Rhode Island Politics
I see that Marc beat me to mentioning that Tom Coyne piece. When I first spotted Coyne’s headline, on Saturday, before I realized who the author was, I smirked; in Rhode Island, even the mantra that the “politics have got to change” has been corroded by endemic apathy. The most proximate cause of my delay…
Tom Coyne of RIPolicyanalysis.org wrote on Saturday that politics in Rhode Island will change, it is merely the pace and manner in which this change occurs that is in question. He offered that either the voters will decide to bring about, via the ballot box, a more equitable political system or will the state go…
In Sunday’s ProJo, M. Charles Bakst, erstwhile stakeholder of the political commentariat of Rhode Island, took Sen. Lincoln Chafee to task for his waffling on both supporting fellow Republican President Bush and staying a Republican at all. His flirtation with bolting the party — and, more especially, his decision not to vote for George W.…
Pre–election day, Marc and I had a short cross-blog exchange that touched on the state ballot’s spending referenda. Marc did his homework and argued on behalf of some of the spending measures, including the URI biotech center. For my part, noting that I considered mine little more than a protest vote, I declared: “not a…
Edward Achorn has a column in today’s ProJo denouncing state Attorney General Patrick Lynch for his confusing and specious written justification for not prosecuting Cranston Firefighter Union head Paul Valletta for threatening Cranston Mayor Steve Laffey at a City Council meeting in August. The incident is on tape and no reasonable person would argue that…
A pre-election comment from the Edward Achorn piece linked in the previous post is worth a follow up: Now, Mayor Laffey and GOP candidate Jim Davey are working to send another powerful statewide message. They hope to defeat state Rep. Frank A. Montanaro (D.-Cranston) — Boss Montanaro’s son — on Nov. 2. A quick look…
I’d been considering republishing a June entry from my own blog here, mostly so that it would be in the archives for future reference, and Marc’s latest post makes the topic more relevant. It’s my “coverage” (including video) of the RIGOP convention. Even if the reality of last week’s election has thrust the GOP revolution…
Turning to local politics, it seems that one of the first things to be done is to concisely show the size of the task we conservatives/Republicans face. With the latest election in the rear view mirror, the following numbers should clarify our perspective (taken from this story): Republican State Representatives – 12 out of 75…