Progressives already lost Providence legislator Maria Cimini this election season, but we’ve also picked up Lauren Carson down in Newport. Here are some of the races where the liberal left could pick up – or lose – legislative seats.

In Portsmouth/Middletown, Rep. Linda Finn is in a dog fight with young Republican Dan Reilly, whom she beat two years ago to first win the seat. Finn says Reilly has been claiming credit for legislation he didn’t author, and telling other tall tales on the trail.

Also on Aquidneck Island, Senate President Teresa Paiva Weed, who has the support of the Sierra Club, also has a challenge from Republican Mike Smith.

In Narragansett/Wakefield Rep. Teresa Tanzi‘s opponent Steve Tetzner, an NRA-supporting mortgage broker, spent more than $100,000 on his campaign touting fiscal conservancy.

On the East Side of Providence, Aaron Regunberg already passed one big test by beat Heather Tow Yick in the primary, but he still needs to fend off Ethan Gyles, who is running as an independent. Whomever wins will be replacing former House Speaker Gordon Fox.

In Coventry, Margaux Morrisseau is hoping to win the senate seat currently held by Nick Kettle, who is best known for fake Facebook pages and disparaging homeless people. Morisseau runs the New Leaders Council, a training program for progressive activists, and for leading the fight for payday loan reform. And on the House side in Coventry Nick Denice hopes to unseat Republican Patricia Morgan.

Nearby in West Warwick, Senator Adam Satchel, a teacher and a Democrat, is defending his seat against independent Michael Pinga.

In North Kingstown, self-described conservative Democrat Julie Casimiro, a charter school supporter, is challenging tea party favorite Doreen Costa, who has the backing of the local fire fighters union in the race. The GOP could also pick up a seat if Republican Sharon Gamba beats conservative Democrat Bob Craven for a House seat.

Central Falls City Councilor Shelby Maldonado hopes to beat independent Albert Romanowicz and Dan Bidondi is running again Senator Elizabeth Crowley.

In Richmond, Rep. Larry Valencia is running against Republican Justin Price. In Cranston Rep. Art Handy is running against Republican Don Gendron.

One would think Rep. Mike Marcello would have a race on his hands, after making an unsuccessful run at being speaker of the House. He’s running against Lillian Jean Delmonico and Robert Quattrocchi.

Many urban progressives have already effectively won their races because they are unopposed, including Edith Ajello, Chris Blazejewski, Juan Pichardo, Gayle Goldin, Josh Miller of Cranston and Dave Bennett of Warwick.

What other races should I be watching?

What the Exeter Town Council attempted to do was change the law in Rhode Island so that the Exeter Town Clerk would no longer be responsible for issuing concealed weapon permits. In most cities and towns residents can go either to their police chiefs or to the state Attorney General, but Exeter has no police force. So by state law, the duty of issuing permits falls to the Town Clerk, a person with no law enforcement training.

On November 11, 2011, Costa agreed with the majority of the Exeter Town Council on the matter. According to the minutes of the regular meeting of the Exeter Town Council from November 11, 2011 Costa originally maintained that “she does not think the responsibility [for issuing concealed weapon permits] should be on the Town Clerk” and that she “is looking into possible help from the State Police on the matter.”

However, at a special Exeter Town Council meeting held on March 11, 2013, Doreen Costa changed her position for the benefit of the large crowd of gun enthusiasts in the audience. As can be seen in the video of the meeting posted on YouTube (starting at eight minutes 49 seconds) Costa used her time to read a letter from Darin Goens of the National Rifle Association, and addressed her comments primarily to the audience, not to the Town Council. The letter presented the NRA’s position that the Exeter Town Clerk should maintain responsibility for issuing concealed weapon’s permits, a position Costa now agrees with.

This begs the question, does Doreen Costa represent the citizens of Rhode Island or the interests of the NRA?

You can help fight this pernicious recall by going to saveexeter.org

North Kingstown conservative Doreen Costa brought the Providence Journal’s attention to my traffic stop last weekend. But she also voted against the reason for my traffic stop during the last legislative session. According to a police report, I was detained because an East Greenwich officer noticed I wasn’t wearing my seat belt while we were both stopped at a red light. Costa voted against a bill that allows police officers to make a traffic stop based primarily on not wearing a seat belt.

According to State House lawyer Richard Raspallo:

“Doreen Costa voted against the primary seatbelt bill 6/29/2011. She again voted against removing the sunset on 5/9/2013, and against the Sub A (lowering the fine to $40.00) that passed after the bill came back from the Senate on 6/28/2013. I believe she agreed with the lowering of the fine, but since she was against the primary seatbelt law to begin with, she voted against the bill as a whole, not really against the idea of lowering a fine alone.”

Earlier this year, she told Matt Allen: “We have to stop controlling every single move we make in this state,” she . “If someone wants to get in the car and not buckle up, that’s their responsibility. The government can’t be controlling what people want to do.”

Justin Katz, who first publicized my run-in with The Law, was also a strong opponent of seat belt violations being a reason for police to pull over a driver – and he’s pointed out to me several times that a more libertarian society would have done me well. Perhaps, though one barometer will be whether or not I learned me lesson.

Katz, to his credit, has been really respectful and very professional throughout my public shaming. It was a good get on his part, and I can’t say I wouldn’t publicize his arrest either. He even wrote on his blog that I’m not a terrible person … or at least not based on my public record, I’m not!

With the possible exception of the recent drug charge (depending on your politics), progressive blogger Bob Plain’s rap sheet is essentially a story of failure to comply with rules and hardly indicates a criminal mentality.  It is, rather, evidence of the obstacle course of compliance that modern life has become.

I’m not sure how I feel politically about a seat belt snafu being a primary offense but we both agree that drug laws should be reformed. Maybe RI Future and Anchor Rising can find a way to work on that issue together?

“I am appalled that she is asking the Church to punish so many good Catholic people who support the civil rights of the gay community,” Handy, a Cranston Democrat, said in the release. “Unfortunately, her feelings are very symbolic of the Tea Party and right-wing thinking that is so prevalent within the state’s Republican Party Leadership.

“Although I obviously disagree, I respected the Church’s right to oppose my legislation,” Handy said. “However, it crosses the line for a party leader to call for active involvement of the Church in partisan politics.”

“Representative Costa needs to be reminded that her own Minority Leader, Brian Newberry, whom she supports, voted for marriage equality, as did the entire five-member Senate Republican delegation,” Handy said. “Is she looking for the Catholic Church to punish her own party members who voted in favor of this legislation?”

UPDATE: According to a story in the Providence Journal, Costa said her comments had nothing to do with marriage equality.

The Providence Journal this morning reprised Dave Fisher’s post from Friday about Woonsocket Mayor Leo Fontaine going on Fox “News” and blaming the city’s economic woes on the fact that one in three residents needs SNAP benefits.

The ProJo picked up on the similar themes as did Fisher’s post*: Fontaine inaccurately claimed that Block’s report uncovered “massive fraud” (or, me and Fontaine have an entirely different idea of what the word massive means) and that even the Fox anchor was surprised that Fontaine was blaming the poor for the city’s problems.

Unfortunately Fontaine wasn’t the only conservative using Block’s investigation to bash our poor on national television.

Rep. Doreen Costa, the voice of the tea party in the General Assembly, was on a Fox segment that included not-too subliminal messages of “‘Rhode’ to Economic Disaster” and “Who is ruining our economy?”

Costa, whose major legislative accomplishment is a failed bill that would mandate drug tests for welfare recipients, is no stranger to this form poor-bashing-as-political-shell-game. Here’s how it works:

Fox: “Why is Rhode Island suffering so much?”

Costa: “Well, I think Rhode Island is suffering so much because we don’t have any jobs here and because no business friendly legislation has been put in up at the State House…”

Fox: “Do people at least recognize that this is a problem or are you the lone ranger in this?”

Costa: “I don’t think people up at the State House even think this is an issue, they just want to keep giving out and giving out and giving out…”

Fox: “If you are trying to help these people, do you think they are trying to help themselves?

Costa: “That’s a good question. We just had a major report…”

There’s a lot in here that is either blatantly wrong or half-true to the point of being misinformation.

• Rhode Island is suffering from a lack of jobs, but it’s not the kind of jobs that the myriad of business-friendly legislation at the State House addresses. In other words, putting the DEM under an economy czar isn’t going to get anyone off food stamps in Woonsocket, probably few – if any – Woonsocket residents lost their jobs when 38 Studios failed and I’d reckon that doing away with the sales tax would do far more damage than good, in the short and long term
• So I get that very few people in politics care that the mayor of Woonsocket and the state Rep. from North Kingstown are spreading lies and half-truths about Rhode Islanders living in poverty on Fox, but what do Costa’s legislative colleagues think of her spreading lies about them. The idea that no one at the State House thinks about these issues is not in any way, shape or form true.
• I like Doreen plenty but the idea that she is “trying to help these people” on SNAP benefits, as the Fox reporter said, is cartoonishly incorrect. She may be a member of the middle class – Costa sells advertising for WPRO – but her overarching philosophy of trying to shrink government down until it can be drowned in a bathtub is nothing but bad news for the working and middle class folks of Rhode Island and good news for the corporate elite.

To date, I think Fisher – WHO LIVES IN WOONSOCKET – has done the most interesting journalism on the Washington Post’s Woonsocket piece. He points out that while the city and the schools are going bankrupt and a third of the residents – and the local economy itself – is reliant on SNAP benefits, Woonsocket is also home of Rhode Island’s largest private sector employer, CVS, which gets more than $15 million in local and state tax breaks and pays its CEO $18 million a year.

There’s something to all that that I believe is the major reason Rhode Island finds itself in such bad economic shape.

I think conservatives, moderates, liberals and progressives all agree that the state’s struggles are pretty much concentrated in our urban areas. And I think everyone also agrees that the systemic poverty in Woonsocket, West Warwick, Central Falls, Pawtucket and Providence is terribly bad for Rhode Island (I think it’s the state’s biggest economic obstacle). Here’s where there is disagreement: do we want to continue with austerity measure and trickle down ec0nomics or do we want to try some bottom-up solutions.

I don’t think the couple dozen ACI inmates who may – or may not be – scamming the system will affect either our real-life economy or our made-up CNBC rankings one way or another.