U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island cruised to re-election Tuesday, setting the Democrat up for a fourth term in Washington.
As of Wednesday afternoon, with 100% of Rhode Island’s polling stations reporting, Whitehouse led Rhode Island state Rep. Patricia Morgan 59.6% to 40.1%, according to unofficial Board of Elections results.
Whitehouse, however, is also among the Democrats disappointed by Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential contest.
“I don’t have an explanation,” Whitehouse said in an interview, “but we’re going to have to deal with it and I’m afraid it’s going to take a lot of work.”
The Public’s Radio political reporter Ian Donnis spoke with Whitehouse to discuss the presidential race and his hopes for his next term in office.
Interview Highlights
On what Democrats could have done to be more competitive in this election cycle
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse: My argument from early days has been that we need to take on the climate issue. Seriously, not treat it as a green job issue, but treat it as a danger and an exercise in political corruption by the fossil fuel industry — come at it with a real fighting stance.
And that we should be doing the same thing about dark money. A lot of people were dissatisfied about that…politics has swiveled towards the big dark money donors and away from regular voters, and that we had very strong public support on.
On if GOP control in Washington will make it more difficult for Rhode Island to get money for needs such as the Washington Bridge
Whitehouse: [It’s] hard to tell. I actually did really well in the last Trump Administration under Transportation Secretary [Elaine] Chao.
She ran, I think, a very straight-up shop and we got the biggest grants Rhode Island had ever gotten. We got grants that we’d been unable to get in the Obama administration. [It’s] too early to tell.
On Democrats’ strategy if Republicans control the Presidency, U.S. Senate and U.S. House
Whitehouse: You know, it’s hard to resist legitimate policy differences when one party has that kind of control, particularly if all their talk about defending the filibuster turns out to have been a smoke screen, which I think is likely.
So I think a lot of the job description becomes: ‘How do you contain corruption within the administration?’ I mean, it is predictable that there will be rampant corruption and to try to keep the spotlight on it to expose it to stop it, I think is going to become a very important task for Democrats in the upcoming Congress.
Donald Trump for the first time won the city of Woonsocket, an economically distressed community. On what that says about voters’ concerns
Whitehouse: There was a good deal of impatience out there. That’s one of the reasons I had hoped that Democrats would speak with a more forceful voice about a variety of issues — that we weren’t just being measured on the quality of our policy prescriptions, but we were being measured on how visibly we were dissatisfied with where things were and how fiercely we would be willing to fight to improve things for folks.
I think that message about our fighting stance, we walked away from and tried to pitch a more sort of moderate and friendly view of ‘Here are wonderful Democratic policies and wouldn’t you like to have them continue?’ And I think that was emotionally out of step with a lot of people who are feeling some really serious economic pressure in their lives.
