By Ted Nesi

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – President Obama, Congressman David Cicilline and other Democrats were propelled to victory last November by a surge in voting by Hispanic and black Rhode Islanders as well as a sharp drop in participation among white citizens, a WPRI.com analysis of new Census data shows.

Read the rest of this story »

Republican Michael Riley spent nearly $1 million on his failed campaign to defeat Democratic Congressman Jim Langevin, almost as much as the incumbent spent and almost all of it from his own bank account.

Riley spent a total of $969,943 after entering the race in January, while Langevin spent $1.07 million over the two-year cycle, according to reports filed last week. Riley spent more during the final stretch, laying out $176,199 against Langevin’s $105,803.

Riley, an investor and first-time candidate, gave his campaign $855,200 in personal loans, none of which had been paid back as Nov. 26. He also reported $129,151 in donations and finished the campaign with $8,151 on hand.

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Will Massachusetts have six U.S. Senate elections in the space of eight years?

It certainly looks possible after Thursday afternoon’s announcement that Susan Rice is withdrawing from consideration as President Obama’s next secretary of state, opening the door for the president to appoint Mass. U.S. Sen. John Kerry.

If Kerry gets the job, Massachusetts could have a special election as soon as June to fill Kerry’s seat for the reminder of his term, which ends in January 2015. Potential candidates include a long list of Democrats – though not Congressman-elect Joe Kennedy III – and Republicans Scott Brown or Bill Weld.

A special election next year would be the fifth time Massachusetts residents have gone to the polls to choose a U.S. senator since November 2006.

Bay State voters re-elected Ted Kennedy for the final time that year, then re-elected Kerry in 2008, elected Scott Brown to finish Kennedy’s term in 2010, and replaced Brown with Elizabeth Warren last month. And special election or not, they will vote for U.S. senator again in 2014 when Kerry’s current term ends.

​(photo: AP/Gerald Herbert)

Congressman David Cicilline outspent his Republican opponent Brendan Doherty by almost $1 million during the last election cycle, finishing with barely any money left in his campaign account.

Cicilline spent a total of $2.4 million over the two-year cycle, while Doherty spent $1.4 million, according to final campaign finance reports filed late Thursday. The campaigns spent nearly equal amounts during the final stretch of the campaign: Cicilline spent $423,294, while Doherty spent $378,018, from Oct. 18 to Nov. 26.

Both campaigns spent the bulk of their money on television commercials and other advertising, along with staff payroll, meals and miscellaneous items, according to documents filed with the Federal Election Commission. Looked at another way, Cicilline spent $22.11 and Doherty spent $16.96 for each vote they received.

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So much for a new era of political openness in Central Falls.

City Councilman James Diossa, the 27-year-old who won an overwhelmingly victory in the Nov. 6 mayoral primary, is refusing to debate the opponent he faces in the Dec. 11 runoff election, former Central Falls Police Chief Joseph Moran.

Diossa and Moran are seeking to finish the term of former mayor Charles Moreau, who resigned due to corruption charges. Diossa spokesman Bill Fischer turned down an invitation to debate Moran on the Nov. 30 taping of WPRI 12′s Newsmakers.

“James has already participated in three debates with Colonel Moran,” Fischer told WPRI.com in an email, noting that Diossa and Moran took part in candidate forums prior to the primary. “Given the short window between the primary and the general in the special election, we are respectfully going to decline the invitation.”

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Brendan Doherty wielded Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles like a shield during his failed bid for Congress: the Republican highlighted his support for the ideas of the beloved-in-the-Beltway budget-cutters to signal he wouldn’t march in lockstep with the national GOP.

Doherty’s embrace of Simpson-Bowles reached its apex in mid-October when he traveled to New York to receive their blessing in the flesh. Doherty’s campaign trumpeted an endorsement, though in the end it was unclear that Simpson and Bowles had actually endorsed him.

Whatever the case, embracing Simpson-Bowles didn’t save Doherty from a 12-point loss – and apparently Bowles’ decision is now coming back to haunt him, too.

The former North Carolina U.S. senator was seen as a leading candidate to replace Timothy Geithner as treasury secretary for Obama’s second term, but Mother Jones’ David Korn reports Democrats haven’t forgotten that Bowles backed Cicilline’s opponent (sort of):

[Jacob] Lew, who as White House chief of staff has won much praise from colleagues, has another advantage over Bowles: better standing within his own party. … This past campaign, Bowles joined with former GOP Sen. Alan Simpson (who co-chaired their deficit reduction commission) to endorse two House Republican candidates over Democrats in tight races. … Both [New Hampshire's Charlie] Bass and Doherty lost, but congressional Democrats are not eager to forgive Bowles his apostasy. A Bowles nomination, a senior House Democratic staffer says, “would cause an uproar among congressional Democrats, and the White House is aware. He endorsed Republican candidates against some of our vulnerable people … [and this has caused] extremely bad feelings over here.”

(photo: Doherty for Congress)

By Ted Nesi

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – Fresh off his re-election victory, U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse says he’s optimistic the Senate will approve new rules making it harder for Republicans to block bills, and he’s prepared to break with President Obama on a budget deal if it cuts Social Security or Medicare benefits.

Read the rest of this story »

A terrific piece from Frank Phillips and Michael Levenson runs down the potential musical chairs in the Bay State if President Obama decides to appoint U.S. Sen. John Kerry as defense secretary or secretary of state. From The Boston Globe:

A Senate vacancy would probably create a comeback scenario for Senator Scott Brown, the Republican who lost the seat to Democrat Elizabeth Warren in last week’s election. …

Among the high-profile Democratic officeholders who are expressing interest are three of the state’s congressmen: Edward J. Markey of Malden, the 66-year old dean of the congressional delegation; Michael E. Capuano of Somerville, who ran second to Martha Coakley in the 2009 Senate primary; and Stephen F. Lynch of South Boston, a conservative Democrat who won his seat in a 2001 special election in which several liberals divided the vote on the left.

US Attorney Carmen Ortiz, who has gained the attention of the political world by prosecuting former speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi, has also been mentioned as a potential candidate, despite her lack of electoral experience. …

Coakley has not ruled out a run, but insiders said she would not be a Democratic favorite after her poor performance in the 2010 special election.

Governor Patrick, the state’s leading Democrat, told The Globe he won’t run for Senate if there’s a vacancy. If Kerry does resign the seat he’s held for 27 years, Patrick would have to appoint an interim senator to fill the job until a special election is over. Kerry’s current term expires in 2014.

Phillips and Levenson also report former Congressman Joseph P. Kennedy II (father of the newly elected 4th District congressman) and former Congressman Marty Meehan won’t run, while former Gov. Bill Weld might consider it but would defer to Scott Brown.

Looking ahead to 2014, the reporters also mention three potential candidates for Massachusetts governor (Patrick is term-limited): Charlie Baker, the Republican who lost to Patrick in 2010; Treasurer Steven Grossman; and Lt. Gov. Tim Murray.

(photo: Gerald Herbert/AP)

Providence Rep. Gordon Fox won renomination for another term as House speaker overwhelmingly on Friday night at the first caucus meeting of the House Democrats whom he’ll have to herd starting in January. The speeches were ideologically diverse: Fox was nominated by Providence Rep. Edie Ajello, a staunch liberal, and seconded by conservatives Arthur Corvese of North Providence and Karen MacBeth of Cumberland.

Democrats will hold 69 of the House’s 75 seats in the next session, and 60 of them showed up for Friday’s caucus at the Asian Palace in Providence. Two of the nine absentees – Woonsocket Rep.-elect Stephen Casey and Lincoln Rep.-elect Gregory Costantino – sent their regrets because of prior commitments.

That leaves seven potential dissidents: Woonsocket Rep. Lisa Baldelli-Hunt, South Kingstown Rep. Spencer Dickinson, Coventry Rep. Scott Guthrie, Cranston Rep. Charlene Lima, Cranston Rep. Peter Palumbo, Pawtucket Rep. J. Patrick O’Neill and Providence Rep.-elect John Lombardi.

Baldelli-Hunt, Dickinson, Guthrie, Lima and O’Neill have all clashed publicly with Fox, while Palumbo is a staunch conservative who lost his party’s endorsement this year but prevailed anyway. Lombardi is a mystery.

My colleague Steve Nielsen caught up with Fox outside the caucus and asked about the next session:

An earlier version of this post identified Rep.-elect John Lombardi incorrectly.

First they took away our exit polls, and now they’re insulting us about it.

Michael Calderone reports for The Huffington Post (emphasis added):

NBC elections director Sheldon Gawiser, who has worked on every presidential contest since 1976, said the network-AP consortium has made some changes this cycle in exit polling, given increased early voting and a focus on battleground states.

For instance, given the huge percentage of early voting in Colorado and Oregon, executives saw less reason to have someone asking questions on the ground at polling sites in those states. While there will be full exit polling in Massachusetts, given its highly competitive Senate race, other states not believed to be in contention for the presidential race will not have such extensive exit polls.

“Why should I put a lot of resources in Utah or Vermont or Rhode Island?” Gawiser asked, adding that the consortium has “put our resources where the stories are and where the states are most important.”

The lack of a Rhode Island exit poll means there is no snapshot available of who exactly went to vote in the state on Tuesday – by gender, race, income, party or anything else – leaving a major hole in our understanding of this year’s results.

• Related: Chart: How many people vote in RI elections, and who they are (Nov. 6)

M. Charles Bakst, who retired in 2008 as The Providence Journal’s political columnist, watched a lot of Rhode Island elections during his four-decade career at Rhode Island’s newspaper of record. On Wednesday, I asked Bakst to weigh in with his thoughts on Tuesday night’s results. Here’s what he had to say:

I was a Cicilline supporter but even I was astonished by the size of his win, which was largely attributable to his zeal and ability to frame the issues as a choice between, in effect, good and evil, or “I’m fighting for you and he’s one of THEM.” Being a Democrat amid a Rhode Island Obama landslide was good planning!

Not to take anything away from Cicilline, but it also is evident that Doherty didn’t do himself any favors. Even though he had a year to work on it, he never mastered the art of skillfully and smoothly handling interviews and debates. He should have run more biographical ads early on to inoculate himself from Cicilline attacks that defined him. Most of all, he should have run ads that better outlined what he wanted to do in Washington and how he proposed to improve the lives of Rhode Islanders – and pounded home the idea that as a Republican in a GOP-controlled House he would be able to accomplish more than a Democrat.

I have no animosity toward Doherty and he was always nice to me. Despite Doherty’s campaign weaknesses, and despite my being a Cicilline backer, there were times when I actually thought Doherty would win or that Cicilline’s best hope for survival lay in the redistricting that made the contours of the district more favorable to him than they were last time around. I would bet you that many others in the Cicilline camp also were nervous.

If I were a functioning journalist, circulating on the front lines and to some extent behind the scenes, I likely would have had a truer understanding of what was happening. But all I had to go by were publicized polls that showed Cicilline in trouble – the last one showing him with only a 1-point lead and with heavy unfavorables and with the Cicilline campaign offering no specific figures to dispute the findings. And the national Republicans were pouring money into this Democratic district, which suggested that the GOP smelled victory. Plus The Providence Journal, which these days endorses Democrat after Democrat, endorsed Doherty, something that seemed sure to be an attention-getter.

Cicilline put himself in a hole with his 2010 comment about the “excellent” shape of Providence’s finances, an act for which he expressed contrition in 2012. But the larger moral of the story seems to be this: Campaigns, at least successful campaigns, are more about the future than the past, something Cicilline recognized and exploited brilliantly. The opponent Cicilline faced was not Perfection, it was Doherty, and Cicilline made voters appreciate that he, more than the Republican, was the guy they could count on to voice their concerns and protect their interests in Washington, and I congratulate him – indeed, I emailed him directly to congratulate him – for accomplishing such a knockout.

As for 2012 General Assembly results, I don’t know enough to comment in depth. It has been obvious for many, many years that the fewer Republicans in the legislature, the more difficulty the GOP has in recruiting good candidates, or candidates, period. Conversely, it also has long been obvious that the larger the Democratic caucuses are, the more unwieldy they become, with the ever-present prospect of factionalism within the party. Leaders don’t need me to tell them to beware of intra-party plotting.

Also, there is something to be learned from under-financed independent Mark Binder’s impressive, though unsuccessful, showing against Democratic House Speaker Gordon Fox. Leaders are by definition in high-profile positions and when they mess up, or voters think they are messing up, they can suddenly find themselves very vulnerable at the polls.

Even those who never wrote off David Cicilline were surprised by his emphatic victory on Tuesday.

The incumbent Democrat beat Republican Brendan Doherty by more than 12 points – doubling his margin over John Loughlin in 2010 – as he managed to improve his performance in half the 19 communities of Rhode Island’s 1st Congressional District.

A huge amount of the credit goes to Cicilline himself, a natural politician who ran two winning races over the last 18 months: his 2011 campaign to keep other mainstream Democrats from challenging him in the primary, and his 2012 campaign to win back voters unhappy about Providence’s finances.

But as Cicilline himself would surely admit, much of the credit also goes to President Obama and Mitt Romney, for waging a campaign that highlighted the significant differences between the two parties and reminded local Democrats and Dem-leaning independents why they dislike the GOP.

For evidence of that, check out this chart comparing Cicilline’s share of the vote across the 1st District in his two elections. In 2010 he lost Woonsocket 46-49; on Tuesday he won it 55-39. His margins improved to 78% in Central Falls and 76% in Providence. And even in places Cicilline lost, he didn’t get blown out – his loss in Cumberland, Doherty’s hometown, only worsened from 42-54 to 39-56. Take a look:

Rhode Islanders all but pulled the plug on the local Republican Party in Tuesday’s election.

Democratic Congressman David Cicilline, written off by many after a February WPRI 12 poll showed him down 15 points, won a decisive re-election victory over Republican challenger Brendan Doherty. Cicilline is only 51 years old; barring a major scandal or other surprise, he can probably represent the 1st District for as many years as he likes. U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and Congressman Jim Langevin won easily, as well, so the same goes for them.

The more surprising results came in the General Assembly races, where Republicans took an unexpected beating. Considering how tiny the Assembly’s GOP caucuses already were, it’s astonishing that they managed to lose ground. As of this writing, Republicans have lost nearly half their state Senate seats – three out of eight – and three of their 10 seats in the House of Representatives. Strong challengers such as Donald Fox in Burrillville also fell short despite high hopes.

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Town-by-town map | Full results
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Ted Nesi is live blogging Tuesday’s election results.
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• US President: Barack Obama
• US Senator (RI): Sheldon Whitehouse
• US Senator (MA): Elizabeth Warren
• US House (RI 1st): David Cicilline
• US House (RI 2nd): Jim Langevin
  
• US House (MA 4th): Joe Kennedy III
• RI House (District 4): Gordon Fox

1:57 a.m. | Here’s my analysis of tonight’s results in Rhode Island.

11:22 p.m. | With all the major races called, we’re closing up the WPRI 12 live blog for the evening. If you want to dig into the results, check out our interactive map, which has town-by-town and race-by-race results. Thank you, as always, for joining us and stick with WPRI 12 on TV and WPRI.com online (including Nesi’s Notes) for full coverage of the fallout from this year’s election, the challenges facing the officials elected tonight – and, of course, the 2014 campaign for governor.

11:17 p.m. | President Barack Obama defeats Republican Mitt Romney to win a second term, CBS News projects.

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By Tim White

Democratic Congressman David Cicilline was taking nothing for granted on Election Day as he faces the toughest fight of his political career against Republican Brendan Doherty in Rhode Island’s 1st District.

At 1 p.m. Tuesday, Cicilline was stumping alongside Lt. Gov. Elizabeth Roberts at the Hampden Meadows school polling place in Barrington, a city he lost by just 36 votes in 2010. “I’m determined to win it!” the Democrat declared. He’d just come from Bristol, an East Bay community he won by a comfortable 544 votes two years ago.

Cicilline said his campaign’s get-out-the-vote efforts Tuesday are focused on Democratic strongholds such as Woonsocket, Providence, East Providence, Central Falls and Newport, though he emphasized that he wants to win votes everything he can.

The congressman said he was heading next to Cumberland – Doherty’s hometown – and North Providence, where he planned to meet up with U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, whose re-election campaign team has given significant assistance to Cicilline’s. The polls close at 8 p.m.

Ted Nesi contributed to this report.

• Related: Late cash pours in for Cicilline, Doherty from companies, pols (Nov. 5)

Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this story misstated when the polls close.

Who’s going to vote today? The answer could decide (among other things) whether Rhode Island’s 1st District sends Congressman Cicilline or Congressman Doherty to Washington come January.

Rhode Island’s last general election was on Nov. 2, 2010, but the electorate that casts ballots today will look more like the one that went to the polls four years ago, on Nov. 4, 2008, because turnout is always higher in presidential years than in midterm/gubernatorial ones.

Here’s the data on Rhode Island turnout, as compiled by WPRI 12 political analyst Joe Fleming:

The first question is, will Rhode Island voter turnout stay at the 67% level reached in 2008, or will it fall back to the 61% level seen in the 2004 and 2000 elections? Those six percentage points might not sound like much, but they’d be the difference between 447,513 and 491,531 votes – about 44,000 ballots, more than enough to swing a close race; Cicilline beat John Loughlin by 9,727 in 2010.

The next question: who exactly will those 447,000 to 491,000 voters be?

As Yogi Berra once remarked, it’s hard to make predictions, especially about the future. But we can take a look at Rhode Island’s last two presidential electorates and get a sense of who’s going to show up tomorrow.

A few things seem highly likely: more women will show up at the polls than men; about one in five voters will be young; Democrats and independents will vastly outnumber Republicans. But will the share of non-white voters jump again? Will Democrats top 40%?

The answers won’t be known until after Tuesday. (Actually, they won’t be known at all – Rhode Island’s exit poll was canceled to save money.) But here’s a look at who voted in 2004 and 2008 so you can see trends:

If you’re looking for a thorough rundown, try this 16-page RIPEC study (pdf).

Tens of thousands of dollars continue to pour into the campaign coffers of Democratic Congressman David Cicilline and Republican challenger Brendan Doherty as Election Day draws near in Rhode Island’s 1st Congressional District.

Cicilline, who was at a significant financial disadvantage to Doherty as of Oct. 17, appears to be getting significantly more last-minute cash than his opponent as individuals and corporate political action committees – some far from Rhode Island – try to swing the race.

Cicilline has received contributions in recent weeks from PACs associated with a number of companies: Textron ($2,000), Citizens Bank ($1,000), Entergy ($1,000), General Dynamics ($2,000), Verizon ($3,000), Honeywell ($2,500) and CDM Smith ($2,000). Doherty got $1,000 from Home Depot.

Cicilline also got PAC money from organized labor: the Service Employees International Union ($5,000), UNITE HERE ($3,000) and the Rhode Island AFL-CIO ($1,000). Doherty received no union money.

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It sounds like Frank Caprio may not vote for Barack Obama in this week’s election.

Caprio, the Democratic nominee for governor in 2010, tweeted on Saturday: “This election has come down to who shows up-JFK’s ‘silent majority’ for @MittRomney- or women & the celebrity culture for @BarackObama.” The former treasurer, who now works as a managing director for the private-equity firm Chatham Capital, didn’t elaborate.

Caprio has also left the Democratic Party, at least as far as the voting rolls are concerned.

Records at the secretary of state’s office show Caprio is now registered as an unaffiliated voter, meaning he is an independent and not formally a member of any political party. The change takes effect Dec. 10. Lincoln Chafee, who defeated Caprio for governor, made the same move in 2007 when he left the Republican Party and registered as unaffiliated.

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House Speaker Gordon Fox pledged on Saturday that the R.I. House of Representatives will vote before the end of January on whether to legalize same-sex marriage.

Fox, a Providence Democrat who’s in the toughest re-election fight of his 20-year career, added specificity to the pledge he made in an interview on WPRI 12′s Newsmakers earlier this year, when he announced he would call a vote in the House on gay marriage during the 2013 session if he got re-elected.

Fox, who is openly gay, told a small crowd of supporters at the restaurant Blaze on Providence’s East Side that he would call a vote “during the third or fourth week of January.” The speaker opted not to call a vote on gay marriage last year because of opposition from leading Senate Democrats including Senate President M. Teresa Paiva Weed, D-Newport.

Fox’s opponent, independent Mark Binder, has criticized the speaker for failing to call a vote, saying he “put marriage equality on the back burner because he didn’t think it would pass a Senate vote.” Binder says on his website he’s pleased Fox is now calling for a vote, but “I only wish that he’d done it years ago.”

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If David Cicilline were running right now in a midterm election, with its typically smaller and more conservative electorate, he’d probably be toast. Luckily for him, this is a presidential year – and he’s still the Democrat in a heavily Democratic congressional district.

In 2010, Cicilline won 81,269 votes out of 160,569. Two years earlier, with Barack Obama topping the ticket, Cicilline’s predecessor Patrick Kennedy won 145,254 votes – out of 211,702. And that was before redistricting made the 1st District even more friendly to Democrats.

The 1st District electorate of 2008 was 32% bigger than the 2010 electorate, and the Democratic vote total of 2008 was 79% higher. Everybody expects Cicilline to do worse than Kennedy did – but how much worse?

A Republican hasn’t won a U.S. House seat in Rhode Island in a presidential year since Ron Machtley in 1992, and he was the incumbent. An argument in Doherty’s favor is that Machtley won as a challenger in 1988 even as Rhode Island backed Michael Dukakis for president; on the other hand, that was 24 long years ago and Machtley was part of a winning ticket (John Chafee won re-election, too).

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It’s common knowledge that there’s no love lost these days between House Speaker Gordon Fox and his fellow Democrat South Kingstown Rep. Spencer Dickinson. Now Dickinson is backing up his enmity with cash.

Dickinson spent $3,820 of his own money this week on an independent expenditure targeting Fox in House District 4, according to a campaign finance report filed Thursday with the R.I. Board of Elections.

Dickinson reported spending $1,000 with Checkmate Consulting Group, an East Greenwich firm known for producing campaign mailers; $660 at Staples; and $2,160 with the postmaster, all presumably to send campaign literature to voters in the Fox-Binder race.

The speaker’s office led an unsuccessful push to defeat Dickinson in the September primary, which led Dickinson to send his constituents a scathing public letter [pdf] describing Fox as “a dictator.” In recent weeks, Dickinson has endorsed and stumped for Mark Binder, the independent who is giving Fox an unexpectedly strong challenge on Providence’s East Side.

Update: Fox isn’t taking this lightly. The speaker’s campaign filed a campaign finance complaint Friday with the Board of Elections arguing Dickinson isn’t allowed to spend more to help Binder because he already gave Binder’s campaign the maximum legal donation of $1,000.

“There is nothing independent about his illegal contribution to the Binder campaign,” Fox spokesman Bill Fischer said in a statement. “This is a clear case of collusion between Rep. Dickinson and the Binder campaign and it violates state law.”

Fox’s lawyer argues that Dickinson’s $3,820 is a coordinated expenditure, rather than an independent expenditure, under Rhode Island law.

• Related: Watch a Newsmakers debate: Fox vs. Binder (House District 4) (Oct. 21)

Is the political momentum shifting back to Brendan Doherty in the 1st Congressional District race? The Cook Political Report thinks so.

The influential Washington-based election forecaster shifted its 1st District rating back to “toss-up” on Thursday, two days after the new WPRI 12 poll showed Congressman David Cicilline down to a one-point lead.

Cook editor David Wasserman explained his reasoning (emphasis added):

In early October, polling on both sides had begun to show Cicilline pulling away from GOP former State Police Superintendent Brendan Doherty in a stunning reversal from most numbers all year. But with less than a week to go, Cicilline’s lead seemed to have evaporated once again. Republicans credit a brutal NRCC ad hitting Cicilline’s work defending a child molester and a murderer in court more than two decades ago, and also argue President Obama won’t match the 67 percent he received here in 2008. The DCCC has spent $279,000 and the House Majority PAC chipped in with $103,000 over the last week, while the NRCC has dumped in $294,000. Cicilline’s chances of winning a second term may now depend on Independent David Vogel siphoning enough of the vote to allow the incumbent to prevail with less than 50 percent of the vote.

Cook has changed its rating on the race multiple times this cycle, first moving it from “Likely Democratic” – meaning it was basically uncompetitive – to “toss-up” back in March, then two weeks ago moving it to “Lean Democratic” based on increasing pessimism among Republicans.

This week’s WPRI 12 poll shows Cicilline at 43% and Doherty at 42%, with 8% of voters still undecided. Election analysts at the Sabato Crystal Ball, Roll Call and National Journal upgraded Cicilline’s chances of holding onto his seat after his emphatic primary victory Sept. 11.

Left to right: Jimmy Riley, secretary-general, United Food and Commercial Workers union; George Nee, president, R.I. AFL-CIO; Bob Walsh, executive director, National Education Association Rhode Island; U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse; Treasurer Gina Raimondo; Secretary of State A. Ralph Mollis; Lt. Gov. Elizabeth Roberts; Scott Duhamel, secretary-treasurer, R.I. Building and Construction Trades Council; U.S. Sen. Jack Reed (obscured); Providence Mayor Angel Taveras; Ed Pacheco, chairman, R.I. Democratic Party.

It was quite a tableau at the historic Slater Mill in Pawtucket this afternoon as Congressman David Cicilline, nearly tied in the polls, called on the more popular members of his party to stand by his side in a show of public support for his re-election campaign.

The major speakers were Pacheco, Roberts and Reed; the party’s two young stars – Raimondo and Taveras – didn’t speak. Their message: Brendan Doherty’s campaign has gone negative to distract Rhode Islanders from his support for Republican policies, and Cicilline is more in step with local voters’ concerns.

Attorney General Peter Kilmartin arrived after the event had ended because of a meeting, while Congressman Jim Langevin was already scheduled to debate his opponent Michael Riley, aides said. Between today’s event, President Obama’s endorsement and Bill Clinton’s appeal, Cicilline’s team is banking on Rhode Islanders’ general preference for Democrats to pull him over the finish line.

(photo: Ted Nesi/WPRI)

The 1st Congressional District race looks headed for a photo finish: this week’s WPRI 12 poll shows Democrat David Cicilline at 43% and Republican Brendan Doherty at 42%, with 8% of voters still undecided.

So who are those 8%?

“With the undecided voters, there’s no one group where they’re from,” said WPRI 12 political analyst and pollster Joe Fleming after the two of us examined the data from our Oct. 24-27 survey of 300 likely voters. (The margin of error is plus or minus 5.66 points, and larger for subgroups, so caveat emptor.)

One characteristic that does stick out: 11% of women are undecided, compared with only 6% of men. “That could be good for Cicilline because he’s winning that group,” Fleming said. On the other hand, by definition these are women who haven’t been convinced by the Democrat’s pitch so far.

Other than that, the undecideds are a highly heterogeneous group.

Between 8% and 9% of voters in each of the poll’s three age groups – young voters (18 to 39), middle-aged voters (40 to 59) and older voters (60 or older) – are undecided. The group includes 8% of independents, 8% of Democrats and 4% of Republicans.

These Rhode Islanders may be more hesitant than the average citizen to make up their minds: 18% of voters who haven’t decided between Obama and Romney for president also haven’t decided who to support for Congress, compared with only 9% Obama voters and just 4% of Romney voters.

Both side will be spending the final days of the campaign trying to present a message that pushes these voters in one direction or the other – and hope that, if the undecideds break heavily in one direction, they can make up for it with a solid ground game.

• Related: Poll: Cicilline clings to 1-point lead over Doherty (Oct. 30)

By Ted Nesi and Tim White

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – President Obama continues to hold a commanding lead over Mitt Romney in Rhode Island with six days to go before voters head to the polls, according to an exclusive WPRI 12 poll released Wednesday night.

Read the rest of this story »

• Interactive: Check out the complete WPRI 12 poll results breakdown