SMITHFIELD — Town Council President Richard A. Poirier said yesterday that the tide of anti-Republican sentiment that swept the country was partly to blame for the party’s local defeat Tuesday.

“It was clearly the wave,” said Poirier, a Republican who was voted out of office after a career dating to 1994. “You wouldn’t think it would trickle down to the local level, but there was a Democratic wave – a lot of people came out.”

Also yesterday, Councilman Stephen G. Tocco, who is the lone Democrat on the current council and who snared the most votes of any of the candidates, said he was “humbled” and “honored” at the outcome. Tocco, who may be picked by two new Democratic council members for president, said he has a vision of open government for Smithfield that would “set the standard” for surrounding communities.

Poirier said a number of factors could have been in play to produce Tuesday’s outcome, in which voters reversed the 4-to-1 Republican majority and installed three Democrats and two Republicans. Councilwoman Maxine Cavanagh, also a Republican, lost her bid for reelection. Joining Tocco will be fellow Democrats Stephen R. Archambault and Bernard A. Hawkins, both political newcomers.

Michael J. Flynn and Ronald F. Manni, Republicans, managed to hang on to their posts.

“It could be that we were outspent significantly,” Poirier said. “It could be that some of the misinformation out there stuck.”

The “misinformation,” for which he blamed local Democrats, he said was the notion that the council voluntarily adopted a plan for low- and moderate-income housing and identified sites around town where it would be appropriate.

“But it was mandated by the state, and towns that did not come up with an acceptable plan would still be facing whole comprehensive permit process,” he said. “It was a complex issue and it was put on the doorstep of the council instead of the legislature.”

Affordable housing became a hot topic several years ago when a little-known amendment to the state’s housing laws, which no one owned up to, opened the gates for commercial developers to ignore local zoning restrictions provided they reserved a percentage of their housing units for persons of low or moderate incomes as defined by federal guidelines.

Developers, using the “comprehensive permit” approach, applied for more than 1,000 units of housing, threatening the school system and town infrastructure.

Through a series of legal maneuvers, which included adoption of a housing plan and a fight all the way to the Rhode Island Supreme Court, the town has prevailed in most of the cases. Others are pending in court.

Tocco, who is chief of the Capitol Police, a department that is responsible for security at the State House, the courts and all state facilities, said, “I can pledge this: Smithfield will be the most model, open, inclusive, informed community in the state of Rhode Island.. We are going to raise the bar and set a tone that has never been seen in government before.”