Rhode Island GOP
Mark Arsenault reports in today’s ProJo that Steve Laffey has written a tell-all about his failed 2006 Senate campaign. The title indicates where he’s going with this one–Primary Mistake: A Candidate’s Tale of How Washington Republicans Tried to Squash a Reagan Conservative but Instead Lost Everything (link added and title revised to reflect information at…
In his interview with Dan Yorke, RI GOP Chair Gio Cicione mentioned that he thought it would be a good idea for the party to have an Executive Director. And now it does (via ProJo’s Political Scene column): Cicione has hired Donna (DePetro) Perry — sister of radio talk show personality John DePetro, and former…
Here’s a paraphrased run-down (though I’ve probably provided exact wording in a few cases) of Dan Yorke’s interview with new RI GOP chair Gio Cicione. (Hopefully, Yorke will put the audio up on his site). Cicione stated that the RI GOP needs to spread the word out about their ideals and they have to do…
In addition to Giovanni Cicione being elected Rhode Island GOP Chairman last night, John Robitaille of Portsmouth was elected First Vice-Chair, Karen Salvatore of North Kingstown was elected second vice-chair (becoming the only candidate not endorsed by the state party’s nominations committee to win a leadership position), Robert Coupe of Cranston was elected party secretary,…
Out with the old, in with the new. By a unanimous voice vote, Republicans at their state convention last night elected 36-year-old Barrington lawyer Giovanni Cicione as party chairman, replacing Patricia Morgan. “I will work to make our party, once again, the party of unity,” Cicione said in a statement handed out to the media….“I…
2006 Republican First-District Congressional Candidate Jon Scott has issued a statement on the recent revelations about Dave Rogers’ Special Operations Fund Political Action Committee. Here is Mr. Scott’s literal bottom line… I call upon the Special Operations Fund to return donations and to cease further use of Mr. Rogers’ name in their efforts. It appears…
The ProJo reports: With written pleas for cash to help put “hard-charging, fearless, battle-tested Republican veterans in the U.S. Congress,” they raised more than $415,000 in the 2005-06 election cycle. Two percent of that money went to federal candidates: a total of $9,000 in two years. In that same time period, Rogers and Winthrop paid…
File under “Moderates on the March”: Providence Phoenix editor Ian Donnis spoke to Lincoln Chafee and got a couple interesting tidbits out of him: During one of Lincoln Chafee’s last news conferences as a US senator, he faced the inevitable questions about his political future. Noting how he had bought a home near Brown University,…
According to frequent AR commenter Scott Bill Hirst, Dave Cote has withdrawn his candidacy for State GOP Chair and asked fellow Republicans to support Gio Cicione. Awaiting additional confirmation. UPDATE: Off the top of his broadcast, WPROs Dan Yorke mentioned that Cote pulled out around noon today.
In response to Mark Arsenault’s report on the money spent by the Rhode Island Republican party on consultants, commenter Sean Gately responds that Giovanni Cicione was paid from so-called “soft money” that could not, by law, have been given to state candidates. Campaign finance records confirm this fact, reporting that Mr. Cicione was paid nothing…
