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From the Desk of RI House Minority Leader Michael Chippendale:
Midterms Matter
Midterm elections matter in Rhode Island. Anyone who doubts that should look closely at Marie Hopkins.
In the 2022 Midterm, Marie ran for the Rhode Island House in District 21 in Warwick against an entrenched Democrat. More than 5,200 votes were cast and when the dust settled, she lost by 38 votes. Not 3,800 or 380 - Thirty-eight votes! That is not a political landslide. That is a few families around a kitchen table. One street in a neighborhood or a few conversations after church. A few people who either made a plan to vote or assumed someone else would take care of it.
Had just 40 more voters shown up for Marie in that midterm, the outcome would have changed. These are the real numbers that kept an extremely effective lawmaker out of the state house from 2023-2025.
Two years later, in the 2024 presidential election, turnout in that same House race climbed to more than 7,000 voters. Marie won by 85 votes. We don’t need to pretend turnout explains every single nuance - politics is rarely that neat. But the lesson is impossible to miss - close legislative races are decided by people who show up, and the people who don’t.
That is the point too many Rhode Islanders forget. We hear it all the time when talking to voters, “Why bother? Nothing ever changes.” I understand the frustration.
Republicans have been outnumbered at the State House for a long time. Taxes go up and government grows, and the pain continues. Seemingly, the same problems return every year with a just new label, a new commission, and another more urgent appropriation. After a while, people start viewing one-party dominance like the weather- unpleasant, predictable, and way outside of their control.
Unfortunately, that is exactly how bad government survives in a Supermajority state like ours. But the biggest mistake voters make is confusing “outnumbered” with “worthless.” They aren’t the same thing – please believe me. If my Republican legislative colleagues and I felt that way – we wouldn’t sacrifice so much to serve the state we love. Every Republican we add to the General Assembly matters. Not because one more member suddenly flips control of the chamber, and not because we can magically pass every single bill we file. It matters because every serious voice in the room changes the conversation.
That’s why Paul Santucci, Richard Fascia, and Chris Paplauskas matter. These are first-term representatives who brought very different backgrounds into the chamber and had an immediate, and noticeable impact on the way these issues were approached. They didn’t need twenty years in the building to understand what working families, taxpayers, small businesses, retirees, police officers, municipal officials, parents, and local communities are dealing with. They brought that perspective with them, along with their own experiences.
Now they are being challenged in the Midterm, and we MUST get them re-elected.
We also need to add new voices and perspectives like Lawrence Almagno, Jessica Gomes, Joe Hosey, and many others who will bring more experience, differing perspectives, and badly needed balance into a State House that has gone far too long without enough of either, and which has been under assault by the Majority Party cancer of “Democratic Socialism.”
When Republicans are at our best, we aren’t just giving Floor speeches so somebody can clip thirty seconds for social media. We are in committee hearings pressing on the details – pushing back on false assumptions. We are in floor debates forcing the majority to explain the fine print. We are in negotiations, working sessions, and the unglamorous places where policy gets shaped before it lands on your tax bill, your electric bill, your local school, your town budget, or your small business. We are the other side of the coin – the alternative to the status quo. And friends – I’m here to tell you that the majority of Rhode Islanders agree with us on those finer points.
Our work doesn’t always come with a glamorous headline or ribbon-cutting ceremony. Often, the most important work a Republican legislator does is nearly invisible: breaking the sharp edges of a bad bill, adding safeguards to an expensive program, tightening sloppy language, slowing down a reckless proposal, or forcing enough scrutiny that a terrible idea quietly dies before it can do damage. There are no ceremonies for victories like this.
Perfect example - House Republicans for years have filed bills and amendments to reform renewable energy policy and bring basic cost discipline back into the system. Many of those proposals never received a vote. They were ignored, dismissed, or buried in the usual legislative talking points and scare tactics about carbon footprints. But when the incumbent governor then later rolls out an energy relief plan and suddenly includes “cost-saving measures” that were ripped straight from our amendments and bills, we know what that means. We moved the needle, our ideas resonated with the people, and our poll-testing Governor adopted our policies into his efforts – because the voters want them too. Even when our names aren’t on the press release, our arguments are still finding their way into policies Rhode Islanders actually live under – and that’s why we do what we do.
That is the impact we have – and that impact has value. There is no “light switch” somewhere that will suddenly turn RI Republican, but the more Republicans we have, the more pain we can stop.
Our Democratic colleagues love to measure their worth by bill counts. They passed this, they passed that – it’s like a bunch of kids comparing their action-figure collections. Another program. Another mandate. Another study commission. Another bureaucracy. Another “solution” to a problem that somehow requires more money, more regulation, and more authority for the same people who helped create the problem.
Fine - if your political philosophy is that government should constantly expand, spend and regulate - then I suppose a long bill list looks like achievement. We Republicans don’t measure our worth that way. We believe that which governs least, governs best. Sometimes success is measured by how much damage we prevent, how many protections we secure, how many costs we reduce, and how many bad ideas we drag into the sunlight before they become another burden on the people we represent.
That is not always glamorous, it’s almost never in the headlines, and it doesn’t always fit neatly on a palm card - but make no mistake - it matters. And we need more good people doing it.
Too many Republican, conservative, independent, and taxpayer-minded voters show up when a president is on the ballot, then disappear during the midterms when the State House landscape is actually being decided. Presidential elections get the noise, the headlines, and the national drama. But the decisions that reach most directly into your daily life are often made much closer to home – and that’s why Midterms Matter.
The Rhode Island General Assembly votes on the state budget, taxes and fees, energy policy, education, housing, public safety, roads and bridges, business regulations, and mandates pushed down onto cities and towns. Those decisions affect your property taxes, utility bills, local schools, municipal budget, small business, and whether your children and grandchildren can afford to build a future here. And the people making those decisions are elected in Midterms.
So no, Midterms are not political leftovers or the “spring training” of politics. They are not the warm-up act between presidential elections - they are the precise place where Rhode Island either gets more balance or gets more of the same.
And balance matters. A larger Republican caucus changes the tone of committee hearings. It changes the impact of Floor debates. It changes negotiations in private that the other side doesn’t want to become public. It changes what the majority thinks it can get away with. It changes whether a bill moves untouched or gets challenged, narrowed, improved, restrained, or exposed.
Legislative Republicans do not need “atta’ boys” or bill-signing ceremonies to be effective. We do not need applause from the people who built the machine. We need more members, more voices, more experience, and more Rhode Islanders willing to vote in the elections where these seats are decided.
That starts with a plan – and we all should make a plan on voting, and do it right now.
For hard working Rhode Islanders, life has a way of showing up without an appointment. A sick child, a longer than expected shift at work, a car that chooses Election Day to die in the driveway, a hospital stay, a family emergency, a last-minute business trip - any one of those can turn “I’ll vote Tuesday” into “I meant to vote.”
That’s why mail voting and early voting matter. Republicans are instinctively hesitant to vote by mail – and I get that. But don’t let the specter of cheating Democrats harvesting ballots dissuade you from having your voice counted. These aren’t conveniences for people who care less, they are tools for people who understand that their vote is too important to leave at the mercy of a flat tire, a fever, a boss, a traffic jam, or the thousand other things that can ambush a normal week.
If voting by mail is easiest, request a mail ballot. If Election Day looks uncertain, vote early. If you prefer voting on Election Day, put it on the calendar and make sure your plan survives real life.
This is not about guilt – it’s about arithmetic – about making sure no good Republican candidate goes home 38 votes short of changing the state.
So when someone says, “Why bother? Nothing ever changes,” think about Marie Hopkins and those 38 votes. Then think about Paul Santucci, Richard Fascia, and Chris Paplauskas. Think about Lawrence Almagno, Jessica Gomes, Joe Hosey, and all the great Republican candidates working to give Rhode Island more balance, more scrutiny, and more common sense.
Change does not happen because people grumble at the coffee shop, post online, or wait for someone else to rescue the state. And no, one election will not fix every problem Rhode Island has spent decades creating for itself - but change will never happen if the people who want it stay home.
Make a plan. Vote early, vote by mail, or vote on Election Day. Just vote. Make sure your family and friends have a plan, too. Every vote matters. Midterms matter.
Respectfully,
House Minority Leader Mike Chippendale
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