Governors: Battling for Every Vote

An Outsider's Chance

Normally, any Republican candidate for Governor in the resolutely Democratic state of Rhode Island would be considered rash even to run. But Edward DiPrete, the stolid two-term G.O.P. mayor of Cranston, R.I., is facing extraordinary circumstances. An unusually bitter Democratic primary has split his opposition, while statewide disillusionment with government may have opened a door for long-frustrated Republicans. For the first time in 16 years, the G.O.P. has a shot at the statehouse.

DiPrete launched his campaign in earnest last week when Anthony Solomon, state general treasurer, emerged from the primary as the Democratic nominee. Solomon won a clear 16-point victory over his opponent Joseph Walsh, the mayor of Warwick, R.I., but only after the two men had spent nearly $1 million each, most of which went to increasingly mean-spirited TV and radio ads. Solomon, who tagged himself "the independent Democrat," labeled his opponent the "machine" politician. Walsh last year wrested control of the state Democratic committee from the four-term incumbent Governor J. Joseph Garrahy, who later chose to retire.

Given Rhode Island's recent political embarrassments, it is hardly surprising that Solomon, who succeeded in disclaiming party ties, was the winner. The Democrats' 1982 gerrymandering of senate districts proved so crude that the courts ruled it unconstitutional. Over the past year 16 Providence city employees and vendors were indicted by grand juries on charges ranging from extortion to payroll padding. To cap the political profession's embarrassment, Providence Mayor Vincent ("Buddy") Cianci Jr. was forced to resign last April after pleading no contest to charges of assault against a man who he said was having an affair with his wife.

Solomon, an assiduous handshaker, likes to point to his experience as an administrator. DiPrete is running on his record as mayor of a sound city. When he took office in 1979 in Cranston, DiPrete inherited a $5.3 million cumulative debt, which he erased while raising taxes only once. Whenever possible, however, DiPrete reminds voters of the Democrats' tarnished record, insisting that "the public has lost faith in state institutions."

DiPrete is not the only local G.O.P. candidate with a chance this fall. Five Republican women are running for high offices, including Arlene Violet, a former nun making a second bid for state attorney general. Violet's strong law-and-order platform has earned her the sobriquet Attila the Nun. Local Republican strategists have yet another reason to take heart: although Rhode Island was the only New England state to reject Reagan in 1980, a recent poll suggests that it now places the President in a dead heat with Walter Mondale.

Second Time Around

Madeleine Kunin took no chances. Even though she was unopposed in last week's Democratic primary, the former Lieutenant Governor of Vermont doggedly crisscrossed her state for nine months, sometimes through torrential rains.

A familiar and respected figure since her gallant but unsuccessful bid to unseat Governor Richard Snelling in 1982, Kunin scores high in public appearances. One matron in Barre, Vt., was so taken with Kunin that she blurted out, "Why, you are much prettier than your pictures." Yet the attractive Kunin, who if elected would become Vermont's first woman Governor, is not taking her widespread popularity for granted. Says she: "I am going to have to fight for every vote I get."

Any hopes Kunin held of benefiting from a divisive Republican primary race were dispelled when State Attorney General John Easton, 41, shut out conservative Banker Hilton Wick by a convincing 22 points. Vermont is almost unyieldingly Republican, and Easton has the added advantage of holding strong party ties to the retiring Governor Snelling, a moderate who became nationally known for his scornful opposition to Reagan's New Federalism. Kunin, a liberal Democrat, is subtly attacking the few unpopular decisions of the Snelling era.

Kunin is downright aggressive about the attorney general's decision last June to raid a 300-person religious community in Island Pond. The members of the fundamentalist sect believe in corporal punishment for their offspring, which some observers equated with child abuse. State troopers took 112 children into protective custody, and the courts ruled the raid illegal. The attorney general's office subsequently dropped the case. Kunin has no intention of forgetting Easton's well-publicized failure. She taunts, "John would like to walk away from it, but he can't."

Both candidates champion Vermont's rural farmers and blue-collar workers, who are gradually being edged out by the high-tech gentry. Easton has even sought a populist image by donning olive work pants for a day to load wooden reels onto trucks at a manufacturing company in Rutland.

Easton has also courted the Yuppie vote by painting Kunin as a Mondale clone. In their first debate, however, Easton's attempt to lock Kunin into a public pledge not to raise taxes backfired. She regally dismissed any such promise as "irresponsible" and flustered her opponent with a reminder that he supports a cigarette-tax hike. Although Kunin seems to have been the victor in that contest, she is the first to admit that the Governor's mansion will be far tougher to win.