To make these results even more stunning, the media’s insistence on over-covering Donald Trump should have juiced the GOP’s numbers, and the media narrative that the Democratic race is over should have depressed the Democratic numbers. But apparently not. The GOP also benefited from a three-way race, which should boost turnout over a two-way like the Democratic contest. Even with these advantages, Democrats solidly outperformed Republicans in turnout.

Unfortunately, some pundits have spun these results as good news for the GOP, pointing to the fact that GOP turnout was up over the 2008 primary. But that analysis conveniently forgets that John McCain had already sown up the Republican nomination by the time Rhode Island voted, while the Obama/Clinton race was very hotly contested.

In the real world, it is difficult to interpret these results as anything but more evidence that Rhode Island is moving to the left. On the right, some Republicans believe that voter anger at the right-wing Democratic establishment’s policies will deliver a red wave in November. Some pundits have begun parroting their talking points. Channel 10 political analyst Wendy Schiller even posited that Donald Trump might win Rhode Island.  Fortunately, it looks like Rhode Islanders are too smart to vote for Trump.  If these turnout numbers hold, the Republican Party will have a rough November in our state.

To give you an idea of what Rhode Island thinks of these dueling perspectives, note the size of the crowd in the two pictures I took today.

Here is the Democratic rally in favor of helping refugees:

And here’s the Republican event against helping refugees:

And here are a few more stories RI Future has reported on the Syrian refugee crisis:

• Cathy Cool Rumsey will run against Elaine Morgan
• Rep. Nardolillo thinks Elaine Morgan owes Muslims an apology
• State senators to hold rally to support Syrian refugees
• Humanists of RI support sheltering Syrian refugees in RI
• Cicilline to Obama: Accept 100,000 Syrian refugees
• Diossa to Obama: Central Falls will take in Syrian refugees
• Dorcas International explains Rhode Island refugee process

While there was jubilation in the Rhode Island Democratic Party election night party because of the biggest sweep since 1960, that mood was not shared by Democrats in South County.

From Exeter to Westerly, Democrats, and especially progressive Democrats, took an awful beating in General Assembly and Town Council races. Majorities in several South County towns also shifted from blue to red in their votes for state offices.

Since I started living in South County in 2002 and covering local politics at Progressive Charlestown, I had enjoyed watching what seemed to be a steady shift from the region’s historic Swamp Yankee conservatism to more progressive politics. South County sent a high proportion of solid blue Democrats to the State House and voted mostly Blue in state and national races.

But that changed on November 4.

Of the 11 South County communities, only four voted for Gina Raimondo over Allan Fung.

In addition to going GOP for governor, South County lost three terrific progressives – my own state Representative Donna Walsh, Sen. Cathie Cool Rumsey and Rep. Larry Valencia. Each of them faced appallingly unqualified opponents. Donna Walsh lost to a radical “Tenther” who doesn’t even seem to live in the District. Cathie Cool Rumsey lost to Hopkinton’s honorific Town Sheriff who was caught using her uniform to impersonate a police officer.

Larry Valencia lost to a guy whose only previous experience was running as a delegate to the Republican National Convention as a delegate for Ron Paul – and who came in fifth out of five.

In Charlestown, we were totally crushed, losing every single elected office in the town to a group called the Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA Party), an off-shoot of the RI Statewide Coalition. If you mixed the Tea Party with the Nature Conservancy and the worst rich people’s homeowners association you can imagine, you’d get something that looks like the CCA.

The CCA Party gets more than 60% of its funding from out of state donors. They provide vacation property owners with the ability to vote with their checkbooks in local elections. The CCA Party has increasingly put Charlestown on a “pay to play” basis where the attention you get from town government is in proportion to the amount you donate to the CCA Party.

But those of us in Charlestown were not alone in our misery. Exeter Democrats also took a terrible beating. Exeter rejected all five state general office winners and provided winning margins for Tea Party Rep. Doreen Costa (R) to be re-elected and for progressive Sen. Cathie Cool Rumsey (D) to be ousted.

It was only 11 months ago that Exeter Democrats rallied to crush a gun lobby-sponsored recall of their Democratic Town Council majority. The “Exeter Four” won a huge victory last December 14 only to see two of the four defeated on November 4, costing them the Town Council majority. The level and sophistication of campaigning in Exeter for the general election bore little resemblance to the way Exeter Democrats won last year’s recall.

Larry Valencia’s home base in Richmond also went very bad. Voters rejected the state slate except for Seth Magaziner and also flipped their Town Council from a Democratic majority to Republican control.

Even in Westerly, a Democratic stronghold, Democrats lost control of the Town Council. So it went in North Kingstown, Narragansett and Hopkinton. When the dust settled, the only solidly Democratic town left in South County is South Kingstown.

South Kingstown was the only municipality not swept up in the red tide. South Kingstown was one of only three South County towns to vote for all five Democratic state office candidates. They also re-elected progressive Democrat Rep. Teresa Tanzi by six points despite a $100,000+ campaign mounted against her by mortgage banker Steve Tetzner.

In another closely watched race, South Kingstown also elected Democrat Kathy Fogarty over her Republican opponent, Lacey McGreevey. Fogarty defeated incumbent Rep. Spencer Dickinson in the primary to get her shot at the seat. She won the general election by 16 points.

On top of all that, South Kingstown voters also elected three Democrats and two independents to their Town Council. One of those independents is RI Sierra Club lobbyist Abel Collins.

So what happened?

Like elsewhere in the country, 2014 voter turn-out in South County was low. It was lower than expected even considering the normal drop-off in non-presidential election years.

In Charlestown, we expected turn-out to drop by 900 from the 2012 count for the presidential race. But the drop-off ended up being more than 1,100. With a total voter registration of just over 6,000, that drop-off had a huge impact on the results.

Challengers to incumbents trumpeted the state GOP’s lead issue – 38 Studios – 24/7. Forget that it was unlamented ex-Governor Donald Carcieri’s (R) idea. However, 38 Studios did not affect the state office races or act as much more than buzzkill in most races. Even Republican Attorney General candidate Dawson Hodgson, who probably banged the 38 Studios drum the loudest, admitted after the election that maybe the issue wasn’t so potent after all.

However, 38 Studios may have had a disproportional effect among our South County Swamp Yankees as it was in just about every one of the many mailers, ads and flyers attacking Democrats.

In many South County races, the conservatives out-spent and out-hustled Democrats. In the House District 36 race, Rep. Donna Walsh’s “Tenther” opponent out-spent her 13-to-1 going into the final month.

But money doesn’t always make the difference, as re-elected Rep. Teresa Tanzi can attest. Tetzner went into the final stretch of the campaign having raised three times as much money than Tanzi, mostly through loans he made to his campaign. Tetzner outspent Tanzi by six to one, but she still won.

By contrast, progressive incumbents Larry Valencia and Cathie Cool Rumsey both out-raised and out-spent their Republican opponents, Justin Price and Elaine Morgan respectively, by wide margins, but still lost.

After reviewing Price’s and Morgan’s campaign finance reports, it looks to me that there was a lot more money in their campaigns than they reported. Morgan, for example, reports having spent only $322 on her campaign up to the last week, but she had campaign signs plastered all over Richmond, Exeter and Hopkinton as well as campaign mailers. She only reported $444 in in-kind donations.

There are still unresolved pieces of the puzzle. At some point, Rep. Donna Walsh will get a hearing in front of the state Board of Elections on her charge that her opponent lied about where he lives and is not really a resident of the 36^th District. There may be charges filed in other campaigns for misreporting, ethics violations or campaign sabotage. There are a few recounts to be done of some races for town office.

But in the end, there is a new political reality in South County.

Perhaps with more time and perspective, we’ll be able to figure out what went wrong, but we now live with the reality that on November 4, South County flipped from blue to red. We have to figure out how to flip it back.

Labor gets a lot of blame for this in certain circles, but it’s a sick joke. The labor movement in Rhode Island is so disunited that pensions were “reformed” in 2005, 2007, 2008 and 2011, each time making pension coverage for state employee union members weaker and smaller. Whether it’s labor law, pensions, taxes, or municipal funding, it is difficult to think of a high-profile controversy in the legislature won by labor in the last 15 years.

The tragic part of this is that Rhode Island’s electorate is not nearly so retrograde as its legislature. Gun control polls well, as does reproductive justice and raising taxes on rich people, and yet the legislature does not act that way.

This accounts for the Machiavellian nature of legislative politics. The conservative Democrats who have held power there for decades rely on strong-arm tactics to enforce docility among the rank-and-file. Uncontroversial bills get held until after the budget is passed to assure its passage, committee chair and vice-chair seats are awarded to “team players,” malcontents are assigned to the standing committee on whatever they care least about. These are not a sign of power, but a sign of weakness. The leadership has long been aware that their hold on power is precarious, and they rely on the disunity of their opposition to maintain their hold.

Part of what maintains that disunity is the selective granting of power to a few individuals, who are allowed to sit as committee chairs or vice-chairs. These individuals imagine they have some leverage worth protecting and that their position allows them some access to the inner workings. This makes them reliable votes to protect the interests of the powerful. But a lot of it is illusion. I found myself once talking to the vice chair of House Finance committee some years ago on the very day that the Finance Committee issued its revision of the Governor’s budget. I was fascinated to notice that he knew as little about what was in it as I did. In other words, his position allowed him to think he had access, but in reality he had virtually none.

This is what is happening today. People with some small measure of influence — who will never get any more than what they have from Mattiello’s leadership — are unwilling to risk what little they have by supporting a leadership that actually favors their perspective. The tragic part, of course, is that if they could be united, they could make a change.

Tomorrow will be a test.

If Nick Mattiello becomes Speaker, the most powerful position in the state Democratic Party, it will be through the support of tea-party Republicans allied with representatives who do not believe he supports any of their priorities, but are willing to go along with him for the sake of small and ultimately meaningless favors. Do you want Republicans Doreen Costa and Joe Trillo to be kingmakers of the Democratic Party?

The conservative path of our recent history has brought us one bankrupt city and a couple more flirting with it. We have given up tax revenue and gotten nothing for it in return. Our schools, buses, streets, and virtually every other public service you depend on, has gotten smaller, weaker, dirtier, and meaner. The legislature has thwarted Governor Chafee’s attempts to restore Carcieri’s school funding cuts and any semblance of equity among the cities and towns, along with most of the other useful reforms he has proposed. You can be upset with him for not fighting harder, but he is not the obstacle to reform in Rhode Island. This is the status quo of our state, and if you are happy with it, then you have every right to be happy with the status quo of the Assembly leadership.

If you are not happy with it, though, please contact your state rep today and ask them to support change at the state house tomorrow. And if you are a state rep reading this, please remember that the bluff only works when no one stands up.

Even if every Rhode Islander disagreed with a person’s policy suggestions, that doesn’t mean that those suggestions are wrong or are not the wisest thing that the state could do, in a particular instance.

That’s right, though too often this can fall into a Jeremiah-wannabe trap, where someone expresses their unpopular opinion, is criticized, and essentially says “just you wait and see.” They can feel vindicated by the criticism, rather than addressing it. Here, Katz is responding to a point (as he perceives it) that the failure of Republican and conservative candidates in the state proves that conservatives are wrong.

I don’t actually think that’s the full argument. I believe the argument is that people generally vote for what they feel is best for them, and that if Republicans were putting forward policy proposals that appealed to the people of Rhode Island, they’d see victory. Anyhow, Katz comforts himself with:

a poll that Bryant University’s Hassenfeld Institute released, this week, finding that 82% of Rhode Islanders would grade their legislators negatively for effectiveness.

That’s not really true;  the pollster (Fleming & Associates) finds that 43% of polled Rhode Islanders graded their state elected leaders negatively for effectiveness. 39% said “just fair.” The poll groups those answers together to create the “negative rating” that was widely reported. Except “just fair” might be read as the neutral opinion; weighting the poll in the affirmative (the addition of maybe an “abysmal” option could’ve balanced the poll, as well as given more information on those who chose “poor”). I understand it’s standard to lump the negative and neutral ratings together, but I can’t find a decent explanation as to why it’s done. We also need to consider what constitutes an “elected leader;” is it all elected officials or just legislative leadership and the governor? Finally, the poll sample has double the representation of the elderly as actually live in Rhode Island, which is going to make the results more conservative.

I’m in agreement with Marc Comtois on this, the results of the Hassenfeld Institute poll “really don’t tell us anything new.”

Katz then comes up with this gem:

the poll results only reinforce what could be inferred from the low turnout for elections.

So, this is the sort of opinionated thing that isn’t backed by data. If you look at page 385 (page 383 in the PDF) of the Official RI 2012 Countbook, you can find the eligible voter turnout going back to 1988. Averaged together, that gives us 61.77% for the 13 elections. That’s not high, but it’s far above the average for the United States from the same time period, which is 48.86%. The low point is the 49% turnout in 2010, a year when Democrats were demoralized, both nationally and locally. If you’re into that sort of thing, here’s a chart plotting turnout by year, and against the OECD average (which decayed 11 points from 1980 to the elections held before April 2011).

Katz might feel that turnout is low (and will no doubt point to the recent Woonsocket special election), but that’s not true. It’s consistently higher than the national average, and not appreciably tied to the national mood (it may be tied to the Democratic Party mood). Rhode Island could certainly boost turnout by rolling back voter ID, increasing poll operation hours, redesigning the ballot, instituting robust early voting, and/or instituting compulsory voting; but somehow I don’t see Katz leaping to advocate for any of that. In fact, decreased turnout helps the Republican Party, because Republicans win when Democrats don’t vote (see 2010).

Katz is right that policies aren’t proved correct by election results. But elections are where policies get debated and given mandates. In a given RI general election, anywhere from around a fifth to two-fifths of General Assembly seats aren’t contested; and those that are contested aren’t necessarily contested by a Republican. Suppose we accept two positions: 1) Rhode Islanders are fed up with their state government, and 2) Republicans will be the primary beneficiaries of that discontent (by no means assured). The problem is that Republicans can’t field enough candidates to capitalize on that. Here’s a graph illustrating that problem:

Democrats field roughly the same number candidates each year, leaving around four seats uncontested. The number of Republican candidates leapfrogs wildly, but we can make this rule of thumb: if the Republicans run more candidates they have a greater likelihood of winning more seats. Former Chairman Mark Zaccaria’s strategy of “quality over quantity” was disastrous, especially in a presidential election year. When Republicans don’t run, they can’t win, and cede the General Assembly to Democratic Party by default. Every year they leave votes on the table, votes that could tell them where their support is, what policies they advocate are popular, and what paths might advance their goals. Instead of realizing this, Katz puts the final cherry on top:

The emerging question — which is beginning to cross the threshold from private conversations to public speculation — is whether we’re living under a legitimate representative democracy.  It sure does seem as if the public is tuned out and hopeless, sensing that nothing can be changed through civic processes.

Not only is this bullshit, this is dangerous bullshit. This is the kind of rhetoric that seeks to illegitimate elections before they happen. It’s along the lines of the belief in voter fraud that people hold; a federal investigation found three instances of mail ballot procedure violations but no fraud. Because the right can’t win in this state because of a myriad of factors (its own incompetence, the power of incumbency, the unpopularity of its positions, etc.) then surely it must be because the public isn’t listening and/or because the government is illegitimate or somehow rigging the system.

That’s not what’s happening in Rhode Island. The Democratic Party is winning a majority of voters who show up, and the Republicans are losing. Quite possibly this is because the majority of Rhode Islanders are Democrats or Democratic partisans. But the lesson for conservatives like Katz is this: just because you consistently lose elections doesn’t make the rightfully elected government illegitimate.

Newton (a former employer of mine) is still listed as the chairman on the group’s webpage.

“Chuck accepted responsibility,” said Isaacs, who has advocated for less anonymous political attacks on the internet. “I think the whole thing, it was almost sophomoric. Unfortunately it’s indicative of the negativity that pervades politics on both sides.”

Senator Dawson Hodgson, a Republican who represents East Greenwich and is running for attorney general, agreed.

“I thought that was appropriate [that Newton be fired] because he created that in his state office on state time and we as a Republican Party stand for wise use of public resources and that is not consistent with how we operate.”

Hodgson said he did not believe a crime was committed. Steve Brown, executive director of the RI ACLU, agreed.

In a letter to Attorney General Peter Kilmartin, Brown wrote, “Indeed, as you are aware, the courts have set a very high standard for public officials to pursue even civil actions against political invective. If the broadsides on this Facebook page constitute unlawful “harassment,” then The Daily Show, the Colbert Report, and dozens of other political web sites engage in criminal activity every day.”

Amy Kempe, spokewoman for Kilmartin, said the Attorney General’s office is still waiting for a complete report from police. “It underscores the loopholes in current statutes,” she said. “We’re trying to add in online impersonation.”

Kempe said the AG’s office will consider stand alone legislation for online impersonation this year instead of bundling it with other provisions.

Rep. Scott Guthrie said he is considering bringing federal charges.

All three events point to a similar conclusion: that a more influential GOP would improve political discourse in the Ocean State. Well … making political discourse less one-sided is a good thing only if it ALSO makes it more representational of the people the politics purports to represent.

As Nesi points out, mainstream party labels do little to describe local politicians:

“…Rhode Island Republicans have a good point – local officeholders deal with a whole range of issues that don’t easily fit into the national parties’ widely recognized platforms. If you tell me what position someone takes on Obamacare or climate change, I could probably tell you which party he or she belongs to – but I still couldn’t tell you what he thinks about mandatory parking minimums or actuarial standards for pension plans.”

I’m sure both Block and Howard would agree – though Block may feel this “good point” belongs to Moderates and Howard progressives. All three actually make the same good point – but it’s most applicable to progressives who, electorally at least, far outnumber both Republicans and Moderates in Rhode Island.

Remember Occam’s razor, the notion that the explanation with the fewest assumptions is most likely right. In other words, why assume our elections and or party structure is broken when it’s much more likely that a state with a strong blue collar, union tradition and a pristine, well-protected environment would attract anything other than a bunch of liberal-minded voters?

So why then are we seeking ways to make our politics more inclusive of of a party system that doesn’t represent our community’s political ethos?

A simpler and more holistic solution would be to make local elections nonpartisan. Of course, this has the same snowball’s chance in hell of happening as does doing away with the master lever or instituting mixed-member proportional voting…

Hopefully this would address the real disconnect between Rhode Islanders and the people we elect to public office instead of artificially giving conservatives more influence than they deserve.

But then, of course, it got worse. After an anonymous email from a hitherto unknown (and probably non-existent) Republican faction blasted the Smiley loyalists as bigots, former state senator Beth Moura left a semi-cryptic anti-GOP message on Harrop’s Facebook timeline. And finally, over at WPRO, Kim Kalunian has all the reactions from various Republican Party factions as of the end of Tuesday, including my personal favorite line refuting accusations of bigotry:

“We have friends and members that are Hispanic or black,” [Raymond] McKay [president of the Rhode Island Republican Assembly] said.

It would be funny if it weren’t so sad. Not a promising start to a position which is vaguely the de facto leader of the Rhode Island Republicans (at least in years without a Republican governor). Not a promising way for a chair who might need to “restore credibility” to the Republican Party in Rhode Island to win the position.

I don’t think the 94-93 split is as divisive as it seems. For one thing, the candidates don’t seem to be that distinguishable on issues (as even outgoing chair Mark Zaccaria said). Smiley supposedly is the conservative wing and Harrop is supposed the moderate wing. Another thing is that political parties’ central committees are rarely representative of the actual voters that make up a party; those feelings are more accurately gauged by the party primary for party purposes. 187 people probably do not represent all of Rhode Island’s roughly 80,000 registered Republicans. Central committees tend to be made up of the most active of the activists, not of the rank and file voters.

So while Republicans can probably put away any fear of a public defection of their moderate wing (it has been quietly defecting for years), this vote doesn’t bode well for their prospects. After all, if not a single General Assembly incumbent lost a seat in 2012 (the year 38 Studios collapsed), it seems unlikely that the GOP could make significant gains in the 2014 cycle (certainly not large enough to weaken Democratic control of the state). What this will do is create bad blood between party factions, and in a small state like Rhode Island, you need your party to at least be able to work together in a general election to share data, assist with voter registration and outreach, and cooperate during get-out-the-vote. If there’s too much tension, the lackluster effort the GOP already puts into those fields could be easily diminished.

Indeed, it seems likely that between General Treasurer Gina Raimondo and Providence Mayor Angel Taveras that the Democratic Party has two highly-popular and well-known figures to run for the state’s top office. The GOP’s top contenders seem to remain Cranston Mayor Allan Fung and Warwick Mayor Scott Avedisian. If the Democrats can seize the governor’s office, they might easily be able to hold it for the foreseeable future until the Republicans or another party finally emerge as a credible alternative.

Moderate Party chairman and possible gubernatorial candidate Ken Block is out with a new website, masterlever.org, which petitions the Governor and the General Assembly to eliminate the ability to vote solely based on party line (a.k.a., the “master lever”).

As a case study for why it should be banned, Mr. Block offers up the 9000+ Rhode Island voters who used the option to vote for the Moderates, despite only three candidates running under the Moderate banner (two Moderates ran in nonpartisan races).

I personally think this is a good idea, the option is archaic, and obviously damaging in nonpartisan contests (of course, I also oppose nonpartisan contests, but that’s beside the point). Yet there’s a cynic in me that has to guess what may come. I worry political leaders in the General Assembly might attempt to squash this merely to prevent the Moderate Party any sort of win. I think this is short-sighted. Let me offer the cynic’s perspective on why the lever should be banned.

Republicans have long advocated the elimination of the master lever, and in this case it’s no surprise to see virtually every local politician from the Grand Ol’ Party backing Mr. Block’s crusade. In fact, non-Democrats often point to the master lever as a reason why they can’t compete in this state.

So, it will be refreshing when the convenient cover of the master lever is eliminated. Perhaps non-Democrats will have to face the unpopularity of their policies for a change. More likely, they’ll rely more heavily on the “stupid Rhode Islanders” line that their candidates and supporters have been throwing around lately. I’m sure that will do wonders for their popularity.

General Assembly leaders should speedily remove the master lever, or at least mandate its placement at the very end of the ballot. Mr. Block rightly points out that his party gained 9000+ votes with the lever alone; votes which the Moderates might not necessarily have received had people had to vote race by race. It’s likely the top-ballot placement gave the Moderate Party the most exposure it got during the last cycle.

With the elimination of the master lever, perhaps non-Democrats will start focusing on issues that affect Rhode Islanders more than once every other year or so. They might consider following in the footsteps of former Sen. Bethany Moura and former Rep. Daniel Gordon; who both spent a great deal of their time fighting foreclosure in our state, much of it fraudulent in nature. I believe conservatives are supposed to care about protecting citizens’ property.

Now, some may argue that making it easier to get high isn’t as important as dealing with our struggling economy, but there’s no shortage of economic benefits to legalization.

Rhode Island spends $40 million annually on marijuana prohibition – that’s more than it costs to have a state legislature! The public defenders office estimates legalization would save taxpayers $12 million a year (read this letter the office sent legislators last session for more info). Does anyone want to argue that Rhode Islanders needs to punish pot smokers more than we need $12 million?

John Loughlin tells RIPR that the local GOP needs to move left on the same day that party chairman Mark Zaccaria said he won’t seek another term. I speculated last night that he might make a good fit to replace Zaccaria. GoLocal adds some to it this morning.

Scott MacKay has more on why the Republican party is in such dire straights: because they don’t even seem to realize just how out of touch they have become with the American people. (Plus he throws in an awesome Catamount reference).

Dan McGowan also chimed in on the tales of woe for the local GOP. Some quick thoughts on his piece: Demographics were not the problem for the GOP, nor was it the national brand. To put it real simply, Rhode Islanders are on balance more liberal than Republicans.

ICYMI, you may also want to read Sam Howard’s thoughts on this topic that we ran earlier this week.

The lesson in the dispute between Providence and the labor union that represents municipal workers there: get it in writing.

Prudence Island is a really bad place for wildlife rabies, ecologically speaking.

NPR: “Want to help Sandy victims? Send cash not clothes.”

Thanks to my buddy Bill Felkner for sending along this article about the Westerly firewood dealer who charges more for a cord to Obama voters than Romney supporters. The lesson here for wood stove owners might be to get your supply in the spring, when both political and economic forces drive the price down…