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Rhode Island Republican Party On Life-Support


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No Republicans Button
Apparently, Rhode Islanders don’t let Rhode Islanders vote Republican, either.

On Election Day 2012, there were 786 candidates for all offices across Rhode Island, from U.S. Senator to Town Sergeant. According to a list provided by the Secretary of State’s office, the make-up was such:

  • 301 Democrats
  • 209 Republicans
  • 116 Independents
  • 4 Moderates
  • 1 Libertarian (Independent)
  • 1 Vigilant Fox (Independent)
  • 154 candidates for nonpartisan offices

In evaluating partisan strength, we need to put aside the 154 nonpartisan candidates and the offices they ran for, merely because nonpartisan offices don’t identify party affiliation. Including the federal offices contested (not including the U.S. Presidency), there were 373 partisan officials elected in 2012 (not all offices are contested in a given election year, the total number of offices in this state is at least 505 and the 1992 Census of Governments by the US Census Bureau put the total number of elected offices at 1186).

How did the parties do? Well, of the 301 candidates put up by the Democrats, 244 of them were elected; a win rate of 81.06% per candidate. The Republicans? Of their 209 candidates, just 96 of them made it to elective office, a win rate of 45.93%. Political independents placed 33 candidates, winning 28.45% of the time. The Moderates (and everyone else) had a win rate of 0%.

Basically, with no organization behind them, political independents did about half as well as the Republicans, despite that party’s over-hyped “Strike Force”, their poorly-constructed/conceived “Rhode Island sucks” website, and chairman Mark Zaccaria’s “less-is-more” strategy (which I criticized back in June). Deep organizational/strategic thinking or cheap gimmicks?

The answer is clear from the results: Republicans in Rhode Island were crushed in 2012. With only 11 members in the General Assembly, it is no longer tenable to think of Rhode Island as having two major parties with minor parties like the Moderates and Greens. Instead, we need to think of Rhode Island has having a primary party, the Democratic Party; a secondary party, the Republican Party; and tertiary parties like the Moderates.

Despite the insight to the RI GOP’s issues provided here by Patrick Laverty (running inexperienced candidates for statewide office), he misses the deeper structural problem for Republicans: they’ve largely ceded much of the state to Democrats and independents (a problem exacerbated under Mr. Zaccaria’s time as chair). If you lived in all but one of Pawtucket’s six city council wards or House District 46, after you completed the federal office section of your ballot there wasn’t a single Republican anywhere down ticket.

Republicans may feel strong in towns like East Greenwich, West Greenwich, and Scituate (towns where the majority of voters voted straight Republican for President, U.S. Senator, and U.S. Representative), but even in these towns, Democrats contested town-wide offices and majorities of voters voted for the occasional Democratic Assembly candidate (in East Greenwich, they picked Mark Schwager; West Greenwich went with Leo Raptakis and Lisa Tomasso; and Scituate returned Michael Marcello).

A strategic problem for the Republicans is that they don’t appear to have a plan to actually fix Rhode Island’s problems, and the only ideas they’ve expressed are an anathema to the majority of Rhode Island’s voters. Without an appealing plan or vision, Democrats will continue to accrue the state’s new talent and fresh blood in politics, while the Republicans will remain a party adrift and rudderless. The only question is whether the party will finally drown under a tide of blue, or find a way to reform and provide a serious challenge. It’s a project that will take decades.

 

CORRECTIONS: An earlier version of this article missed that there were four expressly partisan Moderate Party candidate. It also failed to give a justification for not counting nonpartisan offices. Thank you, Ted Nesi.

An earlier version also incorrectly referred to Rep. Michael Marcello as “Phil Marcello”.

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GOP Strategy for General Assembly Needs Work


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So, according to RINPR’s Ian Donnis, RI Republican Party chairman Mark Zaccaria only plans to run 40-50 candidates for the 113-member General Assembly (about half of the number who ran in 2010 during the Tea Party Revolt). Mr. Zaccaria says that the goal is to force floor fights over every major piece of legislation, and that the focus on fewer candidates will allow for deeper distribution of resources.

I’m not buying it. First, Democrats are extremely well-equipped, monetarily, to fend off challengers (for instance, Speaker Fox alone has a quarter of a million dollars, search the filings here). Second, I’d be more inclined to believe that the RI GOP was a strong and credible organization if they actually came off that way. But go to their website and tool around for a bit. I found these problems with it:

  • The carousel only has one thing on it, leading to lots of clicking on those arrows.
  • The sole item in the carousel asks if you’ve heard their radio ad, but clicking on it just brings you back to the home page.
  • The “At The Front” blog has one article, which discusses Rhode Island Democrats and hardly mentions the Republicans.
  • There are no events on the events page.
  • The lead story in “Latest News” is the selection of Delegates for the Convention.
  • There’s a Twitter feed, but it’s used so rarely (tweets from 13 and 28 days ago) that it might as well be static.
  • RIGOPtv (their YouTube channel) shows a video from 2011 about the jobs plan put out by the U.S. House Republicans.
  • The “About” section is about Mr. Zaccaria, not the party.

Obviously, the Democrats have a much better website (they also have more money to spend on it). And obviously, you can have a crappy website and still be a really great organization. But in the 21st Century, we should note that websites are often the first impression you make on people. And RIGOP.org is not an inspiring impression, though its big candidates (Brendan Doherty & Barry Hinckley) have much stronger websites.

My main issue is with any political organization (Republican, Tea Party, Democrat, Progressive, Green, Moderate, etc.) looking to undo the establishment is that “less is more” does not seem to be an actual functioning approach. There’s just so many things you get from more candidates:

  • A Sense of Movement: When you have a lot of people standing up and declaring themselves under your banner it makes people take notice. It also means that you have more chances to win. If you can’t assist everyone with your meager resource, then focus on those you believe have a chance, and make it clear to those you can’t that you’ll help them if you gain those resources.
  • Larger Networks: Each candidate brings in a different social network. The more candidates that are running, the greater amplification of your organization’s message through their networks. Also, the people they attract to their campaigns are going to be your next generation of candidates and supporters. With fewer candidates, you’re restricting yourself.
  • Drowns Out the Wackos: Some people just have weird beliefs. And they’re often dedicated enough to act upon those beliefs. More candidates means that you’ll keep those folks from totally defining your organization. Obviously, if you’re not a political party, you can exert more control over your candidates. But since the only way to keep someone from running under your banner as a party is to primary them, more candidates means you can show such candidates to by atypical.
  • Free Experience: Training people requires work and time. While it behooves you to offer training to candidates and their staff, there’s nothing like real, on-the-job experience. Yes, inexperienced people screw up. But that’s how people learn. Your goal as a political organization should be to minimize and counteract those mistakes, making it easier for people to participate without sinking your candidates.

Those are benefits I see. Certainly, I’m no heroic field director or party organizer. I think for the Republicans to announce that they’re fielding almost half of the candidates they had in the last election makes it look like they’re contracting, rather then expanding. Which makes them look far weaker then might actually be the case. And if the emphasis is going to be on quality rather than quantity, you have to be of better quality then your opponents.

The other issue here is that perhaps the Republicans have set their sights too low. Forcing a floor debate on major bills isn’t exactly the rallying cry that inspired Tea Party activists last election cycle (“We Want Our Country Back!”). If someone promised me they were going to lose a lot while talking a lot, I’d laugh in their face. The promise needs to be big: our members are going to have control of the state. That should be the promise of any party or organized faction in the state. Republicans aren’t even promising to take one chamber of the General Assembly.

Because but no matter your goal, you’re probably not going to live up to it (unless you’re the ruling Democratic Party). And if you’re going to go down, go down kicking and screaming, because whimpering doesn’t look strong.