Final election cash tallies offer part of the explanation for Democratic defeat

Money talks

By Will Collette

I reviewed several dozen campaign finance reports filed with the RI Board of Elections (click here for their database) and compiled the data for this report.

Final campaign finance reports for the 2014 election cycle explain a lot about why the CCA Party swept every office and why fake BI resident Blake Filippi beat Rep. Donna Walsh.

The final campaign numbers also explain why the town got wall-papered with negative advertising from Flip and the CCA Party.

Flip spent almost $50,000 which included $49,377 he loaned to himself, to launch his attack on Rep. Walsh’s stellar record, accusing her of spending 30 years in the legislature (which is NOT true – it was less than half that) where, according to him, she was responsible for everything that ever went bad in Rhode Island since 1984.

Filippi was willing to say and do anything to win

By contrast, Donna went into 2014 with $15,185 and raised an additional $7,421 for a total of $22,606. She reported spending $13,677 which was largely focused on her record of tangible achievements until the end of the campaign when it was clear that Filippi’s negative campaign was having the desired effect in poisoning voters.

Filippi outspent her by almost 4-to-1.

Napolitano - paid by Filippi

Filippi, who ran as an “independent,” is actually a registered Republican. His paid campaign consultant was Michael Napolitano, head of the RI Republican “Strike Force.” That Strike Force was responsible for recruiting such extremist candidates as Justin Price who beat incumbent Rep. Larry Valencia and Elaine Morgan who beat Sen. Cathie Cool Rumsey, as well as Filippi.

Filippi, who has a long history as a major Republican donor from his actual home address in Lincoln, RI, is caucusing with House Republicans. 

It’s not known why Flip decided to run as an independent, but his close ties to the Charlestown Citizens Alliance indicate his plan was to pander to their aversion to party labels in order to win Charlestown which holds roughly half of the votes in House District 36.

The fight for Charlestown town offices

The differences between the Charlestown Citizens Alliance (CCA Party) and the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee (CDTC) include more than just the number of candidates, though that was quite significant. The CCA Party ran a candidate for all thirteen elected town offices (Council, Planning Commission, Moderator, Chariho School Committee) while the Democrats ran only three Council candidates.

Now that we have the final campaign finance reports, we can also see a marked difference in the money put into the 2014 campaign.

	Charlestown Democrats	CCA Party
Cash on hand, Jan 1, 2014	$5,518	$2,992
Amount raised	$4,570	$13,469
Total 2014 campaign cash	$10,088	$16,461
Total amount spent	$8,000	$9,870

The CCA Party still had $6,592 left over after the campaign. While the Democrats went into the 2014 election cycle with a big cash lead, the CCA Party more than made up that gap by out-raising the Democrats by a three-to-one margin. Most of the CCA Party money came from major donors who live out of state.

The actual spending gap was a lot smaller than the fund-raising gap. The CCA Party outspent the Democrats by about 25%.

They put a lot of them money into negative advertising that attacked all of the usual CCA Party boogey monsters – Democrats and developers, affordable housing, the Narragansett tribe, the rest of the state, and of course Progressive Charlestown, which they labelled the “Hate Blog.”

The Democrats spent their advertising dollars to promote their three Council candidates as good people with good ideas.

Does money and negative campaigning always win?

Not always, but mostly. Study after study shows that people are more likely to be affected by negative messages than positive ones. They are more likely to believe an attack by an opponent than a positive claim by a candidate. Plus, if you repeat a message, especially a strong, negative one often enough, it will stick.

Steve Tetzner - more money than sense?

That almost, but not quite, happened in House District 34 which pitted Republican mortgage bankster Steve Tetzner against incumbent Rep. Teresa Tanzi. This was Tetzner’s second attempt to win that seat. In 2014, he spent nearly $100,000, almost all of it money he loaned to himself, to run a relentless negative attack against Tanzi.

He had so much money that he actually spent himself to death by sending out some remarkably self-indulgent mailers that might have killed his candidacy. The worst of the lot was a mailer with a huge photo of him decked out in his Duck Dynasty hunting gear that said – and I am not making this up –if voters elected him to the RI House, his top priority would be protecting the Second Amendment.

Relentless negative attacks also took down Sen. Cathie Cool Rumsey and Rep. Larry Valencia. These two thoughtful, honest and hard-working legislators lost to two spectacularly unqualified opponents aided by coordinated stealth funding from South County’s Republican Town Committees. 

With the lion’s share of the funding coming from Richmond and West Greenwich, those town committees spent more than $15,000 and came close to running the table.

The Westerly Republican Town Committee also spent a lot on the 2014 election ($8,755) but are not in either Cathie’s or Larry’s districts, though Westerly is part of Donna’s district.