RI GOP – RI Future

April 27, 2016

Weak GOP turnout more evidence RI moving left

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Bernie Sanders’s surprise double-digit win was undeniably the big story of the night, but progressives can find even more good news from the turnout numbers. At 121,923, total Democratic turnout was a whopping 98.6 percent higher than the GOP’s 61,394. To put this in perspective, Obama only won 77.9 percent more votes than Romney.

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.

August 1, 2013August 1, 2013

The 2010 Election Revisited: Attorney General Results (Part 12 of MMP RI)

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The problem with the gubernatorial results is the massive amount of independent votes that have to be thrown out. Luckily, the AG race offers a more typically Rhode Island affair, though a large amount of independent votes are tossed, but only about equal to what the Moderate Party candidate earned.

That Moderate candidate is the most interesting. The former chair of Common Cause RI and the former President of Save the Bay, lawyer Christopher Little best represented the “environment and ethics” part of the Moderate platform. And his vote performance was better than that of his gubernatorial counterpart Ken Block. Why Little has never been emphasized by the Moderates since is an oddity to me.

If the AG race is used as our party preference ballot, the result is the best case for the Moderates short of winning a majority (which would require a crisis of voter faith).

What happens is that the Democrats retain a majority in the House (by one seat only) and have a plurality in the Senate (short by one seat). In this case, the large number of Reps and Senators won by the Moderates can act a drivers of policy. In the Senate, Democrats either have to make a coalition agreement with one of the two parties, or they have to manage to get a leadership team put together with the approval of some members of the other parties or independent Edward O’Neill.

O’Neill’s vote actually becomes very important as well. As an independent, he can be the deciding vote in a showdown between a Moderate-Republican coalition and the Democratic caucus.

The House is a bit different. House Democrats have to be really cautious and not bring any legislation to vote that alienates their caucus and fails to win cross-party support. Otherwise, they could see their leadership team overthrown by a group of disaffected Democratic reps allied with the Moderates and Republicans. Alternatively, they could spurn the left-wing of their party and join with Moderate or Republican legislators to form a cross-party leadership. However, that could damage all parties together, making Republican legislators vulnerable to right wing dissatisfaction, Democratic legislators vulnerable to left wing dissatisfaction, and Moderates vulnerable to voter scorn. How it would shake out would be largely due to personalities.

RI GA apportioned according to the D'Hondt method using 2010 AG results. (via Samuel G. Howard) — RI GA apportioned according to the D’Hondt method using 2010 AG results. (via Samuel G. Howard)

This is Part 12 of the MMP RI series, which posits what Rhode Island’s political landscape would look like if we had switched to a mixed-member proportional representation (MMP) system in 2002. Part 11 (a revisiting of the 2010 election based on gubernatorial results) is available here. Part 13 discusses other electoral reforms.

July 30, 2013

2010 election revisited: gubernatorial results (Part 11 of MMP RI)

Because of the problem with the districts, let’s take a step back and look at the 2010 election again. The 2010 election is unique, because it features two statewide races with Moderate Party candidates. The first race, the gubernatorial election, is atypical. It features a well-known independent and a weak Democrat combined with this third party candidate and a somewhat typical Republican challenger. The second race, for Attorney General is slightly less atypical, with a winning Democrat, a Republican challenger, and a Moderate, plus two independents who do reasonably well.

The reason I’m focusing on these races is because they might give us an idea about what an MMP election might look like in Rhode Island with a party list vote. If you’ll remember, when MMP elections don’t rely on district results, there’s a separate ballot question asking what party a voter prefers. It’s like a statewide election for party, with the effect that it’ll change the party proportions in the chambers.

Let’s look at the gubernatorial election.

2010 MMP Election Using Gubernatorial Results

2010 Gov Election — Voter percentages from 2010. DEM = Democratic Party, GOP = Republican Party, IND = Independent, MOD = Moderate Party. Due to rounding, not all percentages will add up to 100% (via Samuel G. Howard)

I like to think of this as the worst-case scenario for Democrats. First, I’ve removed all the independent voters, simply because it’s hard to simply declare they’d go to the Democratic Party. This means we’re looking solely at the votes that the Democrats, Republicans, and Moderates received. And there weren’t that many for Democrats.

Once again, the districts favor the Democrats. They win handily there, 65 seats in the House and 30 seats in the Senate. However, they have a terribly weak performance in the party list vote. In our alternate history version, we might speculate that in 2010 the depressed turnout of Democratic voters combined with Republican enthusiasm to increase the percentage of Republican votes.

The results in the districts allow Democrats to retain power disproportionate to what the D’Hondt method gives them. The D’Hondt method awards 55 seats to the Democrats in the House, but they win 65 in the districts. That means no one from their list makes it into the House. Republicans have a different result, with 7 out of 8 of their representatives from the list.

Both chambers result in overhang thanks to institutional Democratic advantage and the presence of Sen. O’Neill. What this leaves us with is a House with a Republican plurality (exactly 50%) and a Senate with a slight Republican majority. It’s impossible for either of the two biggest parties to form a veto-proof majority without being joined by many members of other parties. In the House, at least, there needs to be a coalition leadership team. It’s either a Republican-Moderate coalition which fails to give a veto-proof supermajority, or it’s a Grand Coalition between Democrats and Republicans. So it’s probably going to be the former, but the longer MMP lasts, the more likely the latter might get (difficult as it is to imagine now).

In many ways, this is not a good position for the Moderates (despite the fact they’re in the General Assembly). Being a junior member of a coalition is a troubling position to be in, especially when much of the Moderate brand is attempting to say that they’re not Republicans (witness the Liberal Democrats in the UK). On the other hand, should they refuse to sign a coalition agreement in the House, it’ll be easy to portray them as being responsible for that chamber’s instability.

And instability ultimately seems likely to happen. With slim majority control in one chamber and a coalition in the other, Republicans would be forced to find the broad consensus in their decision-making very quickly. It’s a lot easier to whip 10 representatives than to whip 80, and Republicans have never had to whip a majority of a chamber to pass legislation since they last were in power. They’d have to learn fast.

Part of what makes the Democratic Party so effective in its control of the General Assembly is that it usually knows how to shunt aside irrepressible dissenters and how to bring along just enough people to have a large majority. This is what made the failure of the pension amendment to the budget such a surprise. The Democratic leadership doesn’t get blindsided, they blindside others.

Those effective masters of parliamentary maneuver don’t disappear either. They’d be out there causing trouble for Republicans. And with so many new legislators in their caucuses, Republicans would have a hard time keeping any dissenters from breaking ranks.

RI GA apportioned according to the D'Hondt method using 2010 Gubernatorial results. (via Samuel G. Howard) — RI GA apportioned according to the D’Hondt method using 2010 Gubernatorial results. (via Samuel G. Howard)

This is Part 11 of the MMP RI series, which posits what Rhode Island’s political landscape would look like if we had switched to a mixed-member proportional representation (MMP) system in 2002. Part 10 (a discussion of limitations) is available here. Part 12 is another look at the Election of 2010 using the Attorney General results.

July 26, 2013

The election of 2012 (Part 9 of MMP RI)

Voter percentages from 2010. DEM = Democratic Party, GOP = Republican Party, IND = Independent, MOD = Moderate Party, W-I = Write-In. (via Samuel G. Howard) — Voter percentages from 2010. DEM = Democratic Party, GOP = Republican Party, IND = Independent, MOD = Moderate Party, LIB = Libertarian Party, W-I = Write-In. (via Samuel G. Howard)

Nationally, Barack Obama was campaigning for a second term. Democrats were convinced they would win, while Republicans were convinced they would win. While Rhode Island was a sure thing, the chance to vote for President increased turnout to historic proportions.

This was bad news for the Republicans and Moderates in the General Assembly. Democratic voters completely overwhelmed their candidates, and many General Assembly candidates never faced opposition in the general election. State Republican Party chairman Mark Zaccaria’s “quality over quantity” strategy was especially foolish in this environment. Republicans actually lost votes from 2010, as many voters were denied the ability to select a Republican for General Assembly at the polls.

The Moderates were unable to hang on to their two seats. Though they finally contested the Senate, they pulled fewer votes than in 2010, and the Democratic tide significantly increased the hurdle to receive seats under the apportionment method. They were less successful than the Green Party had been in 2004, and the Greens lacked the institutional advantage of being a recognized party.

Democrats also avoided a repeat of the Montalbano episode in the House, as Speaker Gordon Fox held off independent challenger Mark Binder. Fox would now preside over a delegation of 109 Democrats, while his Senate counterpart President M. Teresa Paiva Weed would have 55 Democrats. Once again, the Democratic Party had its veto-proof supermajority.

Implications

2012 burst the Republican balloon, especially after conservative media predicted a blowout for Mitt Romney. National Republican obstinacy seems like it may have convinced a large number of Democrats that it’s not a safe thing to stay home. The other thing is that 2012 brought Democratic voters out at levels about what one would expect in a presidential election year. But Republican voters appear at rates just slightly better than 2006; their worst election.

Part of this really is attributable to the lack of competition. As I’ve said before, challenger apathy effects both sides roughly equally, with an advantage going to Senate Democrats. Zaccaria’s strategy of not spending resources on races Republicans can’t win sort of ignores the fact that there’s really little data about what races Republicans can win that they don’t already have a solid lock on. Senate Minority Leader Dennis Algiere regularly racks up around 11,000 votes in his usually uncontested general elections, making him one of the Senate’s highest vote-getters. House swing districts like 71 and 72 (held by right-wingers Dan Gordon and Dan Reilly, respectively) returned lefty Democrats in 2012; in the case of 71, Republicans failed to even put up a challenger.

In an MMP election where the district results are tied to your party’s seat total, failing to run candidates can have a very disastrous effect. A few hundred write-in votes are nothing compared to the huge amount of votes incumbents get. In a purely FPTP system like we have now, it also deprives Republicans of the ability to point out how popular their ideas are statewide. Part of this is because their ideas really aren’t so popular. In this case, it’s actually better for Republican self-image to automatically lose a third of all races and then complain about voters voting for Democrats. In far too many races, voters didn’t have a choice.

RI GA apportioned according to the D'Hondt method. (via Samuel G. Howard) — RI GA apportioned according to the D’Hondt method. (via Samuel G. Howard)

This is Part 9 of the MMP RI series, which posits what Rhode Island’s political landscape would look like if we had switched to a mixed-member proportional representation (MMP) system in 2002. Part 8 (the Election of 2010) is available here. Part 10 is a look at the limitations of this series.

July 24, 2013July 24, 2013

The election of 2010 (Part 8 of MMP RI)

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Voter percentages from 2010. DEM = Democratic Party, GOP = Republican Party, IND = Independent, MOD = Socialist Party. (via Samuel G. Howard) — Voter percentages from 2010. DEM = Democratic Party, GOP = Republican Party, IND = Independent, MOD = Moderate Party, GRN = Green Party. (via Samuel G. Howard)

President Obama’s first term had devolved into the massive bungling of the Affordable Care Act. Republican intransigence in Washington combined with Obama’s refusal to stake out positions for his healthcare reform left Democratic partisans confused and disheartened. Meanwhile, Republicans were rallying against any change, and they had fired themselves up into a new movement, the Tea Party.

In Rhode Island, the situation was more confused. While the Republicans had nominated outgoing Gov. Carcieri’s senior communications advisor, the Democrats had selected General Treasurer Frank Caprio. Meanwhile, Ken Block was running at the top of the ticket for Rhode Island’s newly minted third party, the Moderates. But the candidate who had the most name recognition was former US Sen. Lincoln Chafee.

Since his defeat in 2006, Chafee had unaffiliated and back Barack Obama’s election in 2008. He would go on to narrowly win the Governorship, after Caprio insulted the President and it made national news. Staunch Democratic voters were left with little choice but to choose Chafee, the man they had rallied to defeat merely four years before.

The key issue that would effect apportionment of the General Assembly were the Moderate candidates for the House. While they captured only 1.62% of the vote for House candidates, this meant they had enough to gain two seats in that chamber from their list. For first time possibly since the 1850s, a party other than the Democrats or Republicans had access to the most powerful part of Rhode Island government. Democrats also lost their veto-proof supermajority in both chambers.

Those gains came at the expense of Democrats, who lost 10 seats, with two going to the moderates, and eight going to the Republicans. Republicans managed to gain three seats from the districts as well.

In the Senate, Democrats lost six seats to the Republicans, four of which were from districts. Observers attributed the success to an abundance of general election races in the districts, though noted that much of those contests were due to independent candidates.

Implications

The 2010 election is the most interesting to me (after 1996’s Year of the Cool Moose), and it’s one I’ll return to later, but mainly because it features two statewide races with a third party candidate in it. The other thing is the nature of the Republican gains.

Even in real life, Republicans managed to increase their seats by 100% in the Senate and 50% in the House. The gains are less stunning in MMP, but still significant. And the primary reason wasn’t GOP motivation. Take the 2004 and 2006 elections for Democrats. Democrats won in 2006 (in the MMP version of events) due to a combination of Democratic fervor and Republican apathy.

For Republicans in 2010, their gains were almost completely due to Democratic apathy. While collectively, Republicans shed around 3000-10,000 votes, Democrats collectively lost over 90,000. These missing Democratic voters are what give the Republican Party gains, and why in the MMP version, the Moderates are able to enter the House. The Tea Party is really overblown in RI, because 2010 isn’t an election where the right wing rises up, it’s one where the left wing stays home.

The other thing to consider is that 2010 is the election in which the fewest candidates are without a challenger in the general election. It’s stating the obvious, but it’s impossible to beat an incumbent when no one runs against them.

2010 also lends credence to the idea that the way towards a healthy opposition to the Democratic Party in Rhode Island is not from the right as the Republicans and Moderates are trying, but rather from the left. A coordinated statewide campaign that effectively played on the disappointment many Democratic voters have had with the spinelessness of Democratic politicians could reap unexpectedly large dividends.

Alternatively, if Republicans wanted to win, they actually might benefit from a campaign that preyed on this disappointment to drive down Democratic turnout.

This is Part 8 of the MMP RI series, which posits what Rhode Island’s political landscape would look like if we had switched to a mixed-member proportional representation (MMP) system in 2002. Part 7 (the Election of 2008) is available here. Part 9 is a look at the Election of 2012.

July 23, 2013July 23, 2013

The election of 2008 (Part 7 of MMP RI)

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Voter percentages from 2006. DEM = Democratic Party, GOP = Republican Party, IND = Independent, GRN = Green Party. (via Samuel G. Howard) — Voter percentages from 2008. DEM = Democratic Party, GOP = Republican Party, IND = Independent, SOC = Socialist Party. (via Samuel G. Howard)

The 2008 election promised more bad news for the Republicans. Their nominee for President, US Sen. John McCain of Arizona, wasn’t particularly well-liked by his party’s base. While attempting to shed his “maverick” image (while at the same time attempting to play it up), McCain stumbled badly by adding half-term Gov. Sarah Palin to the ticket. Palin quickly became more popular than McCain, while at the same time becoming an anathema to moderates and liberals; ostensibly McCain’s strength lay in the idea he could appeal across the political spectrum.

In the face of this, Sen. Barack Obama was a stark contrast. His election would make a historic first of America’s first non-white president. Furthermore, he was intelligent, and a stirring orator. Obama was also the beneficiary of a large number of young voters, while he’d proven in his nomination fight he could defeat establishment political figures like Hillary Clinton. On top of NGP VAN, Obama was also establishing a new set of tools to improve campaigning, building a technological infrastructure that would serve to advantage the Democrats.

Finally, on top of all this, in September of 2008, the United States and the world suffered the worst economic catastrophe since the Great Depression. Americans have turned to the Democratic Party in times of economic peril since the Great Depression, and this year was to be no different.

However, Rhode Island’s General Assembly results were not as triumphant for the Democrats as one would expect in a presidential year favoring Democrats. Democrats actually lost 4 seats in the Senate and merely gained one in the House. Among the seats lost in the Senate was Senate President Montalbano’s, which was won by a political independent, Edward O’Neill.

O’Neill’s victory forced the General Assembly to exercise its overhang rules, meaning that one Democrat would become an extra seat. The Senate would now have 77 seats.

Though the results left the Democrats with a supermajority, Republicans were keen to portray it as a victory. In the face of stunning pressure, they’d managed gains.

Implications

2008 worked as a year of gains for the Democrats, who managed to continue an increase in turnout. While it didn’t match the upswing in votes for Republican candidates, it was enough to allow the Democrats to make a gain of seven seats in the House and take a Senate seat from Republicans while losing Montalbano’s. The MMP election shows why that seems out of sync with how we’d expect the results to shake out.

Something noteworthy in the 2008 election is that Republican Senator Francis Maher faced a Socialist Party candidate. That Socialist won nearly 2500 votes in a district that Democrats normally failed to even mount a challenger in.

This is Part 7 of the MMP RI series, which posits what Rhode Island’s political landscape would look like if we had switched to a mixed-member proportional representation (MMP) system in 2002. Part 6 (the Election of 2006) is available here. Part 8 is a look at the Election of 2010.

July 22, 2013July 23, 2013

The election of 2006 (Part 6 of MMP RI)

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Voter percentages from 2004. DEM = Democratic Party, GOP = Republican Party, IND = Independent, GRN = Green Party, W-I = Write-In. Some percentages add up above 100% due to rounding. (via Samuel G. Howard) — Voter percentages from 2006. DEM = Democratic Party, GOP = Republican Party, IND = Independent, GRN = Green Party. (via Samuel G. Howard)

Nationally, the Bush Administration’s bungling of immigration reform and the ongoing failure to end the Iraq War (while the falsification of the cause for war was becoming apparent) had made the Republican Party toxic. At the same time, Howard Dean’s chairmanship of the Democratic Party began institutionalizing data collection for the party via NGP VAN. Democrats were vitalized to throw the Republicans out of power, ending GOP dominance in Washington since the Contract With America.

In Rhode Island, Republicans further weakened incumbent US Senator Lincoln Chafee by primarying him with right-winger Stephen Laffey. When combined with the anti-Republican fervor sweeping the country, he went down against former RI Attorney General Sheldon Whitehouse.

Gov. Donald Carcieri narrowly won reelection over Lt. Gov. Charlie Fogarty, and as usual, the whole slew of general officers below the gubernatorial level were returned as Democrats.

Low Republican turnout meant gains for Democrats in the GA. Close to 50,000 fewer people voted Republican in Senate races than in 2004, while around 30,000 fewer people voted Republican in House races. Combined with a failure to contest district seats, and Democrats saw significant gains. Democrats gained 10 seats in the House and nine seats in the Senate; with Republicans losing the equivalent.

Republicans complained about the master lever costing them votes. Democrats smiled.

Implications

In real life, this was not actually as stunning a shift. In an MMP election, the shifts are 10 seats in the House, 9 in the Senate; all to the Democrats. In reality, Democrats held steady at 33 seats in the Senate, and only gained two seats in the House. What’s even more stunning to me is that while votes for Republican candidates completely collapsed, Democrats actually boosted their turnout over 2004, which defies the common wisdom of “presidential election years favor Democrats because of high turnout.”

Interestingly enough, the vote for independent candidates completely cratered at this point, with House independents only receiving a combined 0.19% of the vote. In 2008, it would soar to the heights it’s achieved in the last three elections.

This is Part 6 of the MMP RI series, which posits what Rhode Island’s political landscape would look like if we had switched to a mixed-member proportional representation (MMP) system in 2002. Part 5 (the Election of 2004) is available here. Part 7 is a look at the Election of 2008.

July 19, 2013

The election of 2004 (Part 5 of MMP RI)

Voter percentages from 2004. DEM = Democratic Party, GOP = Republican Party, IND = Independent, LIB = Libertarian Party, GRN = Green Party. Some percentages add up above 100% due to rounding. (via Samuel G. Howard) — Voter percentages from 2004. DEM = Democratic Party, GOP = Republican Party, IND = Independent, GRN = Green Party, W-I = Write-In. Some percentages add up above 100% due to rounding. (via Samuel G. Howard)

Turnout was expected to be high in a presidential election year. The Iraq War, which had seen a nation toppled in less than a month, was entering a bloody phase. In April, the US Marines had been defeated at Fallujah, almost exactly a year after President Bush had declared “Mission Accomplished” aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts attempted to hold Bush to one term, in a divisive election that helped solidify the idea of a “red state-blue state” divide in America.

Though Rhode Island was decisively a blue state, a dispute between Providence’s firefighters and Mayor Cicilline prevented Vice Presidential candidate John Edwards from visiting Rhode Island, as he refused to cross the union picket line.

In the General Assembly, Democrats lost seats, even as they won a new seat in Senate. Republicans seized upon that seat gain to suggest that redistricting was a problem; how had Democrats managed to gain a new district seat if their share of the votes had gone down? Democrats countered with the fact that a renewed emphasis on contesting seats had yielded the Republican four new district seats, defeating four Democrats in head-to-head races. Perhaps if Republicans focused on running instead of complaining, they might do better.

In total, Republicans gained two seats in the Senate and five seats in the House. Republicans told their members they were doing better, and the end of Democratic control was coming soon. Democrats grumbled.

Implications

In reality, though the Republicans gained four seats in the House, they actually lost a seat in the Senate. 2004 was the high watermark for Republican turnout, not as a percent wise, but total votes. In both House and Senate races, over 120,000 people cast their votes for Republican candidates. Collectively, Republican candidates tend to must 30,000 to 20,000 votes less. Though Republicans managed to turnout in large numbers, Democrats turnout in even higher numbers, improving somewhere around 40,000 voters over 2002.

This is Part 5 of the MMP RI series, which posits what Rhode Island’s political landscape would look like if we had switched to a mixed-member proportional representation (MMP) system in 2002. Part 4 (the Election of 2002) is available here. Part 6 is a look at the Election of 2006.

July 18, 2013July 18, 2013

The election of 2002 (Part 4 of MMP RI)

Voter percentages from 2002 (via Samuel G. Howard) — Voter percentages from 2002. DEM = Democratic Party, GOP = Republican Party, IND = Independent, LIB = Libertarian Party, GRN = Green Party. Some percentages add up above 100% due to rounding. (via Samuel G. Howard)

2002 was a momentous year for Rhode Island politics. State Representative David Cicilline announced he would challenge Buddy Cianci for Mayor of Providence. The capital city was also seeing a coalition of left-wing voters working to elect a young Green Party candidate David Segal to the city council. The major battle was between liberal standard-bearer former state Sen. Myrth York and conservative businessman Donald Carcieri.

In this atmosphere of change, so too was the General Assembly changing. Though its number of districts had been downsized, nearly a decade prior voters had approved an expansion of the Assembly; both chambers would practically grow by half.

The results of the election were stunning. Carcieri triumphed over York, who underperformed among Democrats. Cianci was eliminated before election day after being found guilty of racketeering conspiracy; after overcoming a primary election, Cicilline cruised to victory. Segal entered the Providence City Council as the minority leader, the sole member whose party wasn’t “Democrat”.

And in the General Assembly, the change was hard to interpret. Certainly, neither party “lost” seats. And yet, proportionally, the Republicans were stronger than they would have been in the old FPTP system. Instead of controlling a mere 14.67% of the seats in the House, they controlled 32% of the seats. In the Senate, the old way would’ve seen them earn 15.79% of the seats. The new method assigned them 30.26% of the seats.

However, the vast majority of Republican seats were from the party list, not from districts. Failure to contest as many seats meant that their candidates were more beholden to party, rather than to constituency. The Democrats had the opposite issue; their victory in the districts meant that they assigned fewer from the lists. The Democratic delegation would be mostly made up of incumbents, while the new Republicans would be mostly fresh-faced.

The Republicans claimed victory. Here was proof that Rhode Island’s corrupt system had prevented the full choice of the voters from being acknowledged. Democrats, for their part, grumbled, and went home with a slim supermajority of the General Assembly seats.

Implications

In reality, Democrats controlled roughly 85 percent of each chamber. Republicans were essentially shunted aside, even while winning slightly less than a third of the vote. So they controlled half of what they should have in the Assembly proportional to the votes they received.

In retrospect, it seems odd that the impetus for the General Assembly being shrunk was to create greater competition for seats. Mainly, because it failed to work; about a quarter of Senate seats were uncontested (10) as were a third of House seats (34).

RI GA apportioned according to the D'Hondt method — RI GA apportioned according to the D’Hondt method. (via Samuel G. Howard)

This is Part 4 of the MMP RI series, which posits what Rhode Island’s political landscape would look like if we had switched to a mixed-member proportional representation (MMP) system in 2002. Part 3 (an explanation of MMP and an account of the methods used to create these posts) is available here. Part 5 is a look at the Election of 2004.

March 27, 2013March 27, 2013

Breakdown In RI GOP

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In case you haven’t heard, the election for Rhode Island Republican chair has turned into a mess. And let’s remember, this wasn’t a paid position or even a position of much influence or power. After invalidating the 94-93 vote by the party’s central committee to make Warren Republican Town Committee chair Mark Smiley chair of the Rhode Island Republican Party, the missing voter has been found, and it was all a clerical error; this led Smiley’s opponent Dr. Dan Harrop (who last challenged David Cicilline for mayor of Providence) to challenge the result.

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.

November 12, 2012November 15, 2012

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”.

June 20, 2012

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.