Americans will finish voting Tuesday, although it remains unclear when a winner will be declared in the presidential race. It’s a more low-key election in Rhode Island, where the race for mayor of Cranston is among the top races. But a close vote is expected on ballot Question 1, which could set the stage for Rhode Island to hold its first constitutional convention since 1986. And next week’s election is a prelude to 2026, when Rhode Islanders will vote for governor and other statewide offices. So what do the current political headwinds mean for Governor Dan McKee? How would a Trump administration affect Rhode Island? And even if the state does stage a constitutional convention, would it make a real difference? This week on Political Roundtable, we have an in-depth election preview with two fellow political reporters, senior reporter with the Rhode Island Current Nancy Lavin and politics editor for WPRI-TV, Channel 12, Ted Nesi.
TRANSCRIPT
This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Ian Donnis: Ted, Nancy, welcome back to The Public’s Radio.
Ted Nesi: Great to be here, Ian.
Nancy Lavin: Thanks for having me.
Donnis: Let’s start with the presidential race. The federal government is sending more than 200 million to help with the Washington Bridge. Ted, if Trump wins, how else would you expect the direction of the federal government to change via Rhode Island?
Nesi: You know, I think if Trump wins, there are going to be so many changes and there are so many unknowns, I think, because of the way he’s been talking on the campaign trail, but also sometimes the gap between what Trump says he’ll do and what he actually winds up doing. For Rhode Island, I think getting this much money secured before a potential change of administration was a big deal, and I do tend to think Senator Reed has his seat on the Appropriations Committee. Appropriators, they say Appropriations is its own party in Congress where they just like to make sure they get the money back to their district. So I think he’ll still have some clout, even if it’s a more Republican Washington in January.
Donnis: Nancy, to the point about the possible disparity between what Trump says and what he will do, he’s talking about putting Elon Musk in charge of cutting government waste. Robert Kennedy in charge of health and human service programs. Do you think this shows that if Trump wins, there would be a much bigger effect on life in Rhode Island than people might otherwise suspect?
Lavin: I think it’s hard to say because as Ted said, Trump says one thing and does another and not a lot. We’ve also seen in his past four years that his cabinet members tend to turn over quite quickly. And so even if he sort of makes some of those appointments, how long they last is another thing. And then I think the last thing with that – who’s in Congress and the nature of the congressional political bent also matters a lot for things like federal funding when we talk about health and human services and transportation. So I think it’s kind of hard to pin that all on the presidency.
Donnis: It’s not a stretch to think that the two possible outcomes to the election are Trump winning, or losing and saying that he won. Does that suggest to you, Nancy, that if it’s the latter that we’ll see more of the kind of strife that was highlighted by January 6th?
Lavin: I mean, I certainly hope not, but I would not say that it’s out of the question. I think the difference might be, hopefully, that we’re, as a nation, both sort of mentally and also security wise, better prepared to deal with whatever violence and also kind of questioning comes after the results of the election.
Donnis: What do you say to that question, Ted?
Nesi: Certainly, just as an American, have concerns. I think I was as shocked as anybody to see how things devolved after the election last time. But I do think there are some hopeful stories to tell as well. A lot of changes have been made. There were legal precedents set by those frivolous challenges to the election last time, which are still in place now. Congress reformed the electoral count act, that obscure law about how the states get certified to avoid maybe some of the mischief we saw last time. So I have no doubt it’s going to be a challenging period right after the election, but hopefully it won’t as badly as it did last time.
Donnis: My colleague Ben Berke had a great story on our air Wednesday about how more Portuguese American voters in Fall River are surprisingly leaning toward Trump. And one of the reasons seems to be the loss of industrial manufacturing jobs. This is something that has happened over many years and through both Democratic and Republican administrations. But is this a self-inflicted wound for Democrats, Ted, that they haven’t done more to shore up the industrial manufacturing base of America?
Nesi: Yeah, I think it’s both for Democrats and for more establishment Republicans, right? They did not foresee the level of political backlash to deindustrialization, the rise of China. And then immigration policy. I mean, you’ve seen the – I’ve rarely seen a pivot as hard as the Democrats this year on immigration to the border security bill, not wanting the asylum policies that Joe Biden supported a couple of years ago. So I just think there was a lot of taking for granted how these things would play out with the public. And now Trump has correctly diagnosed that and is finding support with it.
Donnis: Speaking of immigration, we know the Biden administration presided over a big increase in unauthorized border crossings before clamping down earlier this year. This is a motivating issue for many Trump supporters. So is this another case of a self-inflicted wound for Democrats?
Lavin: I’m not sure if it’s as much of a Democrat versus Republican as much as that Trump has been really smart at sort of separating himself from the Republicans even in Congress or of past office, and sort of looking at, and I think appealing to the fear and kind of correlating that fear with fear of other. So I think it’s a little bit of a missed opportunity, but I also think it’s just like, I don’t know if smart is the right word, but it’s a strategic branding perspective on Trump’s part. And I think particularly in Massachusetts, and now that’s kind of creeping into Rhode Island, the impact that the influx of immigrants, just in general, is having on the state and the lack of services to deal with them is something that even though we’re not close to a border necessarily, people in New England are feeling.
Nesi: Yeah, you can see it, the tensions in Massachusetts, right? Governor Healey, strongly supported the bipartisan border bill that failed earlier this year, but Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey voted against it.
Donnis: Let’s stay with Nancy here. I’m curious to see how voters weigh in on question one, whether to stage a constitutional convention. The Democratic establishment is heavily against it here, and some voters might support it as a way to shake up the system. But if it happens, delegates would be elected through House districts, and Speaker Shekarchi would still have disproportionate influence over the process. So would a constitutional convention be likely to really change anything?
Lavin: I tend to think no, I mean if we look at the last time we had a constitutional convention, which was in 1986, there was a lot of reforms that were proposed and things that people kind of bring up, opponents bring up now is like, we almost lost this, that and the other. But those reforms also then have to go to voters. And I just can’t imagine Rhode Island voters rolling back abortion protections or some of the other things that I think some opponents fear.
Nesi: Yeah, it’s this strange, the opponents of the Constitutional Convention seem to be arguing that the same electorate which reliably elects Democrats to every single major office since 2006 are going to show up, in the next November and say, yes, let’s ban abortion, reverse gay marriage. I mean, I don’t want to make light of it, but I also think, as State Senator Sam Zurier, Providence Democrat, has said, he has more faith in the voters than that.
Donnis: I want to talk briefly about the big political story of the week. Attorney General Peter Neronha found that Governor McKee steered a lucrative, federally funded contract to a politically connected firm. Ted, your shop, WPRI broke this story and the governor, this contradicts what the governor said back then, that he had no involvement with this. He’s still saying that us reporters are all getting this wrong. What do you think the fallout for this is moving forward?
Nesi: I guess it’s hard to say only because the governor, he’s not facing criminal charges. That’s a win. But on the other hand, when you’re talking as the governor about that, look, I’m not being prosecuted, that’s probably a bad place to be overall. And I do think, one of the many cliches we all know as journalists is that it’s the cover up, not the crime. If the governor perhaps had been more candid about the process that led to this said, “We were in a crisis. I wanted these people hired. We had just, we’re just learning the procurement process as a new administration.” But instead he did this, you know, he misled the public and he decided to just constantly attack the reporters for reporting things that were true. We know they were true now. In fact, we know more than we knew before. So, you know, the governor is going to have to own that, and it’s going to be interesting to see how it plays into 2026.
Donnis: Nancy, does the ILO group story combined with the fallout from the Washington Bridge raise more of a question if Governor McKee, who says he is going to run for reelection in 2026, whether he will really do that?
Lavin: I think he’s going to run. I think that it lessens his chances, you know, he’s in headlines all the time now, and it’s usually not favorable, and if people think about the other sort of scandals that he’s been involved in, his administration, the Philly trip, which wasn’t him, but was his officials, Tony DaSilva, it doesn’t add up to a good picture of someone who at the very least is running a tight shop of administrators and advisors.
Donnis: I have a story airing this morning about the hard fought mayoral race in Cranston, and Cranston has been a rare bright spot for Rhode Island Republicans. They’ve pretty much had a near monopoly on the mayor’s office there, and it seems like success has yielded more success. There’s a network of people who support the Republican cause. Nancy, why has the GOP not been able to replicate that approach in more communities?
Lavin: I mean, I think the Rhode Island Republican Party as a state party is kind of under resourced and inactive, especially if we look at how much the Rhode Island Democratic Party is really out in front when they don’t even really need to be. They’re putting out emails and they’re gathering people to go raise money for other states that are battleground states. And they’re having Tim Walz here and Gina Raimondo here. And in comparison, it’s not totally clear what the GOP is doing to support, to recruit candidates, to support candidates, to get the word out.
Nesi: But I also think in fairness to the Republicans, it’s just easier for Ken Hopkins to run. He’s not facing very many questions on the hot button national issues and he probably shouldn’t. He’s running to be mayor of Cranston, not a member of Congress. We saw every time Alan Fung tried to leap out of Cranston with that strong support he had there into a higher office, those more polarized issues, the electorate went back to where it usually is and voted for Democrats.
Donnis: In closing, I’d like to note how polling shows how a majority of Rhode Island independents, the biggest voting bloc, about 72 percent in a recent Pell Center poll, show that they believe Rhode Island is headed in the wrong direction. But nonetheless, we saw in the primary in September, voters overwhelmingly voted for incumbents. So, Nancy, how do you explain this seeming contradiction?
Lavin: I mean, people just love to criticize. It’s much easier to point out what’s going wrong than what’s going right. And it’s also much easier to vote.
Nesi: We never do that, of course as the media.
Lavin: Of course, never. It’s also much easier to vote for the name that you recognize on the ballot. And I think a lot of the challengers, some of them have experience, are running legitimate campaigns. Some of them are kind of quiet, haven’t been out in front. And voters may just not know who they are, and at least they recognize the other name.
Nesi: I struggle with this question. It’s a great question, Ian, because you and I, you and I have both been around a while now. We’ve seen this, this perennial where people say that the state’s going on the wrong track, etc., and everyone wins re-election anyway.
Donnis: To quote my former colleague, Scott McKay, if you think the people who win office are really bad, you should see the people who didn’t win or didn’t run.
Nesi: One of the many good phrases you and I learned from Scott over the years. Yeah, I do go back to the fact that national politics being so polarized means when you get to the November election. we know a majority of Rhode Islanders usually end up on the Democratic ticket. That helps. But I don’t know if people are just maybe less invested in their state and local news and civic society than they used to be because media has gotten so nationalized. I think of how the East Bay lawmakers, Ian, have faced very little criticism for being all but silent about the Washington Bridge crisis. You didn’t see any of them get major challenges. They have had no political trouble for it. So, you know, the voters kind of get what they seek from their office holders.
Donnis: All right. Great conversation. We need to leave it there. Thanks so much for joining us. WPRI TV Politics Editor, Ted Nesi.
Nesi: Great to be here.
Donnis: And senior reporter from the Rhode Island Courant, Nancy Lavin.
Lavin: Thank you.
+ + + + +
State Representative Robert Quattrocchi, a Scituate Republican, this week called for the dismissal of state Transportation Director Peter Alviti. But as the GOP tries to raise its profile on Smith Hill, the party has otherwise been soft-spoken about the fallout from the Washington Bridge. You can read more about that in my weekly TGIF column posting around 4 this afternoon on what we used to call Twitter at IanDon and at thepublicsradio.org.
That’s it for our show. Political Roundtable is a production of The Public’s Radio. Our producer is James Baumgartner. I’m Ian Donnis, and I’ll see you on the radio.
Election 2024 coverage by The Public’s Radio is sponsored in part by Ascent Audiology & Hearing, Providence Picture Frame and Rustigian Rugs. Find more of our elections coverage at thepublicsradio.org/2024elections.
