Rhode Island's Rematch

Original image from RIPR

Christian Martinelli

For the second straight Rhode Island Gubernatorial election we will be having a rematch between the two same major party candidates- Gina Raimondo and Allan Fung.

Both candidates Raimondo [Democrat] and Fung [Republican] won their party’s nomination easily, beating their opponents in the primaries.

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On the Democratic side Raimondo faced two other candidates in the 2018 primary, Matt Brown and Spencer Dickinson. Raimondo and Brown ran a spiteful campaign back and forth, trying to edge out the other in the primary. Spencer Dickinson did not take part in the same kind of jabbing through ads and such, as he just tried to keep his campaign more positive by strictly promoting himself.

According to Matt Brown, some polls that had put him and Raimondo in a statistical tie as of last week, but that was not the case come election night as his campaign came to a halt. Raimondo won 57.1% of the vote, while Brown won 33.6%. Dickinson rounded out the primary with 9.3% of the vote according to The New York Times.

Many people saw this race possibility coming down to the wire between Brown and Raimondo. Dickinson’s higher than expected turnout had a strong influence at the polls. Only a few weeks ago, he was expected to receive 1-2% of the vote but instead received 9.3% and over 10,500 votes. Many of those votes were expected to go to former Secretary of State Brown. Brown did say that he would put his support behind governor Raimondo after his defeat.

Raimondo will square off with the winner of the Rhode Island Republican primary.

Allan Fung mayor of Cranston found himself running this year against House of Representatives minority leader Patricia Morgan, and former Alex and Ani CEO Giovanni Feroce. Many pundits believed that Fung was going to win this race in a blow out, and that no one was going to come close. Patricia Morgan’s supporters had something to say about that.

The candidate that infamously stood outside of Cranston city hall with a man in a chicken suit, because Mayor Fung refused to debate her, ran a strong race and did well at reaching the voters from southern part of Rhode Island. She won every single town in the Southern mainland of Rhode Island and Block Island, although this did not lead her to victory. Fung won every town in Northern Rhode Island, as well as the other islands of the state [Jamestown, Newport, Portsmouth] which gave him the upper hand.

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Fung won at a similar clip that Raimondo did, grabbing 56.4% of the vote, while Morgan took in a strong 40.1% and Giovanni Feroce had a disappointing showing of only 3.5% of the vote and winning no towns. Feroce was confident in his ability to win the primary, but unfortunately for him the people of Rhode Island did not show the same confidence in him. It seemed as though Morgan benefited from what hurt Brown in the Democratic primary where the 3rd candidate, [Dickinson] stole many of the votes and making the race less of a blowout than it could have been.

In 2014 the race was extremely tight between Fung [36.2%] and Raimondo [40.7%] and the late Robert Healey [21.4%] for the Moderate party. One way or the other Fung has a massive hill to climb to catch Raimondo, and not nearly as deep of pockets to spend on his campaign. Raimondo received 66,784 votes of the 116,909 people that voted in the Democratic primary. While Fung received 18,544 votes of the only 33,876 (99% of precincts reporting) people who decided to vote Republican.

This smells trouble for Fung in the main election come November, because if he can’t convert the undecided voters over to him and get more Republicans to the polls it looks like Raimondo will be walking away with a 2nd term as the governor of Rhode Island. Don’t count out 3rd party candidates such as Bill Gilbert [Moderate Party], Daniel Muñoz [Independent] and Joe Trillo [Independent] to make a run at it but, they may have trouble getting the publicity necessary to win this election.

As soon as Fung and Raimondo won their primary election they couldn’t wait to throw some quick jabs at each other. Raimondo said at her acceptance speech, "He does not have the courage to stand up to President Trump." Fung shot back at her by exclaiming, “No more Gina-jams,” talking about the traffic issues on Route 195. Fung continued to say, "We can do better than Raimondo's Rhode Island,".

This is shaping up to be a bloodbath of an election between the two main candidates over the next 2 months.

Raimondo said that she will be taking part in debates, unlike she did in the primary. So Rhode Islanders will have many chances to hear the platforms all candidates are running on and to make an educated choice on a candidate.

I was personally surprised to see that we had a rematch of the 2014 Gubernatorial election, because I always hear my fellow Rhode Islanders telling me how “we need change” and “this state is corrupt”. Rhode Islanders can talk as much as they want, but as long as we refuse to educate ourselves on the candidates and issues, hardly show at the polls 149,785 voters, according to The New York Times, which is roughly 18% of our 18+ population in the state, and lastly believe that your individual vote does not count, we are NOT going to grow as a state.

We the people have the power to elect whoever we want, but we decide to not show up or choose the familiar name. This does not mean that Allan Fung or Gina Raimondo are not competent Gubernatorial candidates, but it does mean that we have a power to change this state with our vote and we decide not to use it most of the time. Before November comes around educate yourselves for once and vote for who you believe will do the best job to get this state to its full potential, because I don’t want to hear anyone complaining like I have for the last four years... we have the power to inflict change, so let’s use it!

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