11.9.2000 08:18
State leadership let them down, local party officials contend
By ELLEN LIBERMAN
Journal Staff Writer
WEST WARWICK
-- More than half a century ago, Republicans mounted a soapbox and hurled invective on the party that had governed the town for 22 years.
"Law-abiding citizens are shocked and disgusted with our unscrupulous politicians and their corrupt hirelings, who today have become a law unto themselves," thundered Henry R. DiMascolo, the party's candidate for secretary of state, at an October 1946 rally.
West Warwick was rife with corruption, the Republicans said. Gambling flourished. And the police were nothing but a gang of drunken thugs, according to charges flung about in the newspapers. November's election would wreck a "vicious political machine," they predicted.
They were right. The Republicans booted out every well-situated Democratic derriere. In short order, the new Republican Town Council fired the entire police force and replaced it with 10 World War II veterans who had no civilian police experience.
Two years later, the voters snuffed out those reformist fires and brought the Democrats back. The party enjoyed another 22-year reign.
It has never been easy to be a Republican in this mill town of blue-collar immigrants. Since that shining victory in 1946, Republicans have endured a wild ride of wins and losses. Today, out of about 16,000 voters, fewer than 1,300 are registered Republicans.
Tuesday was another sad day for the West Warwick GOP. It lost its only Town Council seat, in Ward 5, occupied by Robert B. Moorehead, and its lone School Committee seat, held by Nancy LeBlanc. Only state Rep. Richard Fleury, R-Dist. 40, hung on, winning his third contest against Democrat Robert Rainville.
It was the Democrats' first shutout victory on the council in at last three decades.
Yesterday, local GOP leaders laid the blame in various places -- on the Democratic surge to elect Vice President Al Gore, on the difficulty of attracting candidates prepared to fight an uphill battle, on an indifferent state party leadership, on voters unconcerned about one-party rule.
"I just don't feel there are going to be appropriate checks and balances," said Town Committee Chairman Vincent Marzullo. "I'm fearful of this type of an arrangement."
John Clarke Jr., a former party leader, accused the state GOP and Governor Almond of doing too little to build local party organizations.
"Linc Almond has provided no leadership to the party. He has been sedentary and lethargic," Clarke complained. "It's an evolutionary process. You have to be constantly replenishing with new people. We are nowhere near the active level we once had."
Bernard Jackvony, the state Republican chairman, disputed Clarke's charges. The leadership had worked very hard for many local candidates, hiring a full-time political director to coordinate local campaigns, providing mailings, radio ads, volunteer support and cash contributions, he said.
"You never make everybody happy," Jackvony said. "We did everything we could to support local candidates. We know it's important to listen to people at the local level. The party has always understood that it's the grass roots that keeps the party strong."
But history and persistence have proven that Republicans don't always have to row against the tide, even in West Warwick. Clarke, the local GOP's unofficial historian, can name just about every Republican who won office in West Warwick in the last 30 years.
Legend has it that the Republican sweep in 1946 was engineered by the Democrats themselves. The town, says Clarke, provided illicit entertainment -- prostitutes and poker -- for the boys stationed at the Quonset Naval Air Station. The FBI was ready to launch an undercover investigation into illegal activities there, Clarke says.
Robert Quinn, a West Warwick native son, former governor, and chief justice of the U.S. Court of Military Appeals, caught wind of the probe and ordered the Democrats to throw the election.
As for the police, they walked off the job after the November election and the state police had to take over until a new force was hired. Clarke concedes that his version may sound fantastic, but swears that it's true.
"There was a big barn fire behind the police station," Clarke chuckled. "A lot of records were destroyed."
In 1970, Republicans regained a foothold in local politics, sending five Republicans to General Assembly seats, the School Committe and the welfare director's position. Since then, Republicans have always been represented among town offices. At times, they have controlled the Town Council, he said.
Like the Democrats, they have seen their local rankings rise or fall on the fortunes of national politics. In 1974, the Watergate scandal ushered President Richard Nixon and the West Warwick Republicans out, Clarke recalled.
This election cycle gone, the Republicans, like any good Red Sox fan, have to think about next season. Yesterday, Fleury and Marzullo talked about beating the bushes for new names and tapping party stalwarts.
"There are registered Republicans who have never been asked to serve," Fleury said.
"We need to begin a conversation [about] how the party can be reorganized and concentrate on rebuilding the party in the next two-year election," Marzullo said. Maybe the Democrats will govern without a misstep, "if not, we have to be prepared to take advantage and play our card at that point."
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