I’m Ian Donnis. This week, I’m talking with two fellow political reporters about Rhode Island’s most important campaigns. Jim Ludes from Salve Regina University in Newport joins me to discuss the problem of political violence in America. And we remember the late Robert “Cool Moose” Healey with Lawrence Verria, the author of a new biography about the cult political figure.
Reporter panel on Rhode Island’s top political races
Ian Donnis: We’re putting the band back together. We’ve got Ted Nesi from WPRI TV channel 12. Hi, Ted.
Ted Nesi: Great to be back, Ian
Ian Donnis: And Patrick Anderson from the Providence Journal. Hey, Patrick.
Patrick Anderson: Hey, Ian, great to be back.
Ian Donnis: Let’s start with the marquee race, the second congressional district mash up between Republican Allan Fung and Seth Magaziner. It seems like Fung had some strong advantages this year with the high rate of inflation causing concern for voters. Also, he seems somewhat inoculated from the image of Washington Republicans due to his persona in Rhode Island as a generally moderate affable fellow. Ted, what is your perspective on what difference it will make for Rhode Islanders in terms of who wins this election?
Ted Nesi: Well, I think obviously, having a Republican in the delegation for the first time since 2006, when Lincoln Chafee lost would be quite a change. I mean, I was just think about just the dynamics of the fact that like, we get all the press releases jointly right now, because it’s four Democrats, and they’d have to start to figure out, you know, will there be some more jockeying? Will everyone defer to Jack Reed, if one of them’s a Republican? But, you know, one of the — The house is a very leadership oriented institution, and I don’t care whether it’s Seth Magaziner, or Allan Fung. You know, I think the question is whether if Fung wins, he’s going to have some sort of ability to convince Republican leadership to, you know, fund projects that Jack Reed can’t despite his position on the Appropriations Committee, and that remains to be seen, and then how Fung would navigate, you know, presumably a Republican majority if he wins in a while representing a state that has not voted for a Republican presidential candidate now in decades.
Ian Donnis: Patrick, you had a story this week about how the two candidates would approach the issue of inflation. How would you describe the key differences?
Patrick Anderson: Well, both of them are kind of defering to very general terms and very broad strokes, which in a way they have to do because those big decisions will be determined by leadership for whichever one is is elected. I think one interesting thing is if Fung does win the size of the Republican majority, we’re assuming that that would come with a Republican majority. Is it big enough that gives him a lot of leeway to take votes not with the party on issues? Does he get a hall pass from presumably Kevin McCarthy on a lot of votes that he knows might not be popular in Rhode Island, to get to give him a better shot of being reelected in two years?
Ian Donnis: That’s a really great question, because sometimes we’ve seen how Republicans have gained the majority in the House and kind of overplayed their hand to the point where they’ve alienated voters. How likely is that that CD2 voters if they do elect Fung might have some buyer’s remorse about the direction of the DC Republicans down the road.
Patrick Anderson: I think even if they didn’t have buyer’s remorse with him, personally, there would be a big chance that a Democrat would have a good shot in two years to take it back. And I think there would be some great speculation the morning after on who is lining up from the Democratic bench to try to take that back, because it would be a presidential year, which would help Democrats and just the swing back and forth from party to party, I think would make a big difference.
Ian Donnis: Ted, speaking of 2024, there was one poll that showed President Biden’s approval rating underwater in CD two by 12 points that’s really striking in a blue leaning state like Rhode Island. What does that suggest to you about 2024? Particularly when with the Washington Post reporting this week that Biden appears to be gearing up for reelection?
Ted Nesi: Yeah, look, I think, often I’d say right before a midterm, you find the president at a low ebb. I mean, Barack Obama did not look like he was in good position to win reelection at this point in 2010. He won pretty convincingly, Donald Trump nearly won reelection, despite having a pretty disastrous midterm in the house, at least in 2018. So, but look, I think if Jim Langevin had chosen a different year to retire, I have trouble imagining that the Democrats would be having quite this much trouble holding on to the seat. They picked the year when the Democrats are in charge in Washington when people are very frustrated, and they put up someone who didn’t already have — yes, he’s been the magazine has been the treasurer, but that’s not the kind of office we all know where you’re well known the way someone who ran for governor or is a mayor, which Fung has been. I mean, I talked to one person close to the Fung campaign who said he’s never seen a congressional candidate start out with numbers as strong as Fung did in this district. It’s just highly unusual for someone that well known to be on the sidelines ready to be brought into a race like this like Fung was.
Ian Donnis: Let’s shift gears to talk about the race for governor. Ashley Kaylus moved to Rhode Island just last year, which is a bit of a disadvantage for someone asking for votes. There have been a series of news stories about various disputes she’s been involved in. On the other hand, voters haven’t entirely warmed up to Democratic governor Dan McKee. In the primary, nearly seven of 10 voters voted for someone other than McKee. What is your analysis of this race, Patrick?
Patrick Anderson: Well, it seems like the McKee campaign has been trying to run out the clock for the last couple of weeks, keep him mostly to official events, not a lot of appearances that are going to draw a lot of attention. And assuming that he has that advantage, and that he’s ahead in the polls, and that he can just carry that through unless nothing bad happens, and then relying on all of the negative headlines and all of the stuff that’s been dragged up about Ashley Kaylus’ past to drive down her favorables and drive down her vote at the same time. And then you kind of see that you know why they might not be excited about having McKee doing a lot of unscripted stuff with his last interview on a Globe podcast, which probably couldn’t have gone much worse. I don’t know that I’ve seen a sitting governor give an interview like that. And in a campaign in forever, it was quite bad.
Ian Donnis: Well, Ted as Patrick says we’ve seen how Governor McKee has been quite thin skinned at times. He says he’s moving Rhode Island in the right direction. If he does prevail over Ashley Kaylus, what do you think of four years of a McKee administration would look like?
Ted Nesi: Well, I think he made clear on the Globe podcast that just came out as we’re taping this show, you know, he seems to see himself at war with the media, sort of like Donald Trump. And so I assume that won’t change. Because he’s not trying to change it when he needs to win reelection. Why would he change it if he has won reelection? And more to the point, I think, you know, you talk to leaders in the General Assembly. They think Dan McKee is always very open. You know, he said he didn’t propose certain things because Shekarchi and Ruggiero made clear they didn’t want it. And so I expect you’ll continue to see relationship where he’s more than happy to let them have a very powerful seat at the table over the next four years if he is the governor. So yeah, so I’d expect more of what he’s been doing. You know, that’s kind of what he’s been campaigning on. He thinks things are going well, he doesn’t think there’s a need for change. And we’re gonna find out if the voters agree,
Ian Donnis: Patrick, usually midterm elections, like the one wrapping up next week do not have super robust voter turnout. What does that tell us about the health of our democracy?
Patrick Anderson: Well, I don’t know. It just tells you that some, some races are going to draw more attention than others. And I think this one is from the early numbers actually looks like even the governor’s race which normally draws big turnout might not be getting that much attention. It points to things being nationalized, and people focusing a lot on presidential elections and national politics, and not as much on local races, General Assembly races or city council races. So it’s, it’s to be expected, but I think we are seeing signs that the CD2 race is drawing more attention than normal
Ian Donnis: Two of the top Republican candidates in Rhode Island other than Ashley kaylus or James Lathrop running for treasurer and Aaron Guckian running for lieutenant governor. Guckian seems to have come up with a fair bit of campaign cash Lothrop, I think is a little more challenged in getting his profile out. How do you look at these races? Ted?
Ted Nesi: Well, you know, you have to start and Republicans hate hearing this. But it’s just the truth whether you’re in Rhode Island or Massachusetts, you have to start defaulting that the Democrat starts with the advantage, especially in races that don’t get attention the way a governor or congressional district races. I mean, it’s been a lot of years since we’ve seen one of these down ballot offices go to a Republican even when they’ve been able to find some success in the governor’s office. So, you know, certainly the Lathrop campaign for Lieutenant Governor thinks, you know, Sabina Matos basically had no money coming out of the primary and they think they may have been able to find some advantage over her. He’s going on TV. The Guckian [campaign]. And did I say Lathop? I’m sorry, their campaign feels that way. But then Lathrop: You know, there’s been a lot of hope for him. I feel like among Republicans, but I haven’t seen the fundraising come in to support him and perennially you hear from Republicans who understand politics who say, you know, we will get lots of people tweeting and Facebooking about our candidates. But if they won’t write checks and help them have the money to campaign and get on TV and get their message out, they’re not going to be able to overcome the sort of default Democratic groundswell so you never want to rule anybody out. But I think they would acknowledge that when you’re a Republican running in Rhode Island, it’s an uphill battle.
Ian Donnis: Patrick, we saw in the primary efforts by the progressive Rhode Island Political Cooperative to gain a lot of seats really did not go anywhere. There were some other progressives lined with different groups who did have success, but it was kind of an Empire Strikes Back election. Well, how do you see the stakes in the legislative races wrapping up next week?
Patrick Anderson: Well, I think big picture and this often happens in a midterm, when you have the party in power and things swing back towards the other side. If things don’t go well, the establishment is then going to kick back at the insurgents or the activists in their base that have pushed them. In this case to the left. I think you’re gonna see a lot of that. If in Rhode Island, if the Democrats lose CD two, and if if they lost the governor’s office, I think it would be intense and pretty, pretty amazing how much blowback there would be on the left, which did make inroads and really did push some things to the progressive side in 2020.
Ian Donnis: Ted, you’ve been keeping an eye on the Bristol County, Massachusetts Sheriff race between the longtime incumbent Tom Hodgson and his challenger Paul Heroux, the mayor of Attleboro. This has attracted a lot of out of town interest. How do you break down the outlook?
Ted Nesi: Well, I gotta say, I mean, obviously Hodgson has, it’s very unusual for us all for our county sheriff’s race in New England to be getting national money coming in. But that’s what’s happening here. And it’s because Hodgson has been, he aligned himself closely with Trump during the Trump presidency. Now he’s backing away trying to run to the middle for the election. And he’s also taken this very old school approach to the treatment of prisoners, and they now have had the highest suicides in the state of any county jail, and that’s been a big talking point, but Hodgson is also — he’s a good campaigner. He’s been on the scene for 25 years in Bristol County. And Paul Heroux, he comes out of Attleboro, that’s the fourth of the four cities in Bristol County, the smallest so while he has all this money with him, I talked to a lot of people just kind of who are not counting Hodgson out. But one problem for Hodgson is the weakness of the Republican ticket in Massachusetts Geoff Diehl has barely run a campaign for governor against Maura Healey and so if Paul Heroux were to find a way to win that sheriff’s race on Tuesday night, I would partly think it’s because Hodgson is having to drive out the vote almost solely on his own because of the just incredible weakness of the Republican Party in Mass.
Ian Donnis: That’s all the time we have. So we need to leave it there. Thank you for joining me.
Jim Ludes on rising political violence in America
Ian Donnis: The recent attack on Paul Pelosi, the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi underscores the growing problem of political violence in America. Joining me now to discuss that is Jim Ludes, Vice President for Strategic Initiatives at Salve Regina University, Ludes was previously head of the American Security Project, a think tank in Washington. And he served on former President Obama’s transition team in 2008 and 2009. Jim Ludes, welcome to The Public’s Radio.
Jim Ludes: Thanks for having me Ian.
Ian Donnis: In the aftermath of this attack on Paul Pelosi, most experts seem to think we’re in for a number of years of heightened political violence in the United States. Is that how you look at it?
Jim Ludes: I think it is, I think that we’ve seen this rhetoric growing for frankly, decades. It begins with the notion that the government is somehow out to get the American people. And we’ve seen it really grow and metastasize in the last half dozen years, particularly on the right, with the notion that there are some people in America who maybe are not as loyal as others, who are somehow different or other or have nefarious intent about destroying America. And so we see it manifest itself in rhetoric around things like the way President Trump has talked about the big steal, the big lie in the election of 2020. We see it in the notion that there are a cabal of Americans, in the Q Anon conspiracy theory, who are trafficking children, you know, and that they’re principally concentrated in the left in American politics. These ideas turn not just Americans against Americans, but it undermines our fundamental confidence in the American system. And I think that it is it’s a reason why so many experts are worried about the health of the Republic, and the danger for more political violence in the years ahead.
Ian Donnis: How do we come back from this as a country?
Jim Ludes: Well, I think the first thing is… there things that that we need our leaders to do, are there things that we can do as citizens. Our leaders need to lower the temperature, we need to move beyond the notion that if somebody disagrees with us politically, that they are somehow less American, less loyal, and less worthy of being heard. So that’s, that’s step number one. And so our leaders can do a lot of that simply by changing the way they talk about issues, you can disagree with somebody on a fundamental policy issue, that doesn’t make them less human or less worthy of being heard. As citizens, there’s a lot that we can do, in terms of how we engage with one another. And with issues, you know, so I’ve spent a lot of the last — I spent most of my adult life thinking about disinformation as a weapon in international relations. And what I tell audiences, when I speak about this is stop retweeting, sharing, moving stuff on social media that we haven’t considered. Just because it makes you feel good, doesn’t mean that it’s truthful, doesn’t mean that it is right. And so we need to be critical thinkers. And understand that we are in the social media age, we are just as much purveyors of information as we are consumers of information. So before we retweet or like or share that that meme that really gets our blood boiling, maybe stop and think about well, wait a minute, is it even true? Or am I just contributing to sort of these these divisive forces in American politics?
Ian Donnis: President Biden gave a speech this week in which he talked about democracy being on the ballot. Some Republicans felt like it was a– they said they the President was sliming them. I think that was the phrase from one Republican. And certainly there is a political aspect to it, because democracy may well be on the ballot. But of course, President Biden wants the Democrats to do as well as they can in midterm elections. So to what extent does even the most routine standard politics get in the way of making progress on this issue?
Jim Ludes: Yeah, I mean, that’s how warped we are. I listened to the President’s speech, and I agreed with most of what he said. And yeah, I found myself wondering why this was the speech that he would make less than a week before election day. The timing, I think is political, doesn’t mean he’s wrong. But I think that if we’re going to have a serious conversation, about lowering the temperature in American politics, it needs to happen not just a week before election day, it needs to happen in the long time between elections, where people are working together and really trying to solve problems, rather than just scoring political points.
Ian Donnis: When you look back in American history, I wonder if you see any analagous periods that are similar to what we’re going through now. And and how were those resolved?
Jim Ludes: Yeah. So I mean, there are elements, there are phases, you think about divisive moments in recent American history. And you think about the Civil Rights era. And you think about the McCarthyism of the 1950s, where ultimately those were processes– McCarthyism was ultimately burned itself out. And there’s certainly some hope that some of this threat of violence will burn itself out too. But what’s different today is social media, and the ability of groups to not just sort of find themselves, but for individuals to be motivated to think that they have to take actions themselves independent of a group, I think experts call this ungrouping of extremism. So if you think about the atomic pizza incident in 2017, when an armed gunman stormed a pizza parlor in Washington, DC, because he had convinced himself based on something that he had read online, that Democrats were holding children as sex slaves in the basement of this pizza parlor in Northwest DC. He showed up with an AK 47 to liberate the children. There were no children there, right. But these individuals, hyper motivated and enabled by and frankly, encouraged by what they’re reading online and in social media, take matters into their own hands. It seems that perhaps the man who went into the the home of Speaker Pelosi and assaulted her husband was similarly motivated and radicalized through sort of online engagements and it that sort of really amped up his belief that he needed to personally do something to stop this, this cabal that was trying to hurt America.
Ian Donnis: There’s a lot of contentious stuff in the country right now, as we’ve discussed what gives you hope right now?
Jim Ludes: I think what gives me hope is that there is an enormous amount of good work being done by people trying to find ways to remember and to remind Americans that we’re all in this together that the American experiment with self government is not a foreordained conclusion. This is something we have to work out all the time. It’s a project that we’re working on at the Pell Center every day. And it’s something that it’s that work that labor that gives me hope.
Ian Donnis: Jim Ludes, Vice President for Strategic Initiatives at Salve Regina University. Thank you for joining us.
Jim Ludes: Thank you, Ian.
A new biography of Robert “Cool Moose” Healey looks “Beyond the Beard”
Robert Healey of Warren was known as the spiritual leader of Rhode Island’s Cool Moose Party, which began in the 1980s as a way to involve more people in politics. Healey was a familiar figure with his long hair and bushy beard, but he was also a factor in local politics. In 2014, Healey got more than 20 percent of the vote in the race for governor while barely spending any money. Healey died in 2016. Now, a new biography, The Cool Moose: Robert J. Healey Jr., Beyond the Beard, looks at Healey’s life and influence. I’m joined by the book’s author, Lawrence Verria, chair of the social studies department at North Kingstown High School.
Ian Donnis: Lawrence Verria, welcome to The Public’s Radio.
Lawrence Verria: Well, thank you for having me.
Ian Donnis: Why did you write this book?
Lawrence Verria: You know, when you think about Bob Healey, he commanded attention for 30 years in the political spectrum. And when he passed away, his entire legacy, it seemed to me was processed in approximately 24 hours. And as time went on, all we ever heard about was his will, or his treatment of that will. And it just seemed to me that there was something missing. So I’ve sensed a void. And I thought that maybe I could contribute something to a discussion that I thought needed to be had. And that was, what did this man mean to the political scene and all of us over that 30 plus year period?
Ian Donnis: And how would you describe what he did mean to that political scene over those decades?
Lawrence Verria: I think a lot of that was missed on us. And what I mean by that is, I think there was a lot to take away from Bob Healey. I’m not sure that we ever did come to terms what he meant to us or could have meant to us. And I’m not speaking just to the fact that he never was elected to the Lieutenant Governor’s office, which he obviously sought three times, or the governor’s office, which he sought on four occasions and lost sometimes by very, very wide, tremendous percentage points. I think he had a different message for us. That was lost on us because we weren’t prepared for it. We weren’t ready for it. And that was the conclusion that I came to after my writing. And it was during the writing, not during the research. During the research, I was trying to figure it out, just like anyone else might try to figure out what his legacy would be and what he meant to us. But as I went back, and I started writing, especially as I went through his childhood, I started to see threads that ran through his life, and then revisited his messages. And it became quite clear to me that the government that Bob Healey envisioned was one that would involve all of us at a level that would be unprecedented, and quite frankly, that maybe we just weren’t ready for.
Ian Donnis: I had the opportunity to get to know Bob Healey as a candidate. And he was a very memorable figure. Charlie Bakst the former Providence Journal columnist once famously said he was a haircut and a shave away from the governor’s office. Be all this as it may, I wonder how you think Healey would look at the argument that we still play out now about independent candidates who don’t play by the typical rules of Rhode Island Politics. Sometimes they’re excluded from debates because they don’t reach a certain threshold of polling support, or campaign fundraising. Other people say that if they’re on the ballot, they should have the same opportunity, as better funded better known candidates to be in debates. How do you look at that? And how do you think Healey would look at that?
Lawrence Verria: Well, I think at first, I would agree with Bob Healey’s treatment of that, and he was very outspoken about that he felt that it was mistreatment and misjustice, misjustice to democracy. How can you learn about a candidate if you never get an opportunity to size him or her up against their competition, and that was something Bob Healey had to had to fight throughout his entire political career, once even being disinvited to a to a debate because they decided that, after all, he really wasn’t competitive enough to be in that in that realm. As far as Bob Haley’s appearance, which I alluded to in terms of Charles Bakst’s comment from years ago, actually I mentioned that in the book. I sometimes think that’s overplayed a little bit. You know, we became very used to Bob Healey. Maybe for the first couple of campaigns, it was a novelty that was worth maybe as being taken aback by because we weren’t used to it. But after 30 years, we know what Bob Healey looked like. And frankly, I think it was more of an asset than a detriment to his campaigns. Because unlike other campaigns where you can’t recognize a candidate from one year to the next or four years, all you have to say is, you know, the guy with the beard and the mustache instantaneously, people knew who he was, you can’t pay for that kind of attention. So I thought it was a great draw for Bob Healey. On top of that, Bob Healey himself saw as an asset because he said — People assumed certain things because of my appearance. And then that gave me the opportunity to talk to them, and they realized right there and then that there was a tremendous difference from what they had prejudged prior to, to actually have given him a chance to talk and that often brought converts to his cause.
Ian Donnis: I think one aspect of Bob Healey’s legacy is he showed that politics can be fun even while being about serious things. What are some other discoveries that you found that reflect on his legacy?
Lawrence Verria: Well, Bob Healey was funny, plain and simple. But that was, you know, he was funny because He made himself funny, as one of my sources said, and all of that was by plan, Bob Healey would set out to do things for purpose, where I think a lot of people thought it was just random or just who he was, which is partly true that it was who he was he, he loved a good joke. That being said, there was a real functionality to all of this, and that was to draw attention to his campaigns so that he could then deliver a more serious message. Again, I think the message might at times have been lost on us. But I think the message was heard.
Ian Donnis: Lawrence Verria, thank you for joining us.
Lawrence Verria: I appreciate being here. Thank you.
Thanks for listening to our show this week. If you have a question or comment, drop us an email at news@thepublisradio.org, or connect with me on Twitter @IanDon. This has been a production of The Public’s Radio. Our producer is James Baumgartner. Our editor and executive producer is Sally Eisele and our CEO and General Manager is Torey Malatia. Keep it tuned to The Public’s Radio for our detailed coverage of the election next week. I’m Ian Donnis and I’ll see you on the radio.
