Taveras, Raimondo vie for Democratic endorsements

Public polling is neck-and-neck as Gina Raimondo and Angel Taveras campaign to be Rhode Island’s next governor. But the battle for endorsements tells a different story.

Perhaps the surprise story of the campaign so far has been the amount of union support Raimondo has garnered. She’s been endorsed by 9 labor unions and Taveras only 3.

Given the candidates’ very different reputations on pension reforms one may expect this skew to be the other way around. But the things to keep in mind here is that all of Raimondo’s backing comes from private sector unions and two of Taveras’ endorsements come from public sector unions. While this might not be a clear referendum on pension policy, it goes a long way to refuting the myth of the unified labor movement in the Ocean State.

Here’s a comparison of the city and town committees who have endorsed either Raimondo or Taveras so far:

Raimondo has captured more city and town Democratic committees than Taveras. But there’s also something interesting about where the endorsements are coming from: Raimondo, who has 8* town committees so far (no cities) seems to be attracting the suburban endorsements while Taveras is attracting more urban support, with 7 cities and towns. There’s a practical difference here: the 9 towns (no cities yet) in the Raimondo column only have a combined population of 102,329. The seven city and town committees that gave their support to Taveras have a total population of 362,468.

On the other hand, a municipal committee endorsement certainly does not guarantee the support of party members. For example, the East Greenwich Dems have about as much political juice as the local animal protection league. And while Taveras may have won the endorsement of the Providence Democratic Committee, three Democrats on the City Council are supporting Raimondo: Davian Sanchez, Louis Aponte and Sabina Matos.

When it comes from endorsements of state legislators, it isn’t even close. With endorsements from 9 of 32 Senate Democrats and 24 of the 69 House Dems, Taveras already has significant chunks of both chambers on lock down. Raimondo only has three legislative endorsements so far.

Another interesting comparison of former politicians who have endorsed so far. Make of this what you will:

* This post has been updated to reflect new information from the Raimondo campaign, namely that the Cumberland Democratic Party has also endorsed her.