Rhode Island Post-Election Thoughts

Midterm election results are in for Rhode Island. I was hoping the voters would exercise their brains but that only occurred in 1 instance, which means it was probably an accident and not a sign of changing times.

In the Governor's race, Allan Fung, the Republican, lost with 36% of the vote. Bob Healey, a third party candidate, pulled in a whopping 22% of the vote. Of all the things that occurred on election night, this was truly the most surprising. Historically 3rd party candidates rarely break 10% of the vote, so to see such support for Healey is more likely an indictment of the major party candidates, but I doubt it matters to Healey. Naturally Fung supporters are whining about how Healey won the election for their opponent, that Healey "stole" votes that Fung would/should have gotten. Earth to Fung supporters: Votes are earned and if Fung couldn't earn enough votes to win, even with all the institutional advantages major parties enjoy, then you can't blame anyone but him.

As far as the ballot questions go, they basically went the exact opposite way that I felt they should have.

While we approved expanded gaming at Newport Grand Casino, we rejected a Constitutional Convention and we approved every ballot measure requesting money, totaling an astounding $248M (plus interest) in new taxes. Wonderful. Taxpayers chose even higher taxes than we already pay.