| projo.com | The Providence Journal

11.8.2000 01:29
GOP wins only marginal gains in House, loses some in Senate

According to unofficial Journal results, the party picked up two to three seats in the State House and was poised to lose two of its eight Senate seats to the Democrats.

By CHRISTOPHER ROWLAND
Journal State House Bureau

Democrats easily retained their tight grip on the General Assembly in yesterday's election, as the state's Republican Party won only marginal gains in the House and saw further erosion in its tiny minority in the Senate.

In the 100-member House, the Republicans picked up 2 or 3 seats in extremely close races, building its minority to up to 15 members, according to unofficial results compiled by The Journal.

In Jamestown, the GOP's William H. Murphy was leading Democratic incumbent Rep. George R. Levesque, with the outcome to be determined by mail ballots. In North Kingstown, Ruth Zaccaria appeared to eke out a victory over Democratic Rep. Kenneth Carter. But there, too, the outcome will be determined by mail ballots.

In Warwick, Republican Joseph A. Trillo Sr., of Warwick, president of an alarm company, was ahead of incumbent Democratic Rep. Russell Bramley, a 16-year House veteran, by about 200 votes with 273 mail ballots to be counted.

"All things considered, I think it was a very good night for Republican candidates in the House," said House Minority Leader Robert Watson. "I can't be disappointed when we're heading in the right direction, although," he quipped, "I'm not sure I'm ready to take the mantle of speaker yet."

The GOP was poised to lose two of its eight Senate seats to the Democrats.

A 20-year veteran of the Senate, Republican incumbent Michael Flynn, a former minority leader, was losing a close race to Democrat John J. Tassoni Jr., a president of the Graphics Communication International Union Local 239. Tassoni has never held public office before.

Tassoni led Flynn by fewer than 200 votes last night; there were 547 mail ballots yet to be counted, and the final result remained in doubt.

"All I can say is the mail ballots will be counted by tomorrow afternoon," Flynn said. "I worked very hard. I ran against a candidate who worked very hard and spent a lot of money."

Also in the Senate, two-term incumbent Republican John Patterson, of North Kingstown, was knocked off by Democrat James Sheehan, a history teacher at Warwick's Toll Gate High School.

Also, one of the GOP's most energetic candidates for state Senate, John O. Matson, who ran unsuccessfully as South County's "Carpenter for Congress" in 1996 and 1998, found that he couldn't hammer home a State House victory either.

"I've been running for six years, and I feel pretty tired," said a dispirited Matson. "If you don't get a single in the game once in a while, you get pretty tired."

Half of the 150 legislative seats were uncontested in this general election. GOP leaders said it was particularly difficult to recruit candidates to challenge the dominant Democrats this year.

Few newcomers were willing to mount local campaigns, they said, when a third of legislative seats are going to be eliminated in a scheduled General Assembly downsizing in 2002.

But the truth is Republicans have had trouble recruiting candidates for years. The GOP went into yesterday's election with only 8 seats in the 50-member Senate and 13 in the 100-member House. The last time the GOP posted any signficant gains was in the post-scandal year of 1992; the party has seen steady erosion since then.

Republicans had high hopes for Hopkinton's Matson, who has carried the Republican banner twice in the 2nd Congressional District. This time around, he set his sights lower, on the state Senate, and ran a strong campaign against incumbent Democratic Sen. Donna Walsh, of Charlestown. But he came up short when the votes were tallied.

Another energetic campaigner for the Republicans came up short in East Greenwich. Retired Coast Guard Capt. S.G. "Vet" Payne, who was the leader of the veterans for John McCain campaign in Rhode Island, against incumbent Sen. J. Michael Lenihan.

Incumbent Sen. Stephen D. Alves, who is part of the incoming leadership team of the soon-to-be-named majority leader, Sen. William Irons, handily fought off a challenge in his West Warwick district from Alan G. Palazzo, another hopeful for the Senate GOP.

"We had some good candidates out there, and I'm a little surprised that some of these candidates didn't do as well as I thought they would," said Senate Minority Leader Dennis Algiere, of Westerly. "They tried very hard."

In a battle for an open seat in Lincoln, Democrat Brian Hunter, an insurance agent, overwhelmingly beat Republican Arthur H. Fletcher, a former Housing Authority chairman from Lincoln, by more than 2,000 votes.

Celebrating at the Enrico Caruso Club in Manville last night, Hunter credited his victory to "a lot of hard work, a good campaign staff, a lot of volunteers, family and friends.

"I started walking the district the third week in May, and I haven't stopped walking," Hunter said. "That's the only way to win an election, door to door."

Among the few bright spots for the GOP was in Coventry, where Republican Sen. Leo Blais fought off Democrat Michael G. Reeves and the Reform Party's Victor Moffitt, who ran a statewide campaign for general treasurer in 1998.

In a key House race, Trillo ran an energetic, relatively big-spending campaign against Warwick's Bramley. Trillo claimed during the campaign that he had caught Bramley napping. The big issue in that campaign was airport noise, a potent weapon in a suburban district neighborhood where thundering jets from T.F. Green Airport drown out telephone conversations and television programs.

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