Come out and vote in Tuesday’s primary

Important choices to be made

By Will Collette

If you don’t vote, you don’t get to complain. On Tuesday, Rhode Islanders will have the opportunity to pick who will go on through to the General Election in November to compete for the positions of Governor, Lieutenant Governor, General Treasurer and Secretary of State. Democrats are embroiled in hot primaries for all four positions.

On the Republican side, the only hot race is the one for Governor that pits two RINOs, Ken Block and Allan Fung, against each other. Lieutenant Governor Catherine Taylor (R) faces only token opposition from perennial candidate and full-time crazy Kara Young.

All of these positions are open seats because the present office holder is either term-limited from running again or has chosen a different future. There is no primary for Attorney General because incumbent Peter Kilmartin faces no Democratic primary opponent and Republican Dawson Hodgson does not have a Republican challenger.

Click here for the sample ballot. Don't forget to bring your photo ID.

There are no local primary races for any Charlestown positions. In neighboring House District 35, incumbent Spencer Dickinson (D) is in a rematch primary battle with Kathy Fogarty.

Polls open in Charlestown at 9 AM.

Charlestown Democrats received a mailer from the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee listing the four candidates they have endorsed in this primary:

• Clay Pell for Governor
• Seth Magaziner for General Treasurer
• Guillaume DeRamel for Secretary of State
• Ralph Mollis for Lieutenant Governor

If you didn't get the mailer, click here.

I just didn't buy Mollis' answer to my questions about voter ID

I am with my former colleagues on the CDTC on three out of four of their picks, but I prefer late-filing candidate Rep. Frank Ferri for Lieutenant Governor. When Mollis came before the CDTC to ask for its endorsement, Ferri was not in the picture at all. 

While I appreciated many of the improvements Mollis made in the office of Secretary of State, I remained dismayed at his most dubious achievement, the enactment of an unnecessary Voter ID law.

I quizzed Mollis on this issue and I was not at all happy with his answers. Summed up, he said that he thought it would be a good idea to enact Voter ID rather than have it continuing to dangle out there as an issue. Except voter ID is still a big issue in Rhode Island where we have the sad distinction of being the only Democratic state to enact what is, at its core, a Republican voter suppression tool.

But the CDTC endorsed Mollis anyway because his only primary opponent at the time was Cumberland Mayor Dan McKee whose only real issue is to privatize public education and whose main base of support are the corporate interests pushing charter schools.

By the time Frank Ferri declared his candidacy, it was too late. Plus, I had also stepped down from the CDTC. But Frank is a solid progressive and a close friend and ally to our own Rep. Donna Walsh.

I don't fault my former CDTC colleagues - the committee endorsed Mollis for good reasons at the time and they are honoring that pledge. But since I am no longer on the committee, I don't feel bound to support Mollis, so I don't.

For Governor, my choice was easy. I think Clay Pell is the only candidate with fresh, new ideas who has kept his promise to run an issue-oriented positive campaign despite extreme provocation and smear jobs by his thoroughly nasty, old school opponents General Treasurer Gina Raimondo and Mayor Angel Taveras. 

Clay is a person we can trust to be faithful to his promises, scrupulously honest, positive and inclusive and, in lots of ways, a 21^st century version of his grandfather.

And that’s in sharp contrast to Gina Raimondo, despite what her daily mailers say. If you want to understand how Raimondo has screwed Rhode Islanders to the tune of $372 million – click here. It may matter to some Charlestown voters that Jim Mageau is a big booster of Taveras' candidacy.

Making my pick for General Treasurer was also easy. I also trust Seth Magaziner to be a smart, honest and faithful General Treasurer. It’s hard for me to even believe that there’s a primary, given that his opponent Frank Caprio is, in my opinion, a total disgrace who seems to have no other reason to run than personal redemption from his past failures and to please his father.

I am supporting Guillaume DeRamel for Secretary of State. 

Like Clay and Seth, my main reason for supporting Guillaume is that I trust him. Like Clay and Seth, this would be the first time he has held public office – and I think that’s a good thing. 

His opponent Nellie Gorbea has been all over him, on the attack for his lack of experience. Yet Gorbea has largely gotten a pass on two very serious problems that are evident in her own experience, which I documented in detail (click here).

First, she failed in her duties as a director in five different non-profit groups by allowing them to miss mandatory deadlines to file Annual Reports with the Secretary of State – which is, ironically, the office she is seeking. One of those organizations was her own – HousingWorksRI where she served as executive director.

Thousands of Puerto Rico workers took to the streets to
protest Gorbea's boss

Second, she took a position as economic advisor to the notoriously corrupt, anti-union Governor of Puerto Rico, Pedro Rosselló right after Rosselló put thousands of public workers out of their jobs by selling off the Puerto Rico Telephone Company to Verizon at a bargain basement price.

After I published that information on Progressive Charlestown, her campaign removed all references to that part of Gorbea’s experience from her campaign website.

I trust Guillaume. I don’t trust Nellie Gorbea.

Obviously, who you vote for is your own very personal choice. I like Clay Pell, Frank Ferri, Seth Magaziner and Guillaume DeRamel, and that’s my own personal choice. I am obviously not speaking for the town Democrats, since I am no longer a member of the CDTC, and am only supporting three out of four of their endorsees. I’m also not speaking for any of my Progressive Charlestown colleagues.

Like you, I will go into that voting booth by myself on Tuesday, September 9, and will exercise one of the greatest rights of citizenship, the right to vote.