The direct mail political advertisement that landed in the mail boxes last week of Rhode Island registered Republicans featured a photo of independent governor candidate Joe Trillo smiling and shaking hands with President Donald Trump.
The flyer boasted that Trillo and the president have the “same policies, the same priorities.”
You would surmise that Trillo, chairman of Trump’s Rhode Island campaign in 2016, might have sent this mailer to harvest votes from Republicans mulling a vote for their party’s candidate, Cranston Mayor Allan Fung.
Guess again. The Trump-Trillo mailer was sent by Democratic Gov. Gina Raimondo’s Rhode Democratic Party. The message is a blatant attempt to boost Trillo among Trump supporters –at Fung’s expense.
As the days dwindle toward Nov. 6, it’s clear that even in such deep blue bastions as Rhode Island and Massachusetts, Trump’s shadow hangs everywhere, even in contests that for decades have been largely focused on local and state issues.
When Massachusetts Republican Gov. Charlie Baker, a moderate Trump critic, was asked during a recent televised debate whether he would vote for his party’s Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, he hesitated. That candidate is Geoff Diehl, a conservative Trump booster, who is challenging Democrat Elizabeth Warren. While he was on air, Baker wavered and stumbled, declining to say for who he would cast his ballot. After the debate ended, the governor released a statement saying he would support the Republican ticket.
Trump has carved a wedge deep into New England Republican parties. In Rhode Island, both Trillo and Fung use Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric to slam Raimondo for failing to have the state police help federal immigration agents chase undocumented immigrants. Both Fung and Trump have used Trumpian themes on immigration, with both denouncing Raimondo for allowing “sanctuary cities” to gain traction in the state.
U.S. Senate campaigns are usually a mix of state and national topics. Not this year. In southern New England, Trump’s policies dominate the discussion. The combatants in Rhode Island, incumbent Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse and Republican Bob Flanders joust about such issues as the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court hearings and the president’s tax cuts, the president’s decision to walk away from the Paris Climate Change deal, Trump’s immigration stances and trade negotiations.
This has been difficult for Flanders, the Republican trying to harvest independent votes necessary to defeat a Democrat. Flanders says he wants to be a senator in the vein of the late John Chafee, a Republican known for his ability to forge compromise. At other times, he praises Trump’s tax cuts and work for trade deals that he believes would be better for American industries and workers.
Referencing Chafee may be smart politics; older Rhode Islanders remember him fondly. But you have to wonder if Chafee—who famously called for a ban on manufacture and sales of cheap handguns—would be able to win a Republican primary in the Trump era.
Warren, the staunch Massachusetts liberal known for her criticism of lax regulation of big banks, recently released her DNA. Why, leading comfortably in polls, would she open such a discussion?
Some Democrats criticized her for indulging in such a distraction so close to the mid-terms. Her answer: She was sick of Trump’s constant needling of her as “Pocahantas,” a nasty moniker the president uses at rallies to deride Warren, who says her ancestry is part Native American.
So she released DNA results that showed some American Indian ancestry generations ago. This may not doom her reelection in Massachusetts. But it could tarnish her progressive credentials if she runs for president in 2020.
Even obscure themes have a Trump tie. In Rhode Island, Raimondo’s closing argument in radio spots is that she is bringing “The change we need.” That’s precisely the same slogan used in the 1980s by another Cranston mayor, Republican Ed DiPrete when he was elected governor. The political consultant who came up with that one: None other than Paul Manafort, the Trump campaign manager, who has been convicted of tax and bank fraud.
Trump himself isn’t on any ballot next Tuesday. Yet, voters here and across the nation will be deciding whether they like the direction he is leading for the nation.
Scott MacKay’s commentary can be heard every Monday on The Public’s Radio at 6:45 and 8:45 a.m. and at 5:44 p.m. You can also follow his political analysis at our web site ThePublic’sRadio.org.
