Yesterday’s District 3 primary voters renewed my nomination to appear on November’s ballot as the Democratic Party candidate to represent our neighborhood in the Rhode Island Senate. Thank you for approving my return to office with an unofficial majority of 73.6% to 26.4% for my worthy opponent Robin Xiong, whom I commend for providing us with a substantive choice. My hundreds of discussions with you at your doors helped inform me of the priorities and ideas for our neighborhood, our City and our State. As has been my experience in prior campaigns, you provided me with a valuable free public education, something that I remain committed to enshrining in our State Constitution as a fundamental right for all of our school-aged children.
Since there are no Republican or independent candidates for the seat, I can in the coming weeks and months (after catching my breath) begin work on legislative initiatives for next session of the General Assembly. As we get closer to the start of that session, I look forward to renewing our dialogue through the weekly emails that help me explain to you what I am working on, and which, through your feedback, help me to do a better job as our State Senator.
As almost 4,500 of us voted in the primary (including almost 1,200 who voted for my opponent), I would be presumptuous to describe the outcome as unanimous “mandate” for a particular detailed policy platform. With that said. I believe this year’s primary result provides a useful contrast to last year’s, in which the 31.2% plurality I received raised questions about both the legitimacy of my election and whether the differences and disagreements among our electorate overwhelmed those items on which we could agree.
As you may remember, last year I reached out to my four fellow candidates after the primary. Three of them were kind enough to share with me their views and ideas, which helped inform my work in the Senate. I view this year’s result as a validation of last year’s outreach, and as a data point suggesting that our neighborhood’s areas of agreement are wider and deeper than those areas on which we disagree. While I will continue to do my best to represent all of our District, I am hopeful that I can return to work next January to work with my colleagues to advance those broad areas of agreement our neighborhood shares with the vigor and urgency that they require.