Gov. Dannel Malloy criticized Maine Gov. Paul LePage for claiming that drug dealers from Connecticut and New York are invading his state and impregnating "young white girls."
"The governor has found a way to demonstrate his ignorance of yet another issue," Malloy said of his counterpart.
LePage made the remarks during a town hall meeting this week.
"These are guys with the name D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty, they come from Connecticut and New York," LePage told his audience. "They sell their heroin. Then they go back home. Incidentally, half the time they impregnate a young, white girl before they leave, which is a real sad thing."
LePage's representatives say the comments about "white girls" were not about race but the emotional toll drugs have on children.
Wayne Winston, a community activist in Bridgeport, labeled LePage's comments as deliberately inflammatory.
"Hold onto your wives, because the black guys are going to come and take them," Winston said, mockingly.
According to Winston, heroin is a traditionally white suburban problem, not a black urban one.
"You can't truly believe, if you have any common sense, that it's all black people who are drug traffickers and somehow we're out to get young white women," Winston said. "I mean, that's a traditional racist stereotype."
An advisor to Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim also condemned the remarks as disgusting and racially insensitive.
Wilbur Chapman, who has spent 50 years as a law enforcement officer in both New York and Connecticut and is Ganim's senior advisor for public safety, says drug trafficking rings are not necessarily connected by race.