Does Scott Brown’s victory mean doom for RI Democrats?

Published Jan. 20, 2010 at 9:13 p.m.
Fallout
...Republican Scott Brown's stunning victory this week in the race for the late Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in Massachusetts has created something approaching panic in the ranks of Congressional Democrats...

TEA LEAVES After Brown’s victory, is the rise of the Rhode Island GOP nigh?

Republican Scott Brown's stunning victory this week in the race for the late Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in Massachusetts has created something approaching panic in the ranks of Congressional Democrats.

A lack of exit polling for the race makes it difficult to divine what, exactly, was behind Brown's capture of a seat held by Kennedy for 46 years. But it seems unlikely that Democrat Martha Coakley's lackluster campaign was the only culprit.

Observers say voters, in the deep-blue Bay State, were voicing at least some opposition to what a growing segment of the body politic views as an overreach — a too-liberal agenda in Washington. And that can't bode well, come November, for Democrats up and down the ticket. Even in Democratic bastions like Rhode Island. Right?

Well, maybe. Maybe not.

The Rhode Island Democratic Party — so dominant for so long — is right to be a bit nervous after watching the debacle across the border. In this economic environment, says Marion Orr, director of Brown University's Taubman Center for Public Policy, "all incumbents will have to watch their backs."

But Orr says Representatives Patrick Kennedy and James Langevin, both Democrats, should not be all that concerned about the fall elections. "My guess is that Langevin and Kennedy, in terms of a general election, would survive a challenge — in part because the Republican Party has not been able to put up the kind of candidates who rally support," Orr says.

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