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CRANSTON, R.I. -- The draft-Laffey movement appears to be picking up steam among the heads of the state Republican party's city and town committees.
Lincoln's Republican town chairman Michael Napolitano reports that the "chairpersons of thirty (30) Republican Town & City Committees unanimously endorsed former Cranston Mayor Stephen P. Laffey as the 2010 Republican Candidate for Governor of Rhode Island'' at an "ad hoc meeting'' Saturday.
In a statement issued over the weekend, Napolitano, a communications professor at Dean College in Franklin, Mass., said: "The 2010 Governor's race is the most critical for the State of Rhode Island in a generation. Rhode Island stands on the precipice of a financial catastrophe not seen in America since the 1975 bond default by the City of New York...I hope that the unanimous support of the local Republican Town & City Committees will convince him to run for Governor.''
It remains to be seen if Laffey will bite.
After taking a parting shot at the state's political leaders, including Republican Governor Carcieri, Laffey announced on a talk radio show last March that he would not run for governor in 2010. He told a WPRO talk show audience: "You really only want me if you have a serious financial problem in a large organization and you want to fix it...And I don't think people want to fix it."
Elaborating on his views in an op-ed piece in The Journal, he said the state was in a "financial death spiral" that would only be reversed by eliminating, for example, "the crushing debt of the state pension plan."
He blasted leaders on both sides of the aisle - including, by implication, Carcieri - for acting like ostriches with their heads in the sand as the state's fiscal health went from bad to worse. "Rhode Island has made lousy financial decisions for years and years. Every budget introduced in recent memory has led, and was always going to lead to more deficits," he wrote.
Asked Sunday night where he stands in light of the effort by Laffey-backers within the GOP to draw him in, the former mayor sent an e-mail that said: "I am honored. It is great to see Rhode Islanders rising to fix this financial crisis.''
But Laffey, who lost his bid for the U.S. Senate in a 2006 Republican primary, has not yet said whether he will run for governor, and if he does so, whether he will do so as a Republican.
The GOP was left without a candidate when East Greenwich businessman Rory Smith withdrew, 52 days after announcing his own Republican candidacy for governor.
