Robert Corrente is the Chairman of The Moderate Party of Rhode Island. Corrente is a partner in the litigation department at Burns & Levinson LLP in Providence and Boston.  From 2004 - 09, Mr. Corrente served as the United States Attorney for the District of Rhode Island. He was nominated by President George W. Bush and confirmed by the United States Senate.

Mr. Corrente graduated from Dartmouth College in 1978 with highest distinction and from New York University School of Law in 1981. He was the founder and Managing Partner of Corrente, Brill & Kusinitz, and a partner at Hinckley, Allen & Snyder from 1998-2004.  He has chaired the Rhode Island Supreme Court’s Ethics Advisory Panel and the Rhode Island Judicial Nominating Commission.

Why does Rhode Island need a new political party?
Providence Journal, Friday, February 19, 2010

It used to be, in American politics, that new parties would spring up with some regularity, some with intriguing and colorful names like Teddy Roosevelt’s Bull Moose Party of a hundred years ago. Nowadays, we’ve settled into a less imaginative rut. You’ve got your Democrats and your Republicans, and that’s it. Never mind that we as a people have never been more diverse and have never spanned a broader spectrum of values and beliefs. For some odd reason we continue to insist that candidates and voters confine themselves to this conventional binary classification -- if you’re not a D, then you’re an R, You can only be Blue or Red.

This categorization is simplistic and misleading, but it is not hard to understand. The system, created and policed by its beneficiaries, is incredibly hostile to the formation or recognition of new parties, but today is not the day to explore the legal roadblocks purposefully placed in the path of new parties.

Today is a day for hope, optimism, and ingenuity. Today is also the day to answer the fundamental question – why does Rhode Island need a new party? More specifically, why does Rhode Island need the Moderate Party? The answer is staring us in the face. As a state, perhaps more than any state in the nation, we have meekly accepted Single Party Rule. The Moderate Party is founded on the belief that this dubious political dominance is the single greatest impediment to fixing Rhode Island.

I spent five years as the U.S. Attorney for Rhode Island, and I had the privilege to speak with thousands of Rhode Islanders about the state of our state. One of the questions I encountered most frequently was this: why are we doing so much worse than other states? It’s a fair, if depressing, question. Even a cursory review of the past few years reveals study after study, investigation upon investigation, ranking on top of ranking, that puts Rhode Island at or near the bottom of every index -- in education, business climate, you name it. I know that this infuriates Rhode Islanders who can see the potential and who are unwilling to settle for such dismal performance.

So why are we so focused on the travesty of Single Party Rule? Simple –- look at the results. Under our odd system of state government, enormous power is vested in the General Assembly. There are 113 members in the legislature. 102 are Democrats. That comes out to 90%. To call the opposition “token” is an insult to tokenism. Even worse, in the last election, a staggering 45 members ran unopposed. That might mean that not a single person in any one of those districts has any interest in how we do as a state, but I doubt it.

I suspect that there is a much deeper and more corrosive problem. In a participatory democracy, there is nothing more deadening than inevitability. That is, if everyone in the district knows (or thinks) that the result is pre-ordained, they will stay home. They won’t bother to run, and they may not even bother to vote. What have we done? We have, like bad alchemists, transformed activism to apathy. Like bad firemen, we have hosed down the hopeful.

That is where we are. If we don’t fix this, there is not much point in fixing anything else. The Democratic Party in Rhode Island has become a self-perpetuating monolith, which must (but won’t) take responsibility for our “last place in everything” distinction, even as they revel in celebration of their achievements. They have no shame, but that’s okay, because they also have no opposition.

So why not just be Republicans? There are two reasons. First, and most fundamentally, we do not define ourselves, nor do we delineate our positions, by party affiliation. If there is one clear thing in contemporary politics, at the national, state, and local level, it is this: people are sick of elected officials who define their success by whether they are being good Democrats or good Republicans. People want, and have the right to expect, politicians who are guided by different stars, towards the real goal of better government.

Second, and we needn’t dwell on this, but let’s be honest. The Republican Party in Rhode Island is, and has historically been, spectacularly dysfunctional, devoid of structure, and wracked by internal discord. We hope they recover their bearings, and soon, but for now, they do not offer a viable alternative to Single Party Rule.
On a related point, why not just be Independents, like Lincoln Chafee, who is rightly respected for his principled stands in the U.S. Senate? Here is why. Every so often, a talented candidate will come along, appeal to our better instincts, and maybe capture a sizable chunk of the vote. This is all to the good. But once that race is run, what structure is left? The reality is that we need to build a broader foundation. No one individual candidate, no matter how good, can hope to fix the systemic problem of Single Party Rule.

So that brings us back to the Moderate Party. We are new. We might not field a full slate, and we might not win a lot of races this year. But we will run some great candidates in some very competitive races. More importantly, we will show Rhode Islanders that nothing is inevitable anymore, and that they don’t have to settle for last place in anything. That they don’t need to accept inevitability with a simple shrug in the face of another collapse and mutter “typical Rhode Island”. As a state, we can, we should, and indeed we must expect more. We’ve had enough. If you have too, come help us.