It won’t surprise me if Republican Representative-elect Steven Coaty, of Newport, runs for high office some day, and he won’t lack for coffee-hour patter.

For example, Coaty, now a 47-year-old lawyer, on meeting his wife, the former Mary Barry:

They were University of Wisconsin-Madison students serving as pages in the state legislature.

She happened to be sitting next to the Senate president. “She looked just like Katharine Hepburn,” Coaty said the other day. “Absolutely beautiful.” He went up and asked her, “Would you like to go to a party with me?”

It was so corny I exclaimed, “Oh, come on !”

But what did she say? “Don’t talk when the Senate is in session!”

Eventually, though, it all worked out, and Mr. and Mrs. Coaty have four kids and, having won a special election last week, he’s poised to become the rarest of rarities: a new GOP legislator — from Democratic Newport yet — in the heavily Democratic General Assembly. He beat former Democratic Sen. J. Clement Cicilline, uncle of Providence’s mayor, for the House seat held by the late Paul Crowley, a Democrat.

Coaty is a smooth talker, with a wink that may charm you, but his message has bite. He says of his district’s residents, “People were frustrated and very tired of a Democratic-dominated Assembly. They were, obviously, concerned about corruption, and they thought those two went together. And they were very, very concerned about taxes and the deficit. I mean, I heard that over and over … They communicated to me that they greatly appreciated the fact I was running … People are really anxious and eager for new blood.”

What a freshman Republican can achieve in a sea of Democrats is anyone’s guess. “The first thing I think I’m going to tell them is that the time for partisan bickering is over. I think Rhode Islanders are sick of the stalemates.”

Coaty campaigned against tax hikes and said he’d cut spending, but I reminded him last week that when specific cuts are proposed, the lobbyists and interest groups from his district will howl that reduced service will hurt people. What will he do then? “A decent society will take care of the neediest, but has to be efficient,” he said. “The days when you can say, ‘Not in my backyard,’ or ‘Don’t touch my rice bowl,’ are over. I would think everybody’s going to have to sacrifice.”

Service in the Navy’s Judge Advocate General’s Corps brought Coaty to Newport. He now has a private practice in Middletown.

Coaty, who is Catholic, is “pro-life” on abortion, but supports embryonic stem-cell research.

And gay marriage? He thinks the state should get out of the wedding business: Any couple — man and woman, two men, or two women — could get a civil union license, which would not use the word marriage or wedding. If they also wanted to call themselves married — say by exchanging vows in a church — that would be up to them. “This is a way to resolve a very emotional, tenuous issue to the satisfaction of everyone,” he said. (I can assure him: Not everyone.)

I’ll watch to see where Coaty fits in GOP circles. He reports he voted for Lincoln Chafee over Steve Laffey in the 2006 U.S. Senate primary. He says he hasn’t mulled going for a top post himself, but, “If I can serve the people of Rhode Island in a greater capacity, I would consider that.”

Speaking of patter: Get ready to needle Coaty if the New England Patriots make it to February’s Super Bowl and their foes are the Green Bay Packers. “What can I say?” says the Wisconsin native. “I’m a Packer fan.”

M. Charles Bakst is The Journal’s political columnist.

mbakst@projo.com