AMARAL

PROVIDENCE — The already lopsided balance of power in Rhode Island’s state legislature could tip even further left come November.

Five of the Assembly’s 18 Republicans will not seek reelection, the majority of them in the House, where one-third of the anemic GOP caucus has bowed out.

Their reasons for leaving are as varied as the part-time legislature itself –– work and family commitments, grandchildren, and in one case a fleet of 50 new cows that need looking after.

Their exit almost guarantees that the Ocean State’s one-party system will grow stronger.

Just 8 of the 95 Democratic legislators said no to reelection.

Republican leaders take an optimistic view, predicting that the state’s budget woes make it a good year for Republicans to hold on to seats they already have and even pick up a few new ones. The alternative of losing “the loyal opposition,” they warn, will leave taxpayers with fewer watchdogs to keep an eye on the Democratic majority.

But the Assembly chambers –– the House especially –– can be a frustrating place for Republicans, who represent less than 16 percent of the 113 legislative votes.

Burnout is a reality.

“You start to say, ‘hey, is it worth fighting this battle up here?’ ” said Susan A. Story, of Barrington, one of four House Republicans not seeking reelection. Story has cited personal reasons for her departure, though she acknowledges that fatigue is a factor. “Sometimes you say, ‘well, maybe someone else could fight it for a while.’ ”

State GOP Chairman Giovanni Cicione said there is “massive frustration when [Republicans] get shut out of any and all decision making up there. It’s a closed-door process.”

“The speaker and the [majority leader] and the [Senate leaders] make all the decisions and go down and tell everyone else what to do,” Cicione said. “The average Rhode Islander who doesn’t spend time in the State House doesn’t realize that.”

The departures may also mirror what’s happening on the national level, said Brown University political science Prof. Wendy Schiller. “A record number of Republicans in the [U.S.] House are retiring, and for similar reasons…. When you have a lame-duck, second-term executive from your own party, and you’re already a small percentage of the overall body, then you have no power whatsoever,” Schiller said.

“The same thing happens [on the local level]. You have to think, ‘this isn’t a good use of my time.’ ”

The difference between Rhode Island and the nation’s Capitol, Republicans here say, is that it’s been years since the GOP was anything but a small minority in the state legislature.

Cicione and other Republicans dispute that the departures constitute an exodus or that it grows harder to recruit new candidates as the national party gets more conservative. As evidence, they point to what they call a strong set of GOP challengers.

Republicans have lined up 70 people to run, several of them unopposed, and are fighting to get 5 more disputed candidates on the ballot. But as of Friday, that still left close to 30 Democratic Assembly seats uncontested, including that of the departing Joseph N. Amaral, R-Tiverton, whose district will now go to an unopposed Democrat.

Amaral, principal of Portsmouth Middle School, cited work commitments and his young family as reasons for walking away. Coventry’s Victor G. Moffitt is also reportedly leaving because of work. Moffitt did not return a call seeking comment.

Story and Scituate’s Carol A. Mumford, said the chance to spend more time with spouses and grandchildren was the reason for leaving the House.

On the Senate side, longtime legislator Kevin A. Breene announced last week that he will bow out to focus on his first love: his dairy-farming business and the dozens of new cows he just purchased. Breene’s absence leaves just four incumbent Republicans in the Senate.

LOOKING TOWARD November, Cicione says he’s not anxious. He points to a recent poll in which some respondents blame the state’s fiscal problems in part on the Democrat-dominated Assembly as an indication that new seats might not be out of reach.

The party, he said, will shift how it conducts Assembly races, taking a cue from Rhode Island Democrats in recruiting political action committees and other activist groups to help organize efforts that the tiny state party doesn’t have the resources to handle.

The goal, of course, is to win enough seats to prevent the leadership from having the votes necessary to override a veto from the governor, as it now easily has. With some help from disenfranchised Democrats, that number may not be far off, House Minority Leader Robert A. Watson, of East Greenwich, says.

“The only way we can blunt the unbridled power of the speaker is to reduce his foot soldiers,” Watson said.

But from where he sits on the rostrum, House Speaker William J. Murphy said the Republican caucus may first want to question why several of its members decided not to seek reelection, while others have left the party altogether.

In the last year, two House republicans, Joseph H. Scott and Richard W. Singleton, have defected to the Democratic party. (Their departure was tempered by the arrival of Newport Rep. Steven Coaty, a Republican who won a formerly Democratic seat in a special election last fall.)

Prior to that, a well-publicized feud several years ago pitted Watson against six fellow Republicans who threatened to stop participating in the already undersized Republican caucus. The tension has since abated, though Amaral has continued not to caucus with the group.

Story said the strain, and the Assembly floor screaming that sometimes comes with it, are signs of an outsized opposition trying its best to maintain a system of checks and balances. “We make a lot of noise, but we don’t get a lot of victories,” she said. “We could count on one hand the number of victories we see in a year.

“If you start to get ho hum about that then it’s time to leave.”

cneedham@projo.com