The Republicans won a sweeping victory last week, turning a 10 seat Democratic advantage in the Senate into a solid Republican majority and picking up at least 13 more seats in the House of Representatives, expanding their majority in that chamber.
The Republicans effectively tied Democratic candidates to an unpopular President Obama employing the same strategy Democrats used in 2006 against an unpopular President Bush, with the same good results.
As is usually the case in mid-term elections where only about 40% of eligible voters participate, the composition of the electorate was whiter and older and consequently more Republican than in Presidential years where turnout is closer to 60% of eligible voters.
For Democrats like me, these results are certainly discouraging. But unified control of Congress by the Republicans does provide a potential silver lining. It will no longer be enough to blame the other party for what over the last two years can only be defined as a ‘do nothing’ Congress. It will no longer be sufficient to simply block the Obama agenda; there is now a political imperative to govern.
And the good news is Republican Congressional leaders are well aware of the need to alter their strategy and at least at this early moment are making the right noises. In his post-victory media conference incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch.McConnell (R-KY), said, “When the American people choose divided government, I don’t think it means they don’t want us to do anything. We ought to start with the view that maybe there are things we can agree on to make progress for the country.” As reported in the New York Times, McConnell also" flatly promised that Congress would not shut down the government or default on the national debt.in disputes about the nation’s finances".
Newly elected Republican Senator Cory Gardner (R-CO) echoed this constructive approach over this past weekend on with George Stephanopoulos. Gardner said, “I think it’s important that Republicans show that we can govern maturely, that we can govern with competence. And if we do that, in two years from now, we’ll have a good result again with our nominee. If we don’t, we’ll see the same results two years from now, but in a different direction.” As a more establishment Republican Gardner typifies the Republicans elected this year as opposed to the Tea Party class of 2010.
President Obama sounded a similar note, saying, “The ultimate lesson of the election, he said, was that both parties should do more to work together. Among the potential areas of common ground cited by the President were trade deals, tax reform and infrastructure spending
A potential early source of contention is immigration reform, with President Obama confirming on Face the Nation this past Sunday that he is moving forward with his plan to take executive action by the end of this year despite pleas by Republican Congressional leaders to hold-off. According to the Washington Post, President Obama is “reportedly reviewing proposals to allow as many as 5 million illegal immigrants to stay in the United States at least temporarily.’
Republicans are saying if the President moves forward it will make cooperation more difficult on a host of issues. But the President rightly retorts that the Republican House has been delaying the adoption of comprehensive immigration reform taking no action on legislation that passed the Senate with a big bi-partisan majority. Obama also points out that even after he announces his action legislation if adopted would supersede it.
Republican leaders are doing their best to block early movement by the President on an issue that is difficult for them internally. But my guess is that they are bluffing. Using Presidential action on immigration reform as an all-purpose excuse for Congressional inaction on a range of issues is a sure-fire way to repeat the dismal performance among Latinos of the Mitt Romney, the Republican Presidential candidate in 2012 in 2016 and doom the next Republican Presidential candidate as well as badly hurt Republican Senate and House candidates in states with significant Latino populations
The new political imperative for Congressional Republicans remains building a record of accomplishments; that can only be done by working with the President. This new political reality provides a sound basis for optimism. For the nation’s sake, let’s hope it bears fruit.
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Rob Horowitz is a strategic and communications consultant who provides general consulting, public relations, direct mail services and polling for national and state issue organizations, various non-profits and elected officials and candidates. He is an Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the University of Rhode Island.
Related Slideshow: Surprise Winners and Losers for 2014 Election
The 2014 Election cycle proved to be one of the most exciting and expensive - take a look at the winners and losers.
Raimondo is the perfect candidate. Local girl, brilliant education and success in the private sector. Next up, she was elected General Treasurer in 2010 and made history and caused a major uproar with the most powerful unions by leading the charge for pension reform.
In the Democratic primary, Raimondo raised a tremendous war chest and caught a big break when Bob Walsh, RI National Education Association's boss, and other union officials put Clay Pell up to beat Raimondo and it had the opposite effect. It split the anti-Raimondo vote between Providence Mayor Angel Taveras and Pell.
Now, Raimondo has made Rhode Island history. Where Betty Leonard and Myrth York failed, Raimondo has smashed the glass ceiling.
It was a beat down. A throw in the towel. A Brady vs Manning moment.
Despite 80% of Rhode Islanders believing that the state is on the "wrong track" - Rhode Islanders gave the Democratic Party a series of sweeping victories.
All four members of the Congressional Delegation are Democrats - three returned by more than 20% margin Tuesday night. All five members of the General Officers are now Democrats. The Providence Mayor is a Democrat with the election of Jorge Elorza and the GOP barely made an impact on the Democrats overwhelming control on the General Assembly.
How bad was it for the GOP? Fung only received 36% of the vote, Taylor only 33% in her effort for Lt. Governor, John Carlevale who barely ran a campaign scored 39% of the popular vote and Hodgson only captured 43% of the vote for AG. The GOP did not run a candidate for General Treasurer.
He never had run for office before. He started the effort with zero name recognition. He fought his way through a crowded Democratic primary and ultimately defeated one of America’s most celebrated and infamous politicians - Vincent “Buddy” Cianci, Jr.
Elorza is now faced with a city with tremendous challenges and the need for on the job training at record speed.
He ran nearly flawless campaigns in the primary and the general - now the hard part - he has to govern.
Elorza's victory by 3375 votes was fueled by an overwhelming advantage on the East Side, where he tallied 4758 more votes than the former mayor - Cianci - out of 9263 total votes, a remarkable advantage of 52.4%.
His 74.7% to 22.3% East Side advantage bested huge pluralities there in previous elections. Elorza actually bettered his East Side advantage he garnered against Michael Solomon there in his September Democratic primary victory, 68.25% to 25.6%. The East Side, which started Buddy Cianci's political career by supporting him in his initial mayoral run in 1974, has probably ended it with this overwhelming rejection of his candidacy.
Imagine this: a multi-timed failed candidate who raises no money and he organizes no campaign, yet he wins 22% of the vote. The winner, Gina Raimondo only won only 40% of the total vote. Imagine if he tried.
Healey may have been the skunk at the picnic for Fung as the combined Fung and Healey vote received 58% of the vote. Raimondo's 40% popular vote is just a tad higher than what Chafee won with in 2010.
Dan McKee has been the champion of education reform. He has looked the most powerful union - NEARI - squarely in the eyes and not blinked. While the unions went all in to beat him in the primary he split the three-way and won.
Then, in the General Election, the unions threw their support at Catherine Taylor, a Republican and he defeated her soundly (54% to 33%). Now, McKee can push a focused education reform agenda in 2015 through the General Assembly.
Now, neither the Governor nor the Lt. Governor owe anything to the public sector education unions.
The former Mayor and Ambassador to Malta had another bad election day. Paolino not only lost on the ballot question in Newport that would have made his investment group’s purchase of Newport Grand a reality, but Paolino also saw former mayor Vincent “Buddy” Cianci lose his comeback bid to regain Providence’s top job.
Paolino’s group promised to invest millions into the Newport Grand facility and produced a plan that would have saved the jobs at the facility that are now in jeopardy, and would have also added at least $1 million per year into Newport’s municipal coffers. But voters, many of which were fatigued from having been asked to approve table games at Newport Grand just two years prior, rejected the measure. Scores of Newport residents have long resented the facility being located in their backyard and won’t shed much of a tear if the facility were to shut down.
Paolino and Cianci started off as political rivals, but have developed a close friendship over the last 10-15 years beginning when Cianci ran into trouble with the federal government. To a large extent, it was Paolino who convinced and lobbied Cianci to throw his hat into the mayoral ring this year.
These losses add to a painful run of elections for Paolino over the span of the last 3 decades. Paolino’s last electoral victory was in 1986, when he was reelected Mayor of Providence. Since then, he ran for Governor in 1990, but was defeated by former Governor Bruce Sundlun. In 2002, he ran for Mayor of Providence as an independent, but was defeated by David Cicilline. He flirted with running for Mayor in 2010, but decided against it.
Make no mistake about it: with these two losses, this election cycle was another loss for Paolino.
When Moderate Party founder Ken Block envisioned the entity, he saw it as a mechanism to reform Rhode Island’s government. Four years later, Block will be the first to admit that his goal has been an unmitigated and dismal failure. If anything, his dream has turned into a nightmare.
In 2010, it’s almost a certainty that Ken Block’s candidacy as the Moderate Party Candidate doomed Republican John Robitaille’s chances to become Governor. Both Block and Robitaille were running on reform agendas.
This year, Robert Healey, as the Moderate Party’s standard bearer, won more than 22 percent of the vote this year—effectively giving the Governor’s office to Gina Raimondo. That means, in two consecutive gubernatorial elections, the moderate party has effectively stopped the Republican Party, which aims to reform state government, from winning the election.
Going forward, reform-minded citizens in Rhode Island need to gather together around one party with one standard-bearer if they’re going to enact the reforms they believe will improve the state.
The Constitutional Convention was promoted by good government advocates as a method for the state to enact good government reforms that could fundamentally change the way Rhode Island ‘s government functions.
A Constitutional Convention would have been convened after a special election was held in each of the state’s 75 representative districts. Each district would select one individual to represent the portion of the population at the convention. The representatives would then have recommended changes to the constitution, which would have then become questions before the voters. If the voters approved the changes, the constitution would have been amended.
The advocates argued that the convention could have been a good mechanism to reform government by giving the governor’s office more power in the form of a line-item veto. The Convention would have also been a mechanism to implement term limits on state legislators as well as an opportunity to implement ethics reform that would have held state legislators to the same ethical standards as every other statewide and local office holder.
Opponents claimed that the Convention could have have been easily hijacked by outside special interest groups that could have used the Convention to limit individual freedoms such as women’s and minority rights.
In the end, the opponents won out, but it remains unclear if the ballot question failed due to voter opposition to the matter or simple confusion. If voters did not really understand what was really at stake with respect to a Convention, they may very well have simply rejected it offhand.
It’s a fair question to ask what circumstances it would take for the Rhode Island Republican Party to make any gains in the state of Rhode Island.
In a year that represented a Republican wave nationally, in which the Republicans took control of the United States Senate, and the increased its margin in the House of Representatives, the Rhode Island GOP failed to win any statewide seats, and also failed to make significant gains in the state legislature.
Unfortunately for the GOP, many analysts believed the 2014 election cycle held significant promise for the GOP both the top of the ticket as well as the in the legislature. Neither became a reality for the Republicans.
As much as good government folks say that the state government should have a functioning two party system, it’s difficult to see when and how that dream could actually become a reality at this point given this year’s electoral disappointment.
Despite the fact that the Democratic Party scored huge victories, the 2014 elections will go down as a painful election cycle for the Rhode Island National Education Association.
That’s because the two state top state office holders, Governor-elect Gina Raimondo and Lieutenant Governor-elect Daniel McKee are both known as a pension reformer and an education reformer/charter school advocate respectively. Those two positions are probably the two biggest affronts to the NEA’s statewide agenda. Pension reform, spearheaded by Raimondo, saw pension benefits for current and even retired teachers slashed. Charter schools, and the education reform they represent, will likely decrease NEA’s ranks because charter school teachers are typically not unionized.
To a large extent, the NEA shot itself in the foot this election cycle by overplaying its hand. In the Democratic Primary, the NEA refused to back Providence Mayor Angel Taveras because he supported charter schools. They then recruited Clay Pell, the grandson of former Senator Claiborne Pell to run in the Democratic Primary. Pell split the public sector union vote with Taveras and gave Raimondo the opening she needed to prevail in the election.
After weeks of deliberation following the Democratic Primary, the NEA decided to back Raimondo in the Governor’s race, but astute political observers knew the endorsement was, at best, half-hearted. Cranston Mayor Allan Fung had already said he wanted to see Rhode Island become a “right to work” state, meaning union members wouldn’t be forced to join a union of they didn’t so choose. That left the union with little choice but to begrudgingly back Raimondo.
The NEA however passed on endorsing McKee, instead backing Republican Catherine Taylor for Lieutenant Governor. Taylor lost the election by a stunning margin of almost 20 percent. That question will likely have political observers wondering if the NEA’s clout has diminished.
