Scott Guthrie, Spencer Dickinson support Mattiello

Coventry Rep. Scott Guthrie said he is supporting Rep. Nick Mattiello for speaker because “a couple people pissed me off.”

He said he initially contemplated caucusing with the group supporting Rep. Mike Marcello, but at the outset that group didn’t even know who it would put forward as the candidate for speaker.

“There was no one they had a name for,” he told me this morning. “If you have a name you can build a team around a name.”

He also said the group was “cutting deals here and there.”

“I like Michael but now it’s going to turn into silly season,” Guthrie said. “Do we have a smooth transition and do the people’s business? All this is is politics for the next election.”

South Kingstown Rep. Spencer Dickinson, another occasional ally to the progressive movement, said he too is supporting conservative Democrat Nick Mattiello.

“I began by supporting O’Neill or Lombardi, but lack of sign-on by the progressive wing made those choices unavailable,” he wrote on his Facebook wall. “I believe that if you had been with me for the last 72 hours, and seen what I have seen, you would have made the same choice.”

On my Facebook wall, Dickinson, a vocal critic of Gordon Fox and his leadership team, wrote: “Plausible intel that the Ucci Blazejewski team (that later grafted on Marcello as speaker) actually started out as the team of horses that was to keep [Frank] Anzeveno in power. Mattiello put a credible stop to that and that’s one reason why he will be the next speaker.”

Dickinson has long been at odds with the previous leadership group.