RI Senate ’06

According to his television ads, Rhode Island Senate candidate Sheldon Whitehouse wants American troops to leave Iraq “by the end this year”. On Thursday, the U.S. Senate rejected a measure sponsored by Senator John Kerry that would have required most American troops to leave Iraq by mid-2007 by a vote of 13-86. The overwhelming margin…

I’m sure everyone will let me know if I missed this already, but included in his new website “Solutions America“, Rudy Giuliani has a section for those Republicans he has endorsed. For Rhode Island, he has endorsed Lincoln Chafee, which really isn’t a big surprise. But perhaps the bigger point is the whole concept of…

According to this morning’s ProJo: More than 14,500 Rhode Island Democrats have switched their voter affiliations within the past six months to participate in the Sept. 12 Republican primary, a figure that experts say will probably help incumbent Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee in his campaign against Cranston Mayor Stephen P. Laffey. State elections records compiled…

The Laffey campaign has responded to the Chafee campaign’s latest round of broadcast advertising, going as far as to say that the Chafee campaign is “putting forth utter lies against his primary opponent Mayor Steve Laffey in an attempt to save his political career from impending disaster”. The Laffey campaign takes extreme exception to three…

Mayor Laffey is running a new radio ad that states that, in the aftermath of 9/11, Sen. Chafee did not support attacking the Taliban in Afghanistan. Sen. Chafee disputes that claim and can point to his September 14, 2001 affirmative vote for authorizing Military force against those who attacked the U.S. on 9/11. The Chafee…

The Chafee campaign has released its newest television ad. They’ve eschewed the cartoon characters of the previous negative ad, and gone with a traditional I’m good because I’ve been photographed in color; my opponent is bad because he’s been photographed in black-and-white attack ad. The ad takes a couple of swipes at Steve Laffey’s record…

As had been predicted, Senator Chafee voted against the reaffirmation of President Bush’s tax cuts. Meanwhile, the Congressional Joint Economic Committee has discovered that lower taxes are actually more “Progressive”: Debate over changes in the tax code often focuses on who benefits most from such changes. Most of this debate hinges on tax distribution tables…

New Hampshire polling outfit American Research Group (via RIFuture) seems to have done a more robust job of polling on the RI GOP Primary race than some recent efforts. The poll methodology was “based on 384 completed telephone interviews among a random sample of likely Republican primary voters in Rhode Island from April 25-May 2,…

Mayor Laffey has a new tax plan, according to the ProJo: Laffey’s proposal would eliminate the tax on estates, interest, dividends, capital gains and Social Security benefits. He would also lower the highest marginal tax rate — that paid by the highest wage earners — to 30 percent. The top federal marginal income tax rate…

A dueling round of political ads has appeared on the Rhode Island airwaves. The Chafee campaign’s new TV ad can be seen here. The advertisement names “environmental cleanups paid for by polluters and not taxpayers”, “ending deficits with a strict pay-as-you-go plan”, being “named the most fiscally responsible Senator in the nation” (presumably by the…