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Saturday, November 19, 2022

Recall complete: Justin Price's margin of defeat increases

Price decisively booted from General Assembly

By Will Collette

State representative Justin Price (District 39) has gotten the recount of the votes that showed him losing his seat to Megan Cotter (D) of Exeter by four votes on Election Night and than 29 votes when the mail-in ballots were counted.

The recount was completed on Friday and added three more votes to Megan Cotter's total, thus beating Price by 32 votes.

Megan is a solid progressive who was aligned with the RI Political Co-op in her first challenge and close call in 2020. This time around, Cotter was assisted by RI Working Families with a much better results.

Price was first elected in 2014 during the rise of the Swamp Yankees that replaced progressive Democrats Donna Walsh of Charlestown, Sen. Cathy Cool Rumsey and Rep. Larry Valencia with right-wing radicals Blake "Flip" Filippi, Elaine Morgan and Justin Price respectively.

These three have between them virtually no legislative achievements other than noise and rhetoric. Frankly, they've been an embarrassment to South County in General and Charlestown in particular. Price's loss and Filippi's retirement leaves us with two of the three stooges being out of office.

These South County races also affect the statewide political landscape. The RI Republican Party went into the 2022 election expected to substantially add to their meager numbers in the General Assembly. They had 15 Senate and House seats and are now down to 14. Too bad they had so many crap candidates.

Aside from losing every state race, Republicans lost one net seat in the General Assembly thanks to Megan Cotter flipping Price's seat, as well as two Charlestown women, Tina Spears and Victoria Gu, winning in House 36 and Senate 38.

Justin Price's defeat is especially sweet since he took part in the January 6 insurrection, claiming that he was there but did not himself enter the Capitol. However, he claims he was close enough to see that it was Antifa, and not violent Trumpnuts, leading the attack. 

I've asked repeatedly since Price made that claim about why he did not follow the oath he took when he joined the Marines to protect this country from enemies, foreign and domestic. If he was close enough to ID the protestors as Antifa, why didn't he act? 

Now he'll have time to think about that question and ponder what mark he left on history during his eight year legislative career.