Victor Moffitt at the Rhode Island Republican Assembly Endorsement Convention

This past Saturday, the Rhode Island Republican Assembly held its endorsement convention for statewide candidates. Candidates were allowed to make a short statement, then took questions from the audience. As always, RI-RA members asked direct and pointed questions of the candidates.

Victor Moffitt spoke to the convention about his campaign for Governor.

Opening statement:

"The most important thing this year is that we cannot let a Democrat be Governor in November..." (Audio: 1 min 0 sec).

"The next governor has to have a strong financial background. I don't have to tell you what's going on with the budget; we all know what we have. I don't want to talk about gloom and doom...we don't need any more taxes, that's one thing I'm definitely against..." (Audio: 0 min 32 sec)

"...and to prove that I was a true conservative, one of the first things I did [as a state legislator] was put in the Defense of Marriage bill...I'm the only person in the state who had enough guts to get up and say I support traditional marriage, one man, one woman..." (Audio: 0 min 38 sec)

Answer: "...in my business for the last 38 years doing taxes, I've done the bookkeeping and taxes for several hundred businesses -- unlike the General Treasurer, who's got this great bill for small business...$50,000,000 he's going to put into a small business loan fund. Shouldn't someone ask him where that money is going to come from..." (Audio: 1 min 22 sec)

"Another thing that I'm proposing is to reduce our Rhode Island sales tax..." (Audio: 0 min 45 sec)

Audience Question: Unions and union contracts are out of control. What can we do to give more autonomy to the communities?

Answer: "I'm actually going to say that I think the problem is the opposite of that. As most of you know, I've been talking about regionalization and consolidation services since 1998....How good would Rhode Island be if we could replace 36 teacher contracts with 4? If we could replace 80 fire contracts with 5? Do you think that would be a little improvement for the state of Rhode Island?" (Audio: 0 min 47 sec)

Audience Pushback: "No", "What do you mean by that?"

Answer: "The point is that, under my regionalization plan, there will still be local autonomy. What I am saying is that by regionalizing, we have to stop competing between our towns and cities...So what we do by regionalizing is take the poorer communities and bring them up to a higher level. Now I also know that when we regionalize, we have to take the school money out of our local property tax..." (Audio: 1 min 9 sec).

Audience Question: If you win the primary, you'll be going up against a well-funded opponent. Can you be competitive?

Answer: "That's a very, very good question. I can answer it very simply...the office of Governor is not for sale to the highest bidder...This is going to be the year where the person with the most money may not necessarily win. I myself plan on raising half-a-million dollars..." (Audio: 0 min 52 sec)