I've had a crazy idea brewing in my head for a while now, and I thought that I'd get some opinions on it from the dkos community.
Let me preface this diary by saying that I'm a liberal, not a democrat. In RI terms I, like more than half of the state, am registered as unaffiliated. According to RI election laws, unaffiliated voters choose which primary they vote in:
You may choose to register as "unaffiliated" which means you will not be considered a member of any political party - unless and until you vote in a political party primary.
In this bluer than blue state, the bulk of the nominees are in the Dem column, while some red primaries can't even scrounge up a single sacrificial challenger, let alone two from which to choose. It's common knowledge around here that if you want to vote in the only election that matters, you vote in the dem. primary.
But I've been wondering, what if there's another way to make my voice heard...
(more after the break)
Lets look at
the numbers. For 2002, the last time a senate seat was up for grabs, there were about 241,000 registered dems, 360,000 unaffilliated,
and only 64,000 registered republicans! Turn outs are usually expected at around fifty percent. That means in a closely contested statewide republican primary, a few thousand votes can make the difference.
Cut to today's recent Brown University poll on Sen. Chafee's highly sought after seat. There are two dems in the race for sure: Centrist, old-boy, well pedigreed Whitehouse, and progressive new kid Matt Brown. The results have Chafee beating both Dems by narrow margins:
In a race pitting Chafee against Whitehouse, Chafee would pick up 41 percent of the vote while Whitehouse would snag 36 percent, the poll found.
In a Brown-Chafee race, respondents picked Chafee over Brown, 44 percent to 29 percent. In February, those numbers were 39 percent to 25 percent, with "don't know" and "no answer" making up the rest.
As for the other side, While "Like unto a Liberal" Lincoln Chafee is obviously in the running, there remains the possibility of a serious challenge from the more conservative Cranston Mayor Stephen P. Laffey. For whatever reasons, the big brains at Brown neglected to poll the Chafee V. Laffey race. However, they did poll the gen. election results if Laffey were to win a Rep. primary:
The poll did not pose a Chafee-Laffey decision. Instead, it asked, Laffey or Brown, and, Laffey or Whitehouse?
The answers: Brown, 40 percent to Laffey's 30 percent; and Whitehouse, 45 percent to Laffey's 32 percent. In other words, if Laffey won a primary, he would lose the general election to a Democrat.
This then brings us to an intriguing possibility: What would happen if, through a combination of leafletting, emails, and phone calls, two or three thousand liberal Rhode Islanders voted for Laffey in the Republican Primary? I hypothosize that his would probably be enough to overwhelm the small pool of voters, and give the victory to Laffey. Then, as this last poll indicates, faced with a republican candidate who represents the real face of the GOP, the RI electorate would give the seat to the more palatable Dem.
So what do you think? Can we make Laffey the Pat Toomey of RI? Please vote and let me know.