A Limited Snapshot of Next Governor’s Race
Teasing an hour-long pension special, Ian Donnis breaks this interesting tidbit:
A poll of 400 likely voters, commissioned by the National Education Association Rhode Island, shows Republican John Robitaille narrowly beating Governor Lincoln Chafee and state Treasurer Gina Raimondo in a hypothetical matchup for the governor’s office.
Walsh says the poll conducted by Abacus Associates of Massachusetts shows Robitaille with 30 percent of the vote, compared with 28 percent for Chafee, and 22 percent for Raimondo.
I’m not sure what this illustrates in real-world terms. It’d be interesting to know who’d win if it was either Chafee or Raimondo against Robitaille. And what might the Moderate Party do to the mix?
Of course, I suspect NEARI’s intention was to show that Chafee and Raimondo have been hurt, politically, by pension reform, and it really doesn’t look like this poll supports that conclusion.
What that poll DOESN’T tell us is how Raimondo would fare in a Democratic primary. Would the Republicans be willing to clear the field for her if she wanted to switch parties?
Also, you wonder if she needs to get Chafee out of the race, with two candidates who can take credit for pension reform splitting the vote.
What Gina should do is immediately announce that she has cleaned up this mess and is ready for new challenges on a much larger scale and announce a primary challenge to Sen. Whitehouse. She wins that primary in a walk then she’s a United States Senator (Barry who?). Some times in politics you can pick your time, but often the times pick you. This is her one best shot. She could easily blunt the criticism for walking out on the Treasurer job by simply stating she accomplished more as treasurer than decades of previous treasurers even dreamed about and that for the next two years the office will function just fine with a caretaker. It’s time Gina. Jump now. They say that Teddy Kennedy’s shot was 1968 but he demurred and never made it to the White House despite his 1980 challenge to Carter. Gina you may never get a shot like this again – its historic, go for it!