She
came within 321 votes of beating him in 2020
By Steve Ahlquist for Uprise RI
“Right after the [2020] election there was the budget vote [and]
Representative Price refused to put on a mask,” said Megan Cotter,
who lost her bid to replace Price in his seat in that election. “District 39
didn’t have a vote… He did not
vote. He decided that he would rather leave than put
on a mask and do his job.”
 |
Justin Price (left) with fellow militia-supporters Rep.
Blake "Flip" Filippi and Sen. Elaine Morgan |
Rhode Island Representative Justin Price (Republican, District 39, Richmond,
Exeter and Hopkinton) was in the news recently after he made a series of
inaccurate and unfortunate claims about the events in Washington DC on January
6.
On that day and in the days following, people around the world
were shocked to see thousands of pro-Trump insurrectionists invade the
Capitol building during a joint-session of
Congress, with the intent of overturning the results of the 2020 Presidential
election.
Admitting he was part of the pro-Trump march down Pennsylvania
Avenue, Representative Price denied that he entered the Capitol Building or
broke any laws.
But in a series of tweets, now removed, Price claimed that Antifa and Black Lives Matter members
infiltrated the Trump protest and that these groups were responsible for the
violence.
 |
| Justin Price called these people "Patriots" who were protesting peacefully, even though they nearly beat this police officer to death. |
To be clear, this is not true. If anything, the arrests made and
the evidence collected since the attempted insurrection indicates that many who
invaded the Capitol that day had deadly designs on members of Congress and Vice
President Pence. There is no evidence to support Representative Price’s
assertions. His statements are not only untrue, they are preposterous and
dangerous.
In the wake of Representative Price’s admission to being at the
protest (in an interview with The Public Radio‘s Ian Donnis)
and his subsequent tweets, newly elected Representative Brandon Potter (Democrat, District 16, Cranston)
and Rhode Island’s General Treasurer Seth Magaziner called
for Representative Price’s removal from office. Since then, dozens of
elected officials have called for
Representative Price to step down o be removed from office.
Megan Cotter, who ran as a Democrat against Representative Price
in the 2020 District 39 election, maintains that much of this could have been
avoided had the Rhode Island Democratic Party supported her
campaign. We spoke via Zoom.
UpriseRI
asked Cotter what she learned about the issues voters in her district were
concerned about as she went door-to-door during her campaign.
“A lot of people in this area of the state feel forgotten, left
out,” said Cotter. “A lot of people just don’t care about politics at this
point in the game. Exeter, West Greenwich and Chariho are all combining school
districts with different towns and we continue to lose funding year after year
after year for our schools. We don’t get a lot with our taxes. We don’t have
garbage removal. We don’t have a lot of things that folks in the city have…
“That was something that we talked a lot about at the doors,
fighting for more funding for our schools,” said Cotter.
The other thing
Cotter heard a lot about from voters was about the issue of clear cutting trees
for solar farms.
“I have three kids. I want them to have a world when they grow up.
And if we don’t start taking care of our environment, there’s not going to be
much left,” said Cotter. “We need to transition to renewable energy, but we
need to do it in a way that is smart. And here, we’re doing a lot of clear
cutting.
We have a lot of land here, and there’s been massive amounts of
clear cutting. We’re talking 40 acres at a time for solar fields. We really
need to start talking about conserving our forestry. That was an issue that we
talked about a lot at the doors that really resonated with people. We all have
well water, there’s flooding issues, there’s so many different issues that go
along with clearcutting.
“Is the water quality
maintained there?” asked UpriseRI. “Is the water still good in the wells
there?”
“When you talk to someone whose property abuts a huge solar farm,
there’s a lot of problems,” said Cotter.
“The forest, as it rains, filters the water. I know people who’ve
had to replace pumps two and three times after the solar farms have been built
because there’s no filtration anymore and a lot of sediments going into the
pumps. We’re talking $900 for a new pump and it’s an unnecessary cost that a
lot of families – If you can afford it, that’s great, but who wants to throw
$900 out the window just because there’s a solar farm there now?”
“These are
interesting issues, but I’ve never heard Representative Price bring these
things up while he’s been there,” said UpriseRI.
“And you won’t because he doesn’t,” said Cotter. “I don’t feel
like he’s listening and we’re at this pivotal moment in time right now where we
need to come together in unity. If you look at this election and you look at our
district, it was really split. I think Biden won Richmond by three votes.” (Biden
won in Richmond by 2346 votes to Trump’s 2343.)
During your
campaign, you were doing a lot of work – going door to door as much as possible
with COVID, sending out mailers, that kind of thing. You had some trouble
though,” said UpriseRI. “You were endorsed by several local Democratic
institutions, but you were not endorsed and you were not helped by the
statewide Democratic Party. Can you talk about that a little bit?
“There’s a greater conversation within the party that that I think
is happening,” said Cotter, prefacing her story. “I was endorsed by the Richmond Democrats,
the Exeter Democrats and
I was also endorsed by my district committee, which consists of five older
folks who I interviewed with. They helped me along through my campaign, just
amazing gentlemen.
“Once you get endorsed by your district committee, typically you
go to the party and they give you the party VAN, which is extremely
important when running a campaign. VAN gives you you everything you need to
know.
You create lists, you can look up any voter, whether they’re
Democrat, independent, Republican, how often they’ve voted and you create your
door knocking lists based on whatever you’re focused on that day. Maybe you’re
focused on independent voters. I did a lot of independent voter door knocks.”
The Rhode Island
State Democratic Party for some reason declined to endorse Megan Cotter against
Representative Justin Price. Unendorsed Democrats are charged $1600 for VAN
access, and money makes a big difference in hotly contested races.
“There were no other Democratic candidates in my race,” said
Cotter, noting that access to VAN “would have been the bare minimum of help for
someone running against someone [like Representative Price] who’s so right wing
and not a Democrat.”
What the Democratic
Party did instead was to send Cotter a rejection letter. The rejection letter
stated that Cotter was not the endorsed candidate, notwithstanding her local
endorsements.
Despite these
travails, Cotter is “feeling optimistic for the future because I think that
with new leadership in place we’re going to see a very different Democratic
Party moving forward.”
EDITOR’S
NOTE: The final
tally shows Cotter lost by only 321 votes out of more than 8,000 cast.
Price had 4,181 and Cotter had 3,860. –
Will Collette
“I’ve already spoken to the new Speaker [Representative Joseph Shekarchi (Democrat,
District 23, Warwick)] and he’s told me that if I want access to party VAN, he
will make sure that I get that,” said Cotter. “We are Democrats, right?”
“That’s what I hear
from Democrats,” said UpriseRI, “that this is a big tent. But when push comes
to shove, if you look a little too lefty, they don’t want you in… And that
seems to be self-defeating, because in this case, as you point out, had you
been able to get a few extra votes, this whole issue about Justin Price being
in Washington, DC would be a nonstarter. He’d be a private citizen in DC.
Whether he committed crimes or not is something the FBI could talk about and we
wouldn’t have to worry about it.”
“Exactly,” said Cotter. “And I think the other piece is that a lot
of people in the party didn’t think I had a winnable race. I think a lot of
people have written off my district as a red district, [thinking] a Democrat
can’t win here, but obviously that’s not true, right? I mean, I came within a
snowball’s throw of winning the election. What it really comes down to is
talking to people and listening to them.”
Megan Cotter will be running for the District 39 seat in 2022.
“That is a promise,” said Cotter.
Can you help us?
Funding
for UpriseRI reporting relies on the generosity of readers like you. Our
independence allows us to write stories that hold RI state and local government
officials accountable. All of our stories are free and available to everyone.
But your support is essential to keeping Steve and Will on the beat, covering
the costs of reporting many stories in a single day. If you are able to, please support Uprise RI. Every contribution, big or
small is so valuable to us. You provide the motivation and financial support to
keep doing what we do. Thank you.
