Block and GOP Hold Talks
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Moderate Party founder and candidate for governor Ken Block and his staff held a closed-door meeting with state GOP chairman Giovanni Cicione on Thursday to discuss the future of reform in Rhode Island.
Cicione said he went to the meeting to encourage the Moderates to work more closely with the GOP. “We’ve got to find a way to unify our efforts with their efforts a little more closely,” Cicione told GoLocalProv yesterday. “It’s a question of whether we can find a way to move forward together or whether we continue to cannibalize each other.”
Moderate Party’s impact on AG’s race
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTCicione said he wasn’t sure what impact Block had in the gubernatorial race, where he garnered about 6.5 percent of the vote to Republican nominee John Robitaille’s 33.6 percent. Chafee took the race with 36.1 percent of the vote. But Cicione said he did think there was an impact in the race for Attorney General, where Moderate candidate Chris Little pulled nearly half of the support that Republican Erik Wallin won—14.4 percent of the vote to 29 percent. (Moderate Party Executive Director Christine Hunsinger pointed out that Little and Wallin's vote totals combined were still less than what Democrat Peter Kilmartin got.)
Cicione said he was invited to the meeting, which was held at the Moderate Party headquarters in Warwick, by Hunsinger. Yesterday, she confirmed the meeting, which she described as a post-campaign recap.
Republicans should stop ‘eating their young’
“We discussed what went right and what went wrong during the campaign,” Hunsinger said. She said Cicione had been invited because he is an “astute political observer.” “We were interested in hearing his comments and feedback on how we did,” she said.
She said the Moderate Party is willing to talk to people of any party or political affiliation. “Ken has said in the past that we will talk to anyone about fixing Rhode Island,” she said.
She denied that the Moderate Party deserved any blame for the GOP’s problems in an election where it won no statewide or federal office and made modest gains in the General Assembly. “First the Republican Party can stop eating their young—then they can worry about the Moderate Party and what impact we have,” Hunsinger told GoLocalProv. She added: “The dysfunctional nature of the Republican Party here in the state is well known.”
Pressed for an example of Republicans “eating their young” Hunsinger pointed to the 2006 Senate primary battle between Lincoln Chafee and Steve Laffey. “I think it’s difficult for moderate Republicans to win the primary process,” she said.
She added that primaries tend to favor far-left and far-right candidates who appeal to the respective Democratic and Republican Party bases—a process that she says produces candidates who do not reflect the views of moderate Rhode Islanders.
Moderate Party a ‘dream scenario’ for Democrats?
In separate interviews, Cicione and Hunsinger agreed that they disagree on a fundamental point: the relevance of the two-party system. Cicione said there were fundamentally two teams in Rhode Island politics, saying the Moderate Party had split the resources on the Right. “It’s a dream scenario for the Democrats if the Moderate Party continues on,” he said.
Hunsinger drew a contrast with Cicione’s commitment to the two-party system. “That’s the traditional way of doing things,” she said. “We differ on what the process going forward looks like.”
Both Hunsinger and Cicione said they expect similar meetings in the future. Hunsinger said no meetings are currently scheduled with Cicione’s Democratic counterpart, Ed Pacheco.
“I think there’s an open dialogue … and it will stay open hopefully until we come to a solution,” Cicione said.
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