Monday, November 26, 2012
Considered by many around the state to be a Republican hotbed, it turns out East Greenwich attracts avowed liberals too.
Mitt Romney may have lost Rhode Island to Barack Obama by a two to one margin, but not in East Greenwich, where he won 3,649 to 3,535, one of only three towns in the state to go Romney. (The other two? Scituate and West Greenwich.) EG also elected (with the help of West Greenwich) the only new Republican state legislator in Rhode Island – Anthony Giarrusso, our new Dist. 30 representative – in a year that saw many state GOP candidate losses. Add to that the re-elected all-GOP Town Council, a GOP majority on the School Committee (4 GOP, 2 Democrats, 1 independent), and a Republican Town Moderator, and it certainly looks like East Greenwich is about as red a town as you can get in blue Rhode Island. So it's interesting to note that some of…
Monday, November 19, 2012
The postcard approved at a meeting Oct. 25 has since become a source of citizen complaints to the state Attorney General and the state Board of Elections.
At a meeting Thursday, East Greenwich Fire District Commissioners re-voted a decision made to mail a postcard to residents that outlined reasons why the district should remain autonomous. It was their first meeting since the election Nov. 6 that approved a nonbinding resolution calling for the merger of the fire district and the town. Currently, the town and the fire district are two separate governmental entities. The vote was 3-1 in favor of sending the postcard, with Commissioner Mark Gee casting the sole no vote, as he had in the original vote on Oct. 25. Commissioner Mark Schwager, who had voted in favor on Oct. 25, did not attend the Nov. 15 meeting. According EGFD lawyer Scott Spear, the re-vote was put on the agenda at his …
Friday, November 9, 2012
Mail ballots were finally counted Thursday and gave the Republican an 81-vote edge over Democrat Schwager.
In the end, West Greenwich handed Anthony Giarrusso victory in the contest for R.I. House Dist. 30. With mail ballots finally counted Thursday, the Republican had 3,304 votes, Democrat Mark Schwager had 3,223 votes, and independent Kevin McDonough had 904 votes. But in East Greenwich, Schwager led 3,053 to Giarrusso's 3,010, and McDonough's 826. In West Greenwich, Giarrusso got 294 votes, compared to Schwager's 170, and McDonough's 78. While there are provisional ballots still to be counted, they are too few to alter the result. "I'm really looking forward to it," said Giarrusso late Thursday about his new job. But, he acknowledged, "We're definitely going to have some hard work to do, some hard choices." The Republican minorities in the…
Thursday, November 8, 2012
The numbers.
East Greenwich went for Republican candidates from Mitt Romney down to the only GOP candidate for School Committee and approved all 8 ballot questions on Tuesday. The election in East Greenwich went off smoothly and results for almost all the contests were clear by 9:30 p.m. Tuesday. Yes, there were some surprisingly long lines at polling places, especially at Cole, Frenchtown and Hanaford. Part of that was the move from eight polling sites in 2010 to five polling sites in 2012. According to Town Canvasser Elaine Vespia, there were two reasons for the cut from eight to five. "The redistricting that took place in May and June changed some of the Senate district lines," said Vespia. "That is why we have that small precinct 0901 [at the high…
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
Rhode Island voters favor Democrats in election.
It was a good night for Democrats Tuesday in Rhode Island. In Rhode Island’s 1st Congressional District David Cicilline was able to win a second term against a tough race fought against Republican Brendan Doherty. The former head of the Rhode Island State Police strongly criticized Cicilline during the course of the campaign over his final leadership of the city of Providence when he was mayor for eight before heading to Washington two years ago. In the 2nd Congressional District James Langevin was able to win a seventh term over Republican Michael Riley. Riley reportedly lent his campaign more than $600,000. Langevin cited as accomplishments his work to maintain submarine production at Electric Boat and efforts to strengthen job training …
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
President Obama defeated Republican Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election.
President Barack Obama and Vice-President Joe Biden were re-elected Tuesday night, defeating Republican challenger Mitt Romney and his vice-presidential running mate Rep. Paul Ryan. NBC News called the presidential election for Obama around 11:15 EST. The president sent a message on Twitter at 10:14 saying simply, "This happened because of you. Thank you." The Obama campaign won the most expensive presidential race ever, with both parties raising about $2.6 billion. The race was filled with negative campaigning on both sides, from President Obama attacking Romney’s business experience with Bain Capital to Romney lambasting Obama’s handling of the economy. The race tightened during the final months of the campaign, with gaffes and surges …
Ballot question on merging Fire District with Town approved.
Voters in East Greenwich returned all incumbents to office, with the five Republican Town Council members and School Committee Chair Deidre Gifford winning re-election. Newcomers Carolyn Mark and Clark Smith also won seats on the School Committee. Republican Anthony Giarrusso was leading the R.I. House Dist. 30 race by 36 votes over Democrat Mark Schwager, with more than 500 mail ballots and the portion of West Greenwich that belongs to Dist. 30 still uncounted. Giarrusso got 2,798 votes in East Greenwich and Schwager got 2,762. Kevin McDonough, an independent, got 755 votes. Ballot Question 8, a nonbinding referendum asking if the EG Fire District should be merged with the Town of EG, was approved 3,994 to 2,120. For Town Council, …
State Sen. Dawson Hodgson leads by more than 2,000 votes over Win Hames; Dist. 35 includes parts of East Greenwich, North Kingstown, South Kingstown and Narragansett.
In the race Senate Dist. 35, arguably the most strangely configured district in Rhode Island, incumbent Dawson Tucker Hodgson looks to have won re-election over Winters B. Hames III, with all but two precincts (one each in South Kingstown and Narragansett) reporting. Hodgson, a Republican, had 7,272 votes by midnight Tuesday. Hames, a Democrat, had 5,181 votes. The totals include all the votes from East Greenwich and North Kingstown. According to the R.I. Board of Elections website, in South Kingstown, 11 out of 12 precincts had reported vote totals as of 11:50 p.m. In Narragansett, 6 out of 7 precincts were in by 11:50 p.m. Senate Dist. 35 includes most of East Greenwich, part of North Kingstown, part of Narragansett, and a small piece …
Updates on the 2012 federal and state elections will be posted here throughout the day. Connect with us on Twitter at #PatchElections.
Check back at your local Patch all day for live election updates. In the race for President of the United States, influential Rhode Island political insiders have weighed in regarding who has run the better "ground game" in Rhode Island leading up to the election during our latest Red Rhody/Blue Rhody political survey. According to our results, Democratic influencers felt Obama has run a better ground campaign by a wide margin while a majority of Republican influencers surveyed said the ground campaign up to this point has been even. In 2008, Rhode Island voted Democratic with 296,571 voters casting ballots for the Obama-Biden team. Republican John McCain and Sarah Palin earned 165,391 votes. According to the Rhode Island Secretary of …
Voters in Rhode Island on Tuesday cast their ballot for Barack Obama, giving him the state's 4 Electoral votes.
Barack Obama won Rhode Island’s 4 electoral votes on Tuesday, defeating Republican Mitt Romney. The Wall Street Journal along with the Associated Press has called the race in Rhode Island declaring Obama the winner. In the 2008 presidential election, the state voted for the Democratic candidate, and since the 1990s has voted for the overall winner of the presidential race 3 out of 5 times. Romney and Obama did not campaign aggressively in Rhode Island. The state has typically been a Democratic stronghold in recent presidential elections. The economy was a key issue for many voters in the state.
KK
11:10 pm on Tuesday, November 27, 2012
I am glad to see that in a community like East Greenwich (wealthy) that there were 3, 535 voters who chose to vote for Obama. I was afraid it would be a lot more lopsided toward the gop. What does it matter what your party is if you are a member of the school committe or town council? Do they follow a party line? I think they should all be independents. more ›