How big will the Blue Wave be? It's certainly big in Charlestown and Rhode Island
Another really bad night for LORIB
By Will Collette
But we do have enough votes counted to reliably report who won and lost here in Charlestown plus contested General Assembly seats in South County. The final counts may change a percentage point or two when all mail-in and early votes are counted, but that will matter only in very close races.
Congratulations to Sam Wilcox for flipping incumbent state Senator Elaine Morgan's seat by a likely margin of 53% to 47%.
Brewed Awakenings' owner Dave Levesque continues to see his money circle the drain. His 40 League of Rhode Island Businesses (LORIB) political action committees backed all the wrong candidates. Levesque had endorsed Elaine Morgan who was the only flipped seat in South County.
His other South County candidates all lost to Democratic incumbents mostly by very large margins:
- Sen. Victoria Gu won by 24 points
- Rep. Carol McEntee won by 20 points
- Rep. Kathy Fogarty won by 30 points
- Rep. Megan Cotter won by 15 points
- Rep. Sam Azzinaro won by the largest margin - 33 points
In Charlestown, Charlestown Residents United (CRU) maintains its 4-1 majority on the Town Council. The Council will also have the first Democratic majority in the 25 years I've lived here with the election of incumbent Council President Deb Carney, Cynthia Drummond in third place and Jill Fonneman who came in fourth.
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| Deb, Cynthia and Jill, all elected |
In a surprise, at least to me, the least competent Council incumbent, CCA 's Bonnita Van Slyke, came in second. CRU incumbent Steve Stokes (R) keeps his seat with a 5th place finish. Incumbent Craig Marr (R) loses his seat with a 7th place finish.
Platner probably eked out another goal - rejection of Charlestown Question 7 which would have reduced the terms of Planning Commission from the current six years to four. As of this writing at 11:30 PM, the margin was down to only 3 votes for the CCA position to reject reducing PC terms.
Richmond Blue Wave
All four Richmond Democrats running for Town Council won, along with one Republican. That sole Republican WAS NOT Justin Price, former state Representative and J6 insurrectionist. Price's campaign pitch was based on his time in the General Assembly which was a pretty bad strategy given how awful he was. This was his third comeback attempt.
Westerly sweep.
Democrats swept town offices, with every Democrat winning and all Republicans losing, giving Blue Wave control in the Town Council and Westerly School Committee. Democrats won everything that wasn't nailed down.
Hopkinton didn't go quite so Blue
Their Town Council is now split between an independent top-vote getter, two Republicans and two Democrats.
Dems won two of three of their Chariho School Committee seats, one of them going to Greg Avedisian, a former Charlestown Town Council member who was excommunicated by the Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA) in 2010.
All blue statewide and federal
All three of our members of Congress, Sen. Jack Reed, Rep. Seth Magaziner and Gabe Amo, won by comfortable margins.
Helena Foulkes (D) trounced Independent Ken Block to become Rhode Island's next Governor. Kim Ahern easily won the right to succeed term-limited Attorney General Peter Nerohna.
The race between incumbent Democratic Lieutenant Governor Sabrina Matos and Republican John Loughlin was supposed to be tight with some polls giving the edge to Loughlin. However, she wins easily by about 16 points to retain her seat.
