Posted on 01/31/2010 4:00:46 PM PST by Maelstorm
Former Cranston Mayor Steve Laffey back in the spotlight last night rolling out his 10 point plan to a Tea Party event in North Kingstown.
Pretty interesting move from a guy NOT running for Governor.
The thought of Laffey running for Governor has our viewers talking. ABC6 Anchor John Deluca has more in this Raw segment...
(Excerpt) Read more at abc6.com ...
Laffey is the real deal and would certainly make this race interesting. Right now Linc Chafee is in running as an Independent and there are two strong candidates on the Democrat side, State AG Patrick Lynch (brother of the head of the RI Democrats) and State Treasurer David Caprio. Laffey would definitely be running as the “outsider” here and he’s done that successfully in the past when he returned to RI and was twice elected mayor of Cranston. He had ruled out a run at governor just a few weeks ago but that was prior to Scott Brown’s election in neighboring MA. Much like MA, most RI voters are not affiliated with either party so he would have a chance (albeit a slim one).
Thanks Maelstorm.
Will Laffey run in RI for Governor ?
He’s pretty conservative for Rhode Island.
I think he’d have the best chance of beating the rat and Missing Linc.
I volunteered on his U.S. Senate campaign for a few days. I wish I could say that I was impressed.
Maybe he was just burned out from the campaign. He came in to the election night party, gave a curt speech, and ran off after shaking 5 or 6 hands.
With a roomful of people who just spend days working for you for free, you would think he’d want to meet everyone in the room rather than trying to get out of there as fast as possible. If he weren’t a conservative, I would have described him as an arrogant political jackass.
Sometimes people from RI can be a little curt/unfriendly. I always felt out of place when I lived there-I was too happy all the time and people would make fun of me for just being pleasant!
Not saying this is the case, but Rhod’Islanders can be pretty rude sometimes. I grew up there.
;^(
SZQ
If he runs, I hope he wins.
Hey, good question, and if so, that will be an interesting race.
This is all I know of Laffey right now (scroll down to "Future"):
I have a RI political history question. What did Edward DiPrete do to get his butt kicked so badly in 1990?
http://www.ourcampaigns.com/RaceDetail.html?RaceID=77954
That’s a hell of a beatdown for an incumbent. I know he went to jail years after he left office.
DiPrete almost lost in ‘88 after the somewhat shady business dealings came to light (and Sundlun was sort of an also-ran), but it may have been a combo of the prior dealings, the shift to pushing through a tax increase after previously being a cutter seemed to all contribute to a negative climate. DiPrete had beaten Sundlun by a 2-to-1 margin in ‘84, so to flip to losing 3-to-1 was pretty humiliating. I think it may have also had a negative impact in what should’ve been a potential upset of the past-his-prime Sen. Pell by Congresswoman Claudine Schneider and the loss of her seat to now-Sen. Jack Reed in ‘90.
Gov. Sundlun, btw, lost in a landslide to Myrth York in ‘94, when he only received 1/4th of the Dem primary vote ! When I was up doing my trip to New England at the time, the day I was in Providence, I was badly disoriented, suffering from a nasty cold/flu bug, and I remember staring slack-jawed watching as Gov. Sundlun took off from the front of the State House in a helicopter to go meet with Clinton, who was doing his last-ditch effort to stave off massive losses in the elections coming up a week later. Right after, I had to get to a nearby motel to lay down in a bathtub with ice-cold water trying to get my high fever down for the rest of the day, ugh.
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