Gov. Charlie Baker may have developed a political headache while playing host to the eastern Canadian premiers and New England governors this week at their annual conference, and that headache is named Paul Lepage. The Republican Maine governor (who likes to compare himself to Donald Trump before he was popular) managed to insult the cities of Lawrence and Lowell, as well as a whole a lot of other people, when he told the state House News Service that it's minority drug dealers from those towns that get arrested in Maine - and that the white arrests are mostly for methamphetamines.

LePage is under mounting pressure in his home state to resign and according to the Portland Press Herald, is considering resigning.

The Democratic governors at a Monday press conference, Connecticut's Dannel Malloy, New Hampshire's Maggie Hassan and Rhode Islander's Gina Raimondo, all jumped on LePage's racial remarks while Baker, the only other Republican on the dias, didn't address Lepage's comments directly. Now the state Democratic party is hitting Baker for not rejecting LePage more vigorously.

Meanwhile in the Commonwealth, the ballot questions are heating up. One of the biggest issues for voters in november will be a ballot question on lifting the charter school cap. The very, very well funded organization behind the Yes campaign to bring more charters to the state has a new ad television viewers may have seen. It lays out their claims that charter school performance is better than traditional public schools and that it means more funding for education.

Of course charter opponents, lead by teachers' unions, reject all that and say charters take away money from local districts and harm public education for everyone.

Anyway, expect to see a lot more ads on this question between now and November. At least the ads will break the monotony of nonstop Clinton and Trump ads. ( Or perhaps just Clinton ads?)

And on Beacon Hill proper, a major industrial group got pols a bit worked up recently by rating how business-friendly they think the House and Senate are.

The scorecards are how interest groups rate lawmakers according to their own standards - for instance second amendment groups typically rate representatives based on gun control votes.  Legislative scorecards don't usually ruffle this many feathers, but Associated industries of Massachusetts has been active in a lot of the negotiations on Beacon Hill to make bills more business-friendly.

The scorecard praises the House and savages the Senate. In fact, almost all of the Senate's crecent of Republican members actually score lower than most House Democrats on business issues, according to AIM.

House speaker Robert Deleo is quite proud that the House works with groups like AIM and the Chamber of Commerce to pass bills almost all his members go along with. Progressives outside the building and some in the Senate are questioning whether Democrats should even care about praise from business groups like this and think of their low scores as badges of honor.