RI Primary Day Winners & Losers

LOSER

LOSERS: Millionaire Newport Blue Bloods

Despite combining to spend nearly $5 million dollars - both Clay Pell and Guillaume de Ramel finished poorly. Pell was suppose to be coming on fast and might even take the Democratic nomination, but reality was that Pell finished in 3rd and 15% behind the leader in a three-way race.

Pell spent more than $106 of his own money per vote (the final numbers are not in). de Ramel was leading the race by more than double digits with a couple of weeks to go, but was beat by the under funded Nellie Gorbea.

WINNER

WINNER: Dan McKee

The Cumberland Mayor has been a champion of education reform. He ran on a record of school reform and even attracted out-of-state dollars from major proponents of education reform.

McKee's win was a blow to teachers unions that ran an anyone but McKee campaign. McKee will now face GOP candidate Catherine Taylor who was hoping for a rematch from 4-years earlier with Ralph Mollis (she challenged Mollis in the 2010 Sec of State race).

LOSER

LOSER:  Bob Walsh, Head of NEA

The Teacher's Union Boss bet big and paid the ultimate price.  Walsh was so angry at the antics of Gina Raimondo and how much the teachers paid in pension reform, he went all in and created Clay Pell.

The bad news is that Walsh's bet on Pell split the Democratic base. Progressives and traditional union voters went any where but with 
Raimondo and kept the base under 50%. Outcome: Raimondo the winner and Walsh the loser.

LOSER

LOSER: Hackers

GoLocalProv got hit earlier in the week by a Malware attack.  Many media companies have been hit by hackers including:The New York Times, CNN and the Boston Globe. It was fixed quickly but the clean up is time consuming and expensive for a small company.

GoLocal was still first to call the Democratic race for Governor, Lt. Governor and Secretary of State. Kudos to the news team. Note, WJAR called the Providence Mayor's race first.

LOSER

LOSER: Democratic Pollster Fleming/WPRI

The Democratic pollster produced the only public bellwether political poll in RI in late August. His poll missed badly. Raimondo won by a far larger margin than he predicted and two of the other three races he polled he got just plain wrong.

Fleming/WPRI had de Ramel and Mollis winning. The poll was released less than 3 weeks before the primary.

LOSER

LOSER: Turnout

Voters simply may be too depressed in Rhode Island due to the condition of the economy to even believe there is hope.  Despite the record spend for Governor, only 123,757 came out to vote in the Democratic primary to cast a vote for Governor.   The turnout was 40,000 less than the Democratic primary of 1990.  

Whomever is the next Governor will need to help Rhode Islanders gain some confidence about the state.

WINNER

WINNER: Allan Fung

The Cranston Mayor faced a tenacious Ken Block in the GOP Primary. The former Moderate Party Chairman poured money and organization into the race.

The popular Fung, however, leveraged his Republican roots to beat back Block. 

Fung's victory sets up a difficult battle with Raimondo who won big against two Progressives - Angel Taveras and Clay Pell. Fung is out of money and will get state matching funds, but it pales to Raimondo's fundraising machine.

WINNER

WINNER: Nellie Gorbea

Nellie Gorbea was outspent by hundreds of thousands by Guillaume de Ramel.  He loaned his campaign $900,000. The Gorbea upset was a battle of substance over style and her home spun commercials set her apart from rest of the field.

Gorbea could be Rhode Island's first statewide elected Hispanic elected official come November.

LOSER

LOSER: Local TV

The political and media world changed forever in RI. Never before had a candidate won a contested campaign for a major office without buying local TV. Candidates stopped buying newspapers years ago, but Jorge Elorza's win over Mike Solomon is will shake-up the world of local TV consolidation. Elorza bought no TV. 

This year, Channel 10's parent company (Media General) bought the parent company of Channel 12 (Lin Media) and then the new company sold off Channel 10. If political begins to move away more and more towards digital and direct mail, the implications will be significant on these mega media groups.  

WINNER

WINNER: Women (Maybe?)

GoLocal has written a lot about the plight of women candidates in leadership roles. They trail their male counterparts in both politics and business leadership roles in RI. With the BIG Raimondo win and Gorbea's upset the Democrats have two strong female candidates to win in November. 

In addition, Catherine Taylor is a credible and well-known candidate to battle Cumberland Mayor Dan McKee in the Lt. Governor's race. Don't look know, but RI could have a majority of General Officers' offices being held by women.