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September 27, 2011

Rep. Brian Newberry Lobs a Bomb at Doherty Camp

Patrick Laverty

Andrew mentioned this in his post yesterday about a Facebook "Reflection" from House Minority Leader Brian Newberry. Newberry is calling for Doherty to either drop out of the Congressional District 1 race completely, or change direction and run in Congressional District 2 against James Langevin.

I will admit that when I first heard the news of Doherty running in CD1, I was a bit confused. Why? Is Loughlin not running again? Will he push Loughlin out of the race? We've seen in recent weeks that yes, Loughlin is definitely running again and no, Doherty will not be able to push Loughlin out of the race. So what sense does this make? The Republicans don't always have candidates with the most money or the best name recognition, but now they have two and they're running for the same seat! To me, that makes very little sense in the grand scheme of things. Yes, each person has every right to run for any seat that he or she is eligible, but spreading the wealth would have seemed to make more sense, at least to me.

So what about eligibility and that second part of Newberry's statement. Newberry suggested that Cumberland and Congressional District 1 resident Brendan Doherty should run against James Langevin in the 2nd District. We had a similar situation last year when Democrat Betsy Dennigan changed her official residence to her summer home in Narragansett so she could be a resident of CD2 and run against Langevin. However, Constitutional law says that her change wasn't required. In fact, all the US Constitution says about residency requirements for Congress is

No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.
Note that it does address citizenship. It requires that the person be a US citizen for at least seven years. What it doesn't say is that the person needs to be a citizen or even a "resident" of the state they are elected from, at least not until election day.

Previously, California passed a law about residency requirements for their Congressional and Senate seats, only to have it overturned by the 9th Circuit Court in 2000. We have numerous other examples of where a candidate was eligible to run for a federal seat not only when he didn't live in the district he was to represent, but sometimes not even a resident of the state he was to represent!

WIth that information, it is completely legal for Col. Doherty to run for Congress in the CD2. As Newberry mentioned on WPRO yesterday, CD2 runs slightly more conservative than CD1. It will be a shame to have two great candidates, and their campaigns, bashing each other every step of the way to the primary. It will be a shame for both of these men to spend campaign money on showing why he is a better candidate for that Congressional seat than not just David Cicilline but also his Republican opponent. It would make far more sense to have just one Republican in the race focused on Cicilline for the next fourteen months, instead of being distracted by a primary. Maybe these two can keep the focus positive and if they do both insist on staying in the same race all the way to primary day, I hope they can combine their focus on Cicilline and make the double spotlight burn even hotter than just one would. The main goal here for both men should be to get a better representative for Rhode Island in Washington than what we currently have.

Comments

After all the attacking and demands from the Loughlin camp, though, it's probably too late. And Doherty looks pretty weak if he goes along with this.
I don't see either of them beating Langevin, since Jim's pro-life stance plays pretty well with conservative CD2 voters.
The GOP has blown a lot of winnable races in this state because any Republican capable of winning Democratic votes is automatically trashed as a RINO. Face it: Doherty can get Dem votes. I'm not convinced Loughlin can. If I were Doherty, I run indie if the Loughlin people close the primary.
Honestly...even Romney's not elitist enough to demand that Perry drop out of the presidential race, or tell him to go run for Senate.

Posted by: bella at September 27, 2011 2:05 PM

Usually,Langevin has benefited by not being the District 1 Democrat.
He is hard to beat because he is scandal free,not arrogant,disabled and doing pretty well at life despite that,and it's easy to disagree with him but he's hard to dislike with any energy.
I voted twice for Mark Zaccaria,an outstanding man and candidate,but Langevin just wasn't vulnerable by virtue of being the only non-stomach turning member of our Federal delegation.
(Reed earned his spot there by whoring for the bankers and swapping spit with a foreign national(legally here)on gun control insanity.)

Posted by: joe bernstein at September 27, 2011 2:39 PM

It's always amusting to watch a certain segment of the Democrat base become confused and even angry when politicians are willing take stands and talk directly to the people, instead of doing all of their work in backroom dealing.

Posted by: Andrew at September 27, 2011 9:14 PM

Bella,

Didn't Langevin flip-flop on his pro-life stance recently?

Posted by: Max Diesel at September 27, 2011 10:32 PM