Was there voter fraud at the RIGOP Convention?

Did Charlestown GOP votes make the difference?

By Will Collette

The successor to State Republican Chair Mark Zaccaria was supposed to have been picked at the GOP State Convention on March 21^st, but Zaccaria declared the convention vote was nullified.

It seems that Mark Smiley beat Zaccaria’s hand-picked successor Dan Harrop by one vote.

However, when all the votes were counted, according to ABC6 and WPRO, there were 187 votes cast, but only 186 delegates who were registered to vote. WRNI reports the vote was a 94 to 93 vote, also in favor of Smiley over Harrop, and says the whole scene was “chaos.”

Based on the closeness of the count and this disparity, Zaccaria said that the parliamentarian recommended voiding the vote. 

Smiley declared winner after "investigation"

Compounding the chaos - and the bad media coverage that came from it - apparently Zaccaria decided to switch gears over the weekend. On Sunday afternoon, he announced in an e-mail that upon further "investigation," Smiley was the winner after all.

This closely fought battle to become the next captain of the RIGOP Titanic is rumored to be one of the reasons why Mark Zaccaria stuck his beak into Charlestown’s Republican politics. As I reported, Zaccaria recruited defeated state Representative candidate Tina Jackson to “re-organize” the town Republican Committee without consulting with the duly elected members of that Committee to find out if they wanted to be re-organized.

I asked the CRTC chair for comment on this story but did not receive a response.

Apparently, that was the second time Zaccaria recruited Tina Jackson for a mission. The first time was her kamikaze run against incumbent Rep. Donna Walsh (D) who won over Jackson with her largest margin ever. 

Zaccaria chose Jackson apparently knowing that Jackson had worked as an “exotic dancer” at a Providence strip club, but not knowing that Jackson also had an extensive criminal record.

Sources tell me that Zaccaria wanted to make sure he controlled the Charlestown Republican delegates and their votes at the state Convention, knowing the count would be close. As the tight vote margin shows, Zaccaria was right about needing every vote he could get – or steal, as in the case of Charlestown – to put his guy over the top. Except his awkward Charlestown caper didn't work out the way he wanted.

Charlestown may indeed be a unique case. I found no other instance where Zaccaria intervened to take-over or "rescue" a city or town Republican Committee.

Zaccaria’s candidate Dan Harrop was a Ron Paul delegate to the RNC Convention. He is also backed by Cranston Mayor Allan Fung and former Secretary of State candidate Catherine Taylor. He is also supported by the RI Young Republicans which is controlled by notorious wingnut columnist Travis Rowley.

Smiley says the state GOP needs to make its pro-business agenda clearer

Mark Smiley was supported by his own array of losers: losing Senate candidate Barry Hinckley, losing House candidate Brendan Doherty and losing gubernatorial candidate John Robitaille. He also had some Tea Party support.

These are the two guys who were vying for the right to lead the state Republican Party into the future.

At first, I thought that rather than void the vote – and draw attention to how ineptly, if not fraudulently, the Republicans run their own elections – Zaccaria might appoint Harrop and Smiley as co-chairs and see if nothing plus nothing can somehow equal more than nothing?

But apparently the absurdness of his position was too much for even Mark Zaccaria to bear, thus ruling for Smiley over his favorite. We'll see whether the GOP approves of his decision when they meet again on April 2nd.