Rhode Island Senate Primary official thread

[LINCOLN REPUBLICAN]

I don't think Santorum is looking for a new Chief of Staff.

I'm sure he'll continue to get them from San Francisco.

No, you must be thinking of Barney Frank, the Democrat.

I think he was making a joke about how Santorum's current (or was it his past?) Chief of Staff is gay.

Oh.  I knew it must be some kind of joke, though I had no idea about what specifically.

Good for Santorum, though, for hiring a Chief of Staff who is gay.  It just shows that Santorum has respect for all people, straight or gay.

[MarkWarner08]

Chafee!  Chafee!  Chafee!

I am so friggin proud of my party tonight!  Lets hope the good news holds sweeps over AZ-8 too

And you have every right to be proud.  We came through in the crunch, never mind the predominant party ideology, which I support by the way, but we came through in the name of political expediency and common sense, because we want to keep this RI Senate seat in GOP hands.

Linc Chafee, the man for the times.

Now on to victory in November!!!!!!

Linc Chafee's going to lose -- but so will McCaskill and Webb. This race is going to cost the DSCC a lot of cash and manpower.

This is the end of Jim Webb. Webb can't afford to run a TV campaign and the DSCC can't afford to help him.

This is not at all true. Webb has raised over $2 million since the primary and has major fundraisers coming up. One will be hosted by Stephen King and John Grisham. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine are also both slated to do fundraising for him. Bill Clinton has agreed to a major fundraiser which will probably be in early October. His fundraising has accelerated since the "macaca" incident.  Webb dosen't need to match Allen dollar-for-dollar to win. He just needs to stay competitive in funds, and it looks like he is going to that at the very least.

I'm just saying it's going to hurt him because there will be less in the way of national funding.

McCaskill will probably suffer more than Webb.

[Deano963]

Chafee!  Chafee!  Chafee!

I am so friggin proud of my party tonight!  Lets hope the good news holds sweeps over AZ-8 too

And you have every right to be proud.  We came through in the crunch, never mind the predominant party ideology, which I support by the way, but we came through in the name of political expediency and common sense, because we want to keep this RI Senate seat in GOP hands.

Linc Chafee, the man for the times.

Now on to victory in November!!!!!!

Linc Chafee's going to lose -- but so will McCaskill and Webb. This race is going to cost the DSCC a lot of cash and manpower.

This is the end of Jim Webb. Webb can't afford to run a TV campaign and the DSCC can't afford to help him.

This is not at all true. Webb has raised over $2 million since the primary and has major fundraisers coming up. One will be hosted by Stephen King and John Grisham. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine are also both slated to do fundraising for him. Bill Clinton has agreed to a major fundraiser which will probably be in early October. His fundraising has accelerated since the "macaca" incident.  Webb dosen't need to match Allen dollar-for-dollar to win. He just needs to stay competitive in funds, and it looks like he is going to that at the very least.

I'm just saying it's going to hurt him because there will be less in the way of national funding.

McCaskill will probably suffer more than Webb.

Well DUH but that dosen't mean Webb is finished.

Also Whitehouse starts out with a large COH advantage over Chaffee. And everyone seems to be overlooking the most obvious - Lincoln Chaffee, an incumbent, won with barely 54% of the vote. That is truly terrible for an incumbent. He needs the Laffey voters to turn out for him in order to win and I see no gaurantee that he will get them. They probably don't care who wins between Whitehouse and Chaffee.

[Jacobtm]

This morning I took a piece of paper, stuck it to my door and wrote:

Steve Laffey: 47
Lincoln Chaffe: 52

I assumed there'd be some random candidate to suck up that 1%, but regardless, I'm pretty proud of that guess.

[Deano963]

Anyone know of a GOOD site to get an AZ-08 update? This azcongresswatch site is pathetic.

[GOP = Terrorists]

You know I was going to give this seat to the Dems but if Keystone Phil thinks that it is going Dem it probably isnt.  His predictions are SOOOOO bad that I probably need to change my mind about this race if that is the way he is calling it.

[Keystone Phil]

You know I was going to give this seat to the Dems but if Keystone Phil thinks that it is going Dem it probably isnt.  His predictions are SOOOOO bad that I probably need to change my mind about this race if that is the way he is calling it.

Yeah, my predictions for tonight have been especially poor:

Chafee win in RI, Cardin win in MD (looks like it will happen) and Graf win in AZ (looks like that will happen, too).

I've made some bad predictions but I don't see how they can be that bad. Feel free to enlighten me.

[MarkWarner08]

I'm starting to feel sorry for the Laffey.

[Deano963]

I'm starting to feel sorry for the Laffey.

Awwwwwwwwwww

Ya gotta admire the guy knowing he fought so hard to win knowing full well that he would have been destroyed in the general.

[Smash255]

I don't think Santorum is looking for a new Chief of Staff.

I'm sure he'll continue to get them from San Francisco.

No, you must be thinking of Barney Frank, the Democrat.

I think he was making a joke about how Santorum's current (or was it his past?) Chief of Staff is gay.

Oh.  I knew it must be some kind of joke, though I had no idea about what specifically.

Good for Santorum, though, for hiring a Chief of Staff who is gay.  It just shows that Santorum has respect for all people, straight or gay.

Well he didn't hire him knowing he was gay.  He kept him on his staff after he came out, but its not as Santorum knowingly hired someone who was gay

[Tender Branson]

Hey, Chafee won ! But barely. I thought Laffey will win this closely , but i didn´t consider that RI is more moderate. I just averaged the recent polls But i were right on Cardin at least.

[riceowl]

Yay.

[Rob]

I'm starting to feel sorry for the Laffey.

He's a good guy, and he fought hard. The odds were just stacked against him. But he got 46 percent of the vote against an incumbent Senator in the GOP primary, with the national party openly attacking him. That's not too shabby.

This means that Whitehouse will have to exert some effort in the general. He wins anyway by four to six points.

[nlm]

Here's what the 2000 Senate primary looked like in RI

RI STATEWIDE PRIMARY
 
September 12, 2000
 
REPUBLICAN PRIMARY
 
   
SENATOR IN CONGRESS
   
Lincoln D CHAFEE
 2,180
 41
 2,221
 
   
RI STATEWIDE PRIMARY
 
September 12, 2000
 
DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY
 
   
SENATOR IN CONGRESS
   
Richard A LICHT
 37,172
 1,109
 38,281
 
Robert A WEYGAND
 50,379
 1,390
 51,769

Compare that to last night

 
SENATOR IN CONGRESS
Candidate Party Polling Place Mail Ballots Total Votes
Sheldon WHITEHOUSE Democrat 65,772  2,079  67,851 - 81.60% 
Christopher F. YOUNG Democrat 8,479  200  8,679 - 10.44% 
Carl L. SHEELER Democrat 6,414  210  6,624 - 7.97% 


Candidate Party Polling Place Mail Ballots Total Votes
Lincoln D. CHAFEE Republican 33,545  862  34,407 - 54.22% 
Stephen P. LAFFEY Republican 28,554  498  29,052 - 45.78% 

And then remember that Chafee beat Weygand 222,588 to 161,023.
 
   

 

 

[??????????]

I don't think Santorum is looking for a new Chief of Staff.

I'm sure he'll continue to get them from San Francisco.

No, you must be thinking of Barney Frank, the Democrat.

I think he was making a joke about how Santorum's current (or was it his past?) Chief of Staff is gay.

Oh.  I knew it must be some kind of joke, though I had no idea about what specifically.

Good for Santorum, though, for hiring a Chief of Staff who is gay.  It just shows that Santorum has respect for all people, straight or gay.

Well he didn't hire him knowing he was gay.  He kept him on his staff after he came out, but its not as Santorum knowingly hired someone who was gay

Why does it matter whether he was gay or not?

[Virginian87]

I don't think Santorum is looking for a new Chief of Staff.

I'm sure he'll continue to get them from San Francisco.

No, you must be thinking of Barney Frank, the Democrat.

I think he was making a joke about how Santorum's current (or was it his past?) Chief of Staff is gay.

Oh.  I knew it must be some kind of joke, though I had no idea about what specifically.

Good for Santorum, though, for hiring a Chief of Staff who is gay.  It just shows that Santorum has respect for all people, straight or gay.

Well he didn't hire him knowing he was gay.  He kept him on his staff after he came out, but its not as Santorum knowingly hired someone who was gay

Why does it matter whether he was gay or not?

It doesn't.  But some people here find it rather humorous that Santorum would have a gay aide when he has made some statements in the past that many would consider homophobic.

Back to the race:  While I wouldn't mind seeing Whitehouse win, I am not predicting a Democratic blowout here at the moment.  Thanks to the great influence the Chafee family has had in Rhode Island, I don't think that Rhode Islanders will easily cast him aside.  In other words, this is still going to be a close race.

[Nym90]

It's good for the country overall that Chafee won this race; it makes the Senate contest in November more competitive and it is always good to see that the GOP still has a moderate/liberal streak left in them. From a purely political standpoint I would have preferred a Whitehouse win (Chafee, no matter how moderate, is still helping to enhance the GOP agenda overall by helping give the GOP a majority in the Senate), but the polarization of the parties isn't healthy for the country in the long term.

[Sibboleth]

In the end Langevin won with about 61% of the vote

[DownWithTheLeft]

That's all I can say, at least Randy Graf won

Laffey was an idiot, but at least he didn't hate the Republican party

Overall, good for Republicans in general b/c moderates win elections

Bad for the base because we can't have the congress we want

[WMS]

Well, score one for the center. Whitehouse isn't bad either.

Actually, score two if you count Langevin (take that, NARAL-ites!).

I'll take what good news I can out of this dreadful electoral year...

[Keystone Phil]

I am watching Laffey's concession speech on C-SPAN.org and it is pretty sad. He starts off by thanking his mom and saying that he didn't know how he'd tell his dad about the loss in the morning (his dad suffers from Alzheimer's). That was depressing. Anyway, the main point of this is how Laffey came right out and said that he'd be backing Chafee. How many here think Chafee would have done the same thing if the situation was flipped? I honestly don't think he would. Stephen Laffey is a good man. I don't think I can say the same for Linc and that's after putting my ideological differences aside.

[MarkWarner08]

I am watching Laffey's concession speech on C-SPAN.org and it is pretty sad. He starts off by thanking his mom and saying that he didn't know how he'd tell his dad about the loss in the morning (his dad suffers from Alzheimer's). That was depressing. Anyway, the main point of this is how Laffey came right out and said that he'd be backing Chafee. How many here think Chafee would have done the same thing if the situation was flipped? I honestly don't think he would. Stephen Laffey is a good man. I don't think I can say the same for Linc and that's after putting my ideological differences aside.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

I never thought I would agree so much with Keystone Phil.

[memphis]

I am watching Laffey's concession speech on C-SPAN.org and it is pretty sad. He starts off by thanking his mom and saying that he didn't know how he'd tell his dad about the loss in the morning (his dad suffers from Alzheimer's). That was depressing. Anyway, the main point of this is how Laffey came right out and said that he'd be backing Chafee. How many here think Chafee would have done the same thing if the situation was flipped? I honestly don't think he would. Stephen Laffey is a good man. I don't think I can say the same for Linc and that's after putting my ideological differences aside.

So, party loyalty makes you a good man? I'm not so sure.

[adam]

Congrats to Lincoln Chafee...unfortunately, you are going to lose. You were a great senator...for a Republican at least.

[Keystone Phil]

I am watching Laffey's concession speech on C-SPAN.org and it is pretty sad. He starts off by thanking his mom and saying that he didn't know how he'd tell his dad about the loss in the morning (his dad suffers from Alzheimer's). That was depressing. Anyway, the main point of this is how Laffey came right out and said that he'd be backing Chafee. How many here think Chafee would have done the same thing if the situation was flipped? I honestly don't think he would. Stephen Laffey is a good man. I don't think I can say the same for Linc and that's after putting my ideological differences aside.

So, party loyalty makes you a good man? I'm not so sure.

Being respectful of his opponent makes him a good man. Chafee would have probably whined, bashed Laffey, complained about the GOP and said that he's not voting for Laffey.