JD Vance Campaigns for Paul LePage in Maine, Urges States to Strengthen Medicaid Fraud Controls

Vice President JD Vance traveled to Maine on Thursday to campaign for Republican congressional candidate Paul LePage in Bangor. Vance appeared alongside former Gov. Paul LePage, who is seeking election in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District.

The visit allowed Vance to expand on themes from a Wednesday press conference where he and members of President Donald Trump’s anti-fraud task force announced new steps to pressure states to cooperate on rooting out fraud. Vance told the Bangor crowd he was heartbroken by fraud in the state he said he loves.

“Because I love this state, I can say I am heartbroken by what has happened to the fraud that’s being perpetrated on the taxpayers of this state,” he said.

He ranked Maine as the bronze medalist for fraud, behind Minnesota and California. Vance said Gov. Janet Mills was refusing to cooperate with the federal government on cracking down on fraud. He accused Mills and former President Joe Biden of transforming Maine from a state without a serious fraud problem to one of the worst in the union.

“If you look at the fraud that has happened in this state, if you look at the illegal immigrant communities who have taken benefits that ought to, by right, go to the people in this room… What you have in Maine is a festering problem where people have been taken advantage of, and they’ve been stolen from, and your government hasn’t done anything about it,” Vance stated.

On Wednesday, Vance and the Trump administration’s anti-fraud task force sent letters to each state Medicaid program. The letters pressed the programs to cooperate with the federal government or risk losing federal funding for Medicaid Fraud Control units.

U.S. president. “Our goal here is not to do that. We don’t want to turn off any money. What we want to do is ensure that people are taking fraud seriously.

We want to protect Medicaid. We want to protect Medicare, but we can’t do that if the states that are administering those programs are allowing those programs to be fleeced by fraudsters,” Vance said on Wednesday. He added that the administration would prefer to help states use technology and other tools to address fraud at its root.

“So we encourage — whether it’s California or New York or Maryland or Ohio — we encourage people to work with us. We want to help you use technology and other tools to get rid of the fraud, to get to the root of the fraud,” Vance stated. Washington Examiner reported the details of both the Maine campaign stop and the prior day’s anti-fraud announcement.

LePage, a former governor, is attempting a return to elected office in a competitive congressional race. Vance’s appearance tied local campaigning to the broader Trump administration push on program integrity that began with the task force letters sent Wednesday. The vice president used the Maine event to illustrate the national stakes he described in the Wednesday announcement.