Is LORIB still challenging South County Democrats in the General Election?

Both of Charlestown’s state Senate seats have LORIB-endorsed candidates

By Will Collette

LORIB has pushed for anonymous money for its candidates

Brewed Awakenings owner Dave Levesque of Narragansett took a big gamble this year, setting up 40 – yes, that’s forty – political action committees (PAC), one for each Rhode Island municipality plus a statewide PAC. They all bear the name “League of Rhode Island Businesses (LORIB)” and all of them were tasked with defeating liberal Democrats, especially women legislators in South County.

Levesque ran “Democrat in Name Only (DINO)” candidates in nine districts statewide. Levesque plunked around $20,000 into each campaign, using his galaxy of PACs to “bundle” the funding and evade the Rhode Island campaign finance legal limits on such donations - $2000. 

Sex crime defense lawyer Leah Boisclair, Levesque’s DINO challenger to Charlestown’s state Representative Tina Spears, received funding from at least 20 of Levesque’s 40 PACs.

Levesque also encouraged MAGA conservatives to donate to his PACs at amounts below the $200 per PAC limit that triggered disclosure of their identities.

Despite all the money Levesque put into these nine DINOs, they all lost, often by huge margins. In Charlestown, Boisclair lost to Tina Spears by a margin of 82% to 18%.

After this beating, is Levesque still in the game? After all, he still has candidates in many General Assembly in the November 3 General Election. Both of Charlestown’s state Senate seats have LORIB-backed candidates, and popular Democratic South County women face LORIB challengers.

Both of Charlestown’s two state Senate seats feature a LORIB-endorsed candidate.

Senate District 38

Our incumbent state Senator Victoria Gu

Let’s start with Senate District 38 that stretches from Westerly through the bottom half of Charlestown and into South Kingstown. Incumbent Senator Victoria Gu (D) is seeking a third term based on her outstanding record. She faces MAGAnut Westin Place (R-LORIB) for the third time. Victoria cleaned the floor with Place in the last two elections.

There’s no reason to think Place’s chances are going to be any better. 

The most recent campaign finance reports filed by Sen. Gu and Place for the period ending Oct. 5 paint this picture of the race in its final month.

Westin Place goes into the final month with $6300 in the bank. Victoria has $48,229. She raised $54,704 in the last quarter compared to Place’s $7,929. Place’s fundraising total includes his first and only payment from Dave Levesque’s LORIB Narragansett PAC of $2,000. Contrast that with the $20,000 LORIB threw into Leah Boisclair’s pathetic effort to unseat Rep. Tina Spears.

Without LORIB’s promised support, Place has had to rely on major donations from the state and local Republican Party and the gun lobby.

Senator Gu has a solid, positive record, a strong volunteer campaign team, and a huge cash advantage. She’s compiled one of the most comprehensive lists of legislative achievements I’ve seen in a long time. And she diligently reports on these and other matters of public interest in her frequent email constituent reports.

Place has none of that. Indeed, other than being a MAGA guy who doesn’t like Democrats, I really don’t know what he actually stands for other than the usual MAGA talking points he used throughout his recent “debate” with Victoria. CLICK HERE to read the transcript. When you read his answers to what he calls “those extremely confusing questions,” you can see he is clearly out of his depth.

He also has no record of public service or civic engagement except for running against Victoria every two years. In 2024, he wrote a letter to the Westerly Sun saying his main issue was lack of transparency in government.

Well, Westin, how about some transparency in your campaign finances? His filings with the Board of Elections show page after page of $50-$100 donations without any identification of the donor, all listed as “Aggregate-Individual.” I am guessing these checks ran through Dave Levesque’s money laundry but who – beside Place – knows. Victoria’s finance reports, by contrast, identify every donor, even those who kicked in as little as $10.

At the end of the debate, Place falls back on trying to red-bait all Democrats with the Democratic-Socialist brush and claims that this election is all about the MAGA fight for “freedom” which he claims is typified by “Providence.” His solution: “I’m going to go up there as a voice to say Providence can suck eggs.” Oh sure, that’s going to help him deliver for the people of Charlestown, Westerly and South Kingstown.

Senate District 34

Elaine Morgan

Speaking of sucking eggs, this is district that includes the northern half of Charlestown, Richmond, Hopkinton, Exeter and a piece of West Greenwich. Since 2014, Sen. Elaine Morgan (R and MAGA before there was MAGA) has been the state senator and she’s running for a sixth term. In 2020, she signed a pledge of support for term limits, which apparently does not apply to her.

Instead of delivering for this district, Morgan has done something in almost every year she’s been in office to embarrass the voters of District 34, starting with her call in her first year to put refugees from the war in Syria in concentration camps.

Several of her stunts have made national news, such as her more recent stunt where she “raided” an innovative temporary housing for the homeless project in Providence, falsely claiming she was an accredited agent of Elon Musk’s DOGE.

She has been busted for campaign finance fraud for using her campaign finances as her personal funds. She blamed her use of the money for groceries, restaurants and beauty salon visits on her late husband.

Sam Wilcox. Photo by Steve Ahlquist

She has a lively and able opponent in Democrat Sam (Samantha) Wilcox, President of the Richmond Town Council. 

In 2022, Sam led a slate of Democrats who ousted the MAGA Town Council majority that had been taking Richmond deep into the culture wars. Under her leadership, sanity and civility was restored to town government.

Is she the one who can bring sanity and civility back to Senate District 38? Let’s look at the numbers.

I noted after the September 9 primary that even though neither Sam nor Morgan had a primary opponent, it’s worth looking at how many members of their base voted for them anyway. While the vote counts only show people registered to one of the two major parties (and the largest bloc of voters are unaffiliated), we saw Sam receive 2,732 Senate District 34 Democratic votes compared to only 1,114 Republicans who voted for Morgan.

Since Charlestown has usually voted by large margins against Morgan in the past, Sam’s prospects going into November 3 look good.

The campaign finance reports also show an edge for Sam Wilcox.

Morgan’s finance reports are predictably messy. In the third quarter, she had to file numerous amended filings apparently to correct mistakes. One such example caught my eye: in one filing, she listed a $250 donation from Arrowhead Dental co-owner Dr. Bruce Gouin but then in amended filings, she showed $250 refunded to Dr. Gouin, replaced by a $250 donation from his spouse and Arrowhead co-owner Dr. Christine Benoit.

Note: Dr. Gouin's name is misspelled.

Other donations from anonymous individuals listed under “aggregate” were subject of several revisions. There was an entry labelled “Aggregate PAC” that showed $350 coming in and an apparent refund of $250. I suspect Morgan be getting another visit from the auditors from the RI Board of Elections.

In the most recent filing for the period ending October 5, Morgan shows a fundraising total of $7,124 with only one $500 LORIB check issued by the LORIB Hopkinton branch, but not the $20,000 windfall Leah Boisclair received. Morgan has a cash balance of $12,791.

Sam Wilcox raised $7,797 for the same period and shows a cash balance of $13,007.

On the merits, the two Democrats who want to represent Charlestown in the RI Senate as far and away so much better than their MAGA Republican rivals. Their campaign finance reports are much more thorough and transparent than their rivals and show that their support is largely more local.

District 38 voters have another sensible way to judge who they want in the state Senate: ask yourselves what Elaine Morgan has done since 2014 that's made your life better.

Remember: Early and mail-in voting starts this week. I hope this information helps you make better choices.