Gov. Paul LePage, a Republican, reignited a firestorm on Thursday when, for the second time, he compared the Internal Revenue Service to the Gestapo. Democrats suggested that he was not fit to hold office and I.R.S. workers have asked for an apology. In his Saturday radio address, Mr. LePage termed the I.R.S. “the new Gestapo” in comments opposing health care reforms. In an interview Thursday, he said: “What I am trying to say is the Holocaust was a horrific crime against humanity and, frankly, I would never want to see that repeated. Maybe the I.R.S. is not quite as bad — yet.” Asked if he knew what the Gestapo, Hitler’s secret police, did during World War II, including imprisonment and murder of millions of Jews, Mr. LePage said, “Yeah, they killed a lot of people.” Asked whether the I.R.S. “was headed in the direction of killing a lot of people,” he answered, “Yeah.” In a statement, Ben Grant, chairman of the Maine Democratic Party, said, “We are governed by a person far more suited to anonymously calling talk radio programs than representing 1.3 million hard-working people.”
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