The Charlestown Citizens Alliance as a political party

Why the denial? Why the stealth?

CCA Party's secret clubhouse? There are down sides to operating
as a secret society.

By Linda Felaco

This is the original of the op-ed that ran in the Westerly Sun.

It seems churlish at best for newly reelected Charlestown Town Council member George Tremblay of the Charlestown Citizens Alliance to complain of “egregious errors” in the Sun’s local election-night reporting when the Sun’s reporters were pointedly denied admission to the CCA’s invitation-only election-night party (Letter: “Post-election story on upsets was off-base,” November 9).

How do I know this? Because I was there that night at the Breachway Grill, where the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee ended up hosting all four Sun reporters since they weren’t allowed to cover the CCA party.

Indeed, the reporters weren’t even told the location of said party, presumably out of fear that they might get it into their heads to show up uninvited. All the reporters were given was a phone number and the instruction to call at 10 p.m. for the CCA reaction to the election returns.

Seems to me if you want accurate reporting it behooves you to grant reporters access. But apparently the CCA’s financial backers prefer to stay out of the media spotlight.

As for Tremblay’s denial of the similarities between the GOP and CCA platforms, Sun reporter Ellyn Santiago, who struck me as nobody’s fool, surely possesses the reading comprehension skills to discern certain parallels, particularly on the subject of taxation.

This is not by any means an error of reporting. Tremblay’s claim that “there exists no arm of the GOP in Charlestown to address the local issues we address in our platform” is also incorrect; while the Charlestown Republicans didn’t run any candidates in the current election cycle, there is in fact a Charlestown Republican Town Committee, although the CCA has largely taken over the GOP ecological niche in Charlestown.

Tremblay even denies knowledge of the party affiliations of the CCA leadership, which is just plain silly given that voter registrations are a matter of public record. Apparently in the rarefied atmosphere of the CCA’s secret monthly meetings, which unlike the meetings of the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee are never advertised to the public, it’s considered impolite just to ask.

Or it would be silly if not for the fact that since taking control of town government, the CCA has been systematically purging people from serving on town commissions who don’t kowtow to CCA orthodoxy.

Why so many denials, you might wonder, especially after the CCA’s sweeping electoral victory, which has given them a lock on every single elected position in town government?

The answer can be found in Tremblay’s claim that “we are not a political party in the traditional sense.”

The fact is in virtually every respect, they are a party and are subject to all the same rules regarding filing of campaign finance reports, etc.

The only thing that keeps the state of Rhode Island from certifying the CCA as a party is that they don’t—or haven’t as yet—run candidates for statewide office.

I doubt we’ll ever see them run statewide candidates, though, for the simple reason that they would then be required to open their meetings to anyone who registered with their party and would not be able to continue operating in secret.

This, I suspect, is the real reason they are at such pains to deny having aided in toppling our Democratic state representatives to elect Blake Filippi and Elaine Morgan.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The CCA Party posted a notice that Filippi and Morgan are special invited guests to the special November 17 Town Council meeting to crown all 13 of the CCA candidates who won Charlestown town office. Not that this means anything, mind you.