Greetings from Little Rhody. Blink and you miss us, but we are here and the blue wave has us WOKE!
I know Rhode Island is supposed to be a blue state. And it mostly is — although until we elected Gina Raimondo Governor in 2014, and Lincoln Chafee as an Independent before that, the state had 4 straight terms of a Republican governor. And — to be fair, we had Linc Chaffee as our “mavericky” Republican Senator, after his Dad John (another “mavericky” Republican). So maybe it’s not that blue….
But I digress. I speak about the wave with some serious knowledge. I live in East Greenwich, which is like the polar opposite of Austin TX — a bright, red suburban dot amidst all the blue. While our state house and senate are dominated by Democrats, our state rep and senator are Republicans (and they’ve run unopposed the past few cycles). And our town government? Ruled by the GOP for 33 years straight — and these days it hasn’t even been close. In fact, I’ve lived here for 12 years. We vote for town government every two years, and the Democrats have never, ever filed a full slate of candidates — ever.
But this is the wave in action. We have Democrats running for both of those state legislative seats. And they are both women — evidence of what we are seeing nationally. That, alone, is simply amazing for this district.
But the local candidates? This year — for the first time since I’ve lived here the Democrats have filed a full slate of local candidates. And they look like our party looks: Men and women, people of all sorts of backgrounds, etc. That alone is amazing. My little red town - for the first time in 12 years — is really running Democrats. And we have another big slate running for school committee, too!
But it doesn’t end there. I've met several of these candidates (and missed one — Sorry Bridget Valverde) because they are knocking on doors. They have lawn signs (which are everywhere), and direct mail pieces. Before this year, in 12 years, the only time I’ve ever run into a politician is by accident out somewhere in public (a purely Rhode Island phenomenon).
One gentleman running for the town government told me that they have all been to a training session on field work, GOTV and other campaign strategies that was held by the DNC. In fact, Tom Perez was in attendance. I can’t speak for other states, but I'm assuming that’s happened there, too. That tells me the national party is on it in an amazing way: It's not just a 50 state strategy, but a 50 state all levels of elective office strategy.
I realize that the big story this year is control of the federal government and governorships — and that is extraordinarily important. But so is the control of state houses, and for the sake of all sorts of strategic reasons, offices on the local level. After all, the bench has to get filled somewhere — and that’s a great place for lots of terrific elected officials to get their start.
And I know it's just one little dot of red in an otherwise blue, very small state. But it’s evidence that the wave is building, and not just in key seats or purple districts. The big blue wave is building everywhere!