Further to yesterday’s post on Johnston politics, don’t forget this corresponding news about the state legislature:

In 2022, just 20 percent of Rhode Island’s 113 General Assembly seats went uncontested in a primary and/or the general election.

But this year, 52 percent of those Assembly seats will go uncontested thanks to a sharp drop in Democratic primaries and Republican candidates.

That combination — of plunging numbers of progressive challengers in September and a truncated GOP field in November — will benefit incumbents, but leave Rhode Island voters with far fewer choices as they head to the polls this fall, observers say.

COVID and mail ballots were the end.  You’ve been able to practically feel it in the air ever since.  Until something fundamental shifts, it’s all over.  The Party is in total control.

The article has some perfunctory hand-wringing from John Marion, whose organization, Common Cause, has been right in the mix for causing the current condition, but the fact that Boston Globe journalist Edward Fitzpatrick still goes to him to set the tone of the article shows how performative the concern is.  The truth can be found in this from AFL-CIO poohbah Patrick Crowley, who came up as one of the most aggressive and offensive activists in the state and who once told the progressive NetRoots Nation conference when it came to Providence that the radical Left in the Ocean State was implementing a “one union” strategy to fuse progressivism with labor unions to take over the state:  “Generally, the General Assembly has performed exactly as Rhode Islanders are expecting them to.”

Just as union organizers always mean “union members” when they say “workers,” when Crowley says “Rhode Islanders,” he means is particular far-left faction.  They’ve completely bought state government, and neither journalists or supposed good-government groups are interested in causing them any problems.