Exeter saved: four Town Councilors beat back recall campaign

“Exeter people power has prevailed over the big bucks and dirty tricks of the gun lobby.” – Will Collette, Progressive Charlestown

A big local turnout in the Exeter special election yesterday helped the four Democrats on the Town Council stave off an attempt to recall them for outsourcing gun permitting to the Attorney General’s office rather than dumping the job on the unqualified town clerk.

Progressive Charlestown, a left leaning blog in South County that covered this issue as well as any news organization in Rhode Island, reports that more than 40 percent of registered residents came out on a snowy Saturday and preserved the results of the last regular election, rather than turning the offices over the runner-ups who didn’t win in 2012, as stipulated in the town charter.

Writes Will Collette in Progressive Charlestown:

“I don’t know if many of all those voters who turned out to say NO to the gun lobby were thinking about the Newtown massacre anniversary today, but I’ll bet some of them were. For me, that adds a lot of meaning to this win.

The recall election was organized by the RI Firearm Owners League, based in Cranston. They set up a front group called “We the People of Exeter” whose leaders are really mostly from out of town and include Charlestown’s Raymond Bradley, owner of Brad’s Guns. Click here for background.”

Collette also reports that the gun lobby, Republicans and other out-of-town conservatives who pushed for the recall also tried to confuse voters on election day by putting out signs that used their opponents slogan but encouraged the opposite action. As evidenced by this sign he photographed: