Gov. Paul LePage repeated his assertion Friday that two members of the Maine People’s Alliance should be jailed for backing a minimum wage increase.

“They are deliberately and knowingly hurting Mainers,” LePage said during a phone-in interview on WGAN radio according to the Portland Press Herald. “To me when you go out and kill somebody, you go to jail. Well, this is attempted murder in my mind because it is pushing people to the brink of survival.” 

On Thursday morning, LePage told an audience at the Lewiston Auburn Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce breakfast meeting that a ballot measure that would raise Maine’s minimum wage to $12 an hour by 2020 would force businesses to raise prices to cover higher salaries. That would hurt the elderly.

LePage said two backers of the increase — Ben Chin and Mike Tipping of the Maine People’s Alliance — “should be thrown in jail for what they’re doing to the elderly” by pushing the wage increase.

This story will be updated.