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December 18, 2007

District 75 goes Republican

Monique Chartier

With a remarkable 63% of the vote, Republican Steven J. Coaty won today's special election in Newport and will represent that city in the Rhode Island House.

Mr. Coaty carried five out of seven precincts. More details are available at Ocean State Republican.

[Hat tip once again to Will Ricci for alerting us to this breaking news.]

Comments

We've been down in the dumps for so long electorally, I can't even remember the last time a Republican took a Democrat seat here.

Anyway, congratulations to Steve for running an obviously effective campaign. I'll be interested to exactly know how he did it, so that we might be able to duplicate the results in the future!

Posted by: Will at December 18, 2007 10:25 PM

Plus Steve Coaty overcame a name recognition double whammy: Mr. Cicilline had been involved in Newport politics for many years. And he has the same name (it's his nephew, right?) as the Mayor of the Capitol City, which accrues a certain amount of statewide press.

Posted by: Monique at December 19, 2007 8:29 AM

let's hope this is a bellwether of the public's desire to have a 2-party system in this state and not just a no-confidence vote against anyone named Cicilline.

Posted by: Greg at December 19, 2007 8:57 AM

A small victory. We've got a long, long, long way to go.

Nevertheless, congrats to Mr. Coaty, with the hopes that he won't be a go along to get along guy like most of the GOP in the statehouse.


Posted by: Theracapulas at December 19, 2007 9:45 AM

Some of this victory is clearly attributable to the name Cicilline being identified in the last five years with corruption and cronyism, mismanagement and ineffectiveness, crime and perversion.
How fitting that this defeat occurs on the same day yet another Sissyline employee is indicted on corruption, to a near complete media blackout.
This victory will hopefully scare the suburban Democrats into not raising taxes and instead gutting the union/welfare kleptocracy. It will be a several years process but this session should be "Fun, Fun, Fun" for us-not for Jerzyk, Brewster, Donnis and the rest of the "Moscow Faction".
12 Days and counting!
"If you "broaden" taxes you "narrow" you're re-election chances"!

Posted by: Mike at December 19, 2007 10:07 AM

Kudos to Coaty - sounds like he got out there and outworked Cicciline.
As long he realizes the Democratic good old boys are a bigger threat than the so-called "Moscow Faction" (man, victory as only made the rhetoric more desperate), it's good to see the GOP number grow.

Posted by: rhody at December 19, 2007 11:14 AM

Perhaps the natives, er marks, are finally getting restless!

Paging Dr. Montanaro! Paging Dr. Brewster! Paging Dr. Montanaro! The patients are getting ready to revolt! woo woo woo woo woo

Posted by: Ragin' Rhode Islander at December 19, 2007 11:16 AM

I figure Coaty's victory resulted from one of three things:

a.) He outworked Cicilline and benefited from a low turn out.

b.) He took advantage of shifting demographics in the East Bay/Aquidneck Island areas. It seems like quite a few GOP state legislators now come from that area of the state.

c.) He benefited from the overall dissatisfaction with the state's direction.

It's definitely a wake up call to incumbent Democrats in suburban areas.

Posted by: Anthony at December 19, 2007 11:54 AM

Congrats! Whatever was done here needs to be done STATEWIDE next year. One small step for the RIGOP, one giant leap for RI-kind!

Posted by: Siva at December 20, 2007 10:36 AM

>>One small step for the RIGOP, one giant leap for RI-kind!

That's good! I wish that I'd thought of it!

Posted by: Tom W at December 20, 2007 2:24 PM

Hi!
In a strict historical sense Mr.Coaty is the first Republican from Newport to be elected to the General assembly since the 1960's, so the vote was historic. I understand Mr. Coaty had the endorsement of The Newport Daily News. Other Republicans have represented Newport in the Rhode Island General Assembly in recent decades, but they came from other communities.
Regards,
Scott

Posted by: Scott Bill Hirst at December 20, 2007 5:16 PM