Former Rhode Island GOP Chairman John Holmes died this week at age 74. Back in 1983, Holmes helped to engineer the biggest Republican gains in the General Assembly in recent history. Taxpayers were mad about a costly redistricting mistake made by Democrats. By hammering that issue, the GOP was able to triple its number of state Senators, from 7 to 21. But the gains were short-lived and Rhode Island Republicans have struggled to win office for years. The last GOP governor was elected in 2006 and the party holds just 14 of 113 legislative seats.
TRANSCRIPT:
Ian Donnis: Welcome to The Public’s Radio. You won election in March as the new chairman of the Rhode Island Republican Party, congratulations. What are your top goals as party chairman?
Joe Powers: Well, first off, thank you very much. And I appreciate you having me, Ian. The top goals of any chair should always be focused on the party as a whole, creating a foundation to build a party on to bring in the most qualified candidates and and help them get elected into the general election into the General Assembly, I should say, and into all the cities and towns and the committees just to build up the party as high as big as we can get it.
Ian Donnis: Joe, I don’t have to tell you, it’s been a struggle for decades to increase Republican ranks in the General Assembly, the number has been more or less constant for a long time. Now there are just 14 Republicans among 113 legislative seats. What does the Republican Party need to do differently to increase those numbers?
Joe Powers: Win. I mean, that’s the easy answer. Right? It’s it’s the intention behind what we’re doing here is to build the quality candidate to show Rhode Islanders how it is that the people that we have ready for office are going to help make the proper course corrections, to move Rhode Island in a in a more positive direction. And it’s been what 80 to 90 years of essentially one party rule. That’s never worked in history anywhere along the way. And you’re seeing the results of it now.
Ian Donnis: We’ve seen the General Assembly, its membership move in a more progressive direction over the last 10 years. That’s a reflection of voters’ views. So does that suggest that the GOP is out of step with where the voters are in Rhode Island?
Joe Powers: Well, I don’t know if it is the I don’t think it’s a result of Rhode Island as a whole of moving in the progressive way. I just have a tendency to believe that that far to the left of it has gotten so much louder that people kind of kowtow to what’s going on. I mean, you see it now where you see progressives where the so-called conservative Democrat isn’t really a Democrat anymore, because they’ve pulled the line so far over. I get the phone calls, I get the emails, I get the text messages from folks trying to figure out where their party left them. And as a Republican, as a conservative, more middle of the road than anything else. We’re sitting here showing them this is what you want in the state of Rhode Island. We don’t need to keep going that far to the left. Are we out of step of the average Rhode Islanders? The answer is no, we’re actually right in line with them. We’re just going to get them to understand that their values do line up with ours by getting to the microphone first and getting our message out.
Ian Donnis: Last year, the appeal of the Republican candidate for governor, Ashley Kalus seemed to be undermined, to some extent by how she had been a Rhode Island resident for a pretty scant time. What is the party doing to prepare for a more effective gubernatorial challenge in 2026?
Joe Powers: Well, I’ll tell you, we’ve got plenty of time to work on that our focus right now is the immediate future, you know, stepping into the chair role and being handed a special election and then another special election and another special election that we have to focus on. That is definitely something that’s in the plans for us to work on as far as governors are concerned. But it’s 2026, like you said. I have 2023 that we need to focus on. Any good system builder works on the current situation that’s in their hands right now. And then you kind of plan how things are going to look out in the future and you move later on.
Ian Donnis: Speaking of special elections, there’s clearly a much watched race in Rhode Island’s first congressional district with the primary on September 5, that’s considered tough terrain for Republicans, because it’s an overwhelmingly Democratic district. But there’s been a lot of drama, with the signature gathering controversy involving Sabina Matos. Do you think the state board of elections made the right decision this week by voting to review all the signatures submitted by Matos’ campaign?
Joe Powers: Well, I mean, it took them a couple of times to kind of figure it out. But this falls right in line with what you and I had just discussed, is they got feedback from the average Rhode Islanders saying that they want to see they want to see this system fixed. And obviously, it’s the system as a whole. As far as the elections are concerned, it’s it’s a work in process, but we just need that one extra mechanism to tap into, to actually make sure that we don’t have all of these things that fall through the cracks. And I do believe the decision that they did make was the right one. Do I think it’s too late? Well, she’s still on the ballot. And I’m not sure that there’s anything that can happen with that at the moment. However, at least they’re looking into it and we can they can expose exactly what went wrong with the system.
Ian Donnis: The GOP has made a couple of efforts over the years to try and reach out to more people of color in Rhode Island. We see how Republicans are drawing more support from Latinos in other states. There hasn’t been a groundswell that I’m aware of in Rhode Island of Latinos or other people of color rushing to embrace the GOP cause. So how do you plan to make more progress there?
Joe Powers: Well, I’ll tell you what it’s not even so much of us having to reach out or them having to reach out, we actually fall a lot in the same values. Latino, Latino Americans have a very conservative background. They’re very much family oriented as our way they’re very much. They have a spiritual background. They do believe in certain things of as far as their money and their finances and such and they do fall in line. That’s going to be our job, my job in particular, to get that message out to them to show them exactly what we have. We’re getting the phone calls, we’re getting the contacts, I’ve had people call up and say, I actually am a Republican. I just haven’t told anybody yet.
Ian Donnis: We’re talking here with Rhode Island Republican Chairman Joe Powers, and I have a couple of questions for you about Donald Trump currently the heavyweight in the Republican presidential primary. Do you believe that he offers the best hope for Republicans to retake the White House next year?
Joe Powers: Well, that’s the beauty of having somebody like myself in the chair position. First off, it’s not my job to determine who our candidate is going to be. It’s going to be for me to actually listen to everybody tell me what they think is going to be the best move for Rhode Islanders. Also, too, as I’m a businessman, I actually strategize and I plan. I don’t make any knee jerk reactions. We are just getting all of the information in now as far as all of the different candidates. Do I think Donald Trump holds a commanding lead. Yeah, the polls say so. Do I think he has a good opportunity? Absolutely. Does that mean that everyone has fallen in line behind them? No, not necessarily. A smart individual pays attention to the entire landscape, not just what’s immediately in front of them.
Ian Donnis: State Representative Brian Newberry, a former Republican leader in the Rhode Island house has expressed concern that Trump could outflank Ron DeSantis in the primary but be a weaker general election opponent against Joe Biden. What do you think of that argument?
Joe Powers: Well, you know, Representative Newberry actually can he speaks for himself when it comes up with this and whatever, opinions that he have his own as are mine. I choose not to discuss what my own personal opinions are, because nobody really cares. Simply because my job is to make sure that I get a collective of what everybody is thinking and what everybody wants to do.
Ian Donnis: I’ve got to ask you, did you vote for Donald Trump in 2020? Or 2016?
Joe Powers: I absolutely did.
Ian Donnis: And you’re a Cranston guy. There’s another, now former Cranston guy, Steve Laffey, whose name I’m sure you know, if whether you know him personally or not. Former Mayor of Cranston he’s running for president hasn’t gotten much support. But he’s been very outspoken, saying that Donald Trump is just done so many egregious things that it’s incomprehensible to him, that Republicans support him. We know that Trump talked about grabbing women by their genitals, he called white supremacists who marched in the south fine people, he praised the autocratic leaders of China and North Korea as top line people, is he really the kind of person who should be considered as a as presidential timber?
Joe Powers: You know, if the Republican Party was based on one particular person, these these conversations of these arguments about Donald Trump good, bad, right, wrong, that keep being brought up, would probably help dictate which what direction we’re going to go. All of that stuff has been has been talked about to death, what he’s going to do moving forward what he has already done for the United States. And it’s remarkable to me how all of the stuff that he did do all these accomplishments that he did do, it gets overshadowed by things how people just keep bringing up certain things. We all have certain situations in our life where if we weren’t friends up, we weren’t we weren’t happy about. Just imagine going through the rest of your life. People just consistently bringing it up. Do I think he could be the best representative? I’m a businessman. This is a business that we’re running here political party state of Rhode Island, United States of America, it’s a business. It needs to be handled as such.
Ian Donnis: Isn’t that different, though? You know, we’ve all made mistakes in our lives. And you know, we’ve all had moments perhaps we’re not proud of but Donald Trump on a historic scale of past presidents. He is an outlier. I don’t think you can point to any other president who’s been accused of supporting a slate of fake electors in seven battleground states to try and alter the outcome of a presidential election.
Joe Powers: Yeah, so the beauty of all of this is this is why we live in a Republic where everyone has an equal voice when it comes to their vote. If the United States citizens don’t want Donald Trump to represent them, don’t let them know what the polls they’ll let them know when they go and vote. Up until that point, a singular voice consistently over and over about the negativity isn’t going to change much of it, no matter how hard somebody tries.
Ian Donnis: One more question on Trump. Is it a concern that if he wins, his critics believe he’ll order the Justice Department to just end the multitude of investigations and prosecutions into him? They called as a threat to democracy, what do you say?
Joe Powers: Well, I’ll tell you what it’s ironic that the majority of the stuff that was brought up on him, I’ll use this simply from a novice standpoint, from a politician. I like to tell people, I’m a politician, by definition. I wasn’t in the political world, I got into it because I saw what was going on. And I thought I could help make a change. And that’s my target. My point being is, from an outsider standpoint, when it comes to somebody like who has a critic, the critics are going to continuously say what they need to say over and over again, and it’s a lot of it is scare tactic. It’s a lot to get people to try to react to something emotionally as compared to doing something down the road. All of the stuff that Donald Trump has brought up, or they brought up against Donald Trump, not much of it has stuck. And I’ll give you from my standpoint, when the first indictments were coming out, my phone was blazing from the press and the media. Ever since then, every other indictment has come up. I haven’t gotten a single phone call. And the reason being is people are just sitting there going, Okay, well, let’s see if this one sticks. Now this last one, I don’t know much this is way above my paygrade. But from what I understand this last one that they brought up, he actually has a certain little bit of extra power to it. Now if he gets in and he is able to recuse himself, or I’m sorry, if he’s able to pardon himself, well, then that’s what the United States citizens wanted. They wanted Donald Trump in there, knowing that he has the ability to do so. And if he wants to do it, I’m pretty sure he’ll tell us.
Ian Donnis: Quickly give us your recollection of former state Republican Chairman John Holmes, who died this week at age 74.
Joe Powers: Yeah, I didn’t know much of him personally. In fact, I think I breezed past him probably once. However, in running for the chair and talking with previous reps, excuse me, previous chairs that have been in there. A lot of them referred back to John Holmes, and you know, it’s, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention, you know, how much of an impact that he had on every chair since then. Brandon Bell, Sue Cienki, the Gios. Every single one of them have told me that there has been some piece of John that they’ve brought to this to brought to the chair to actually make things better. So I know the impact that he’s actually created.
Ian Donnis: John Holmes was a gentleman gentleman and he will be missed. Joe Powers, Rhode Island Republican Chairman, thank you so much for joining us.
Joe Powers: Thank you, Ian.
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Dissatisfaction with politics as usual isn’t anything new. But third party candidates have done little more than play a spoiler role in some presidential elections. Now, the group NoLabels is drawing concern about its organizing ahead of 2024. The thinking is that a third-party candidate could have the effect of tossing the election to Donald Trump. You can read more about that in my Friday TGIF column posting around 4 this afternoon on what used to be known as Twitter @IanDon and at thepublicsradio.org.
That’s our show for this week. Our producer is James Baumgartner.
I’m Ian Donnis and I’ll see you on the radio.
