Roberts' Rules of Order

Rolling a 75-mm. howitzer over the Statehouse lawn, Rhode Island National Guard artillerymen positioned it for a 19-round inaugural salute to their new governor. Then, gun poised, the guardsmen waited, joining in the speculation that gripped the tiny state on New Year's Day: whether the salute when fired would honor Republican Christopher Del Sesto, 49, declared the winner by the board of elections (TIME, Dec. 31), or Democratic Governor Dennis J. Roberts, 53, who had suddenly challenged Del Sesto's narrow triumph in the State Supreme Court.

In the marbled corridors of the Capitol, a growing, growling inauguration-day crowd waited too, under the steely eyes of state troopers and city police spotted through the building to prevent riot. Harried election supervisors filled out certificates of election for both candidates, and waited. And in their seventh-floor chambers of the courthouse, four justices of the Supreme Court mulled over the problem thrown to them three days before the inauguration for an eleventh-hour decision.

"No Small Part." Behind the confusion lay not only the close election but a crazy quilt of law. When Rhode Island's 1,014 voting machines were opened election night, three-term Governor Roberts led by 207 votes. But when absentee ballots from servicemen, civilian travelers and shut-ins were counted two weeks after election, Republican Del Sesto took the lead. With a final tally of almost 390,000 votes counted, the board of elections declared Del Sesto the victor by 427. Unwilling to have the office pass out of Democratic hands after 16 years' continuous control, Roberts ignored the board's verdict and the widespread bipartisan enthusiasm for Winner Del Sesto, decided to stake his chances on a last-hope technicality.

To the Supreme Court went his lawyers, protesting a loophole that had never bothered Denny Roberts before. The loophole: although a three-year-old state law allowed absentee civilians and shut-ins to vote on or before Election Day, a 1911 constitutional amendment, in setting up Election Day, had noted that ballots should be cast on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. Argued the Democrats: the tide-turning absentee votes cast by civilians before that specified election were illegal. Four justices heard the argument; the fifth, Thomas H. Roberts, disqualified himself for ample reason: he is the governor's brother. On inauguration afternoon, the court--"a tribunal," as the Providence Evening Bulletin once put it, "whose present composition . . . Governor Roberts himself had no small part in deciding"--ruled for the Democrats.*

"Win in 1958." While the cannon boomed, and Del Sesto supporters angrily stormed out of the Statehouse growling "robbery" and "dictatorship," smiling Denny Roberts took his oath, in his own private office, surrounded by cops, state troopers, newsmen and henchmen. There was no inaugural address--just a Roberts' statement justifying the necessity of court action to resolve a "grave constitutional issue."

Though Providence newspapers were swamped with protests against Roberts' election, Loser Del Sesto decided not to appeal the decision on the ground that Roberts' plea came too late. Instead, he warned that continued agitation might affect the operation and finances of state government. But he promised to run again for governor in 1958. Banking on that promise, a committee launched a "Win in 1958" fund, and campaign committees were formed two years ahead of time by citizens who agreed with Del Sesto's postdecision comment: "Democracy received another setback in Rhode Island today."

* Two of the four judges hearing the case, Chief Justice Edmund W. Flynn and Justice Francis B. Condon, both Democrats, were elected to the Supreme Court during Rhode Island's infamous "Bloodless Revolution of 1935." That year, when Republican candidates narrowly won two disputed senate seats to give the G.O.P. a 22-to-20 control of the state senate, Democratic Lieutenant Governor Robert E. Quinn refused to administer oaths to the two close Republican victors. This left the senate in a 20-to-20 tie, which Quinn broke with his own vote, to order a closed, Democratic-controlled recount of the contested districts. When the ballots were recounted, the general assembly declared that both Democratic contenders had won. Then with both houses under Democratic control, the assembly declared all five Supreme Court seats--all then held by Republicans--vacant, replaced the justices with three Democrats, two other Republicans.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.