“In the past 20 years, the party has moved so far to the left, it’s verging on Socialism.””

Doug Gablinske

“There’s old school and there’s new school,” said Bristol Democratic Town Committee Chairman Tony Rego. “I try to run the middle.”

It’s a complicated dynamic that came to a head last Wednesday, June 27, as the deadline to file as a member of the political party committees passed and Bristol’s Democrats met to vote in the slate of new members who filed to join the group.

Mr. Rego adamantly opposes the idea of labeling members of the local party as moderates, or progressives. 

“We’re all Democrats,” he said. “And we are going to go forward as Democrats.”

Still, he admits that the meeting he chaired last Wednesday, which saw the Town Committee’s numbers jump from 76 to 107, wasn’t without a bit of strife.

“The more moderates would rather have a smaller committee,” he said. “But the Committee voted overwhelmingly to take all 107 people who filed.”

Don’t call them ‘progressives’

There is a limit (the room where they meet has a capacity of about 125 people.) But it’s not about the numbers, it’s about what those numbers represent. If Mr. Rego were not resistant to using the label, he would use the p-word (progressive) to describe the majority of the people rushing to engage in the political process.

One person who is not afraid to call out the progressive wing of the Democratic Party is Doug Gablinske, who has been serving as the chairman of the executive board of the Bristol Democratic Town Committee for six years.

“This is not the Democratic Party I joined in the 1970’s,” said Mr. Gablinske. “In the past 20 years, the party has moved so far to the left, it’s verging on Socialism.”

“It’s happening all over the country, and it’s leapt forward since Trump was elected. People feel local government is the place to join and be a part of the process,” said Mr. Gablinske. “More power to them, this is a democracy.

“But local government is not about philosophical platforms. It’s about schools, it’s about trash pickup, it’s about taxes, it’s about snow removal.”

If you google “backlash,” you get a range of hits, depending on the the slant of the news outlet doing the reporting: there’s conservative backlash against this, progressive backlash against that. Consistently, at the center of all this backlashing, is the concept of identity politics — the movement of people away from traditional broad party platforms, to a political identity aligned with a social group with which they identify, be it race, religion, gender identity, or something else.

It’s powerful stuff. Being called to act because people are moved by immigration policy, or pay inequality, or losing a friend to gun violence, is a lot more galvanizing than making sure the streets are getting plowed and the trash is getting picked up.

Moderates have been leaving both parties for years, abandoning both the Republican and Democratic parties to the extremists.

Gablinske calls it ‘extremism’

“I don’t believe in extremism,” said Mr. Gablinske. “It’s one of the reasons we can’t make decisions in Washington. The incivility is ripping at the fabric of our society. Politics used to be about taking different ideas and melding them together in compromise. Not anymore.”

Erich Haselhurst has been a member of the Democratic Town Committee since the 2014 election cycle. “I won’t speak for anyone else,” he said, “but I subscribe to the platforms of the Democratic National Committee and the Rhode Island party, as well as the new platform of the Town Committee.”

Mr. Haselhurst doesn’t see the influx of people as a power shift, as much as it is an increased interest in engagement with the Democratic Party.

“The 2016 election got people paying attention, and for many, their eyes were opened by a specific issue.”

“You know what they say — all politics are local.”

Philosophically, the so-called moderates and progressives are not that far apart. According to Mr. Gablinske, they believe in the same things, just not to the same degree. “We want gun control, they want to abolish guns,” he said. “But that’s not a political reality. They think we should stop using fossil fuels tomorrow. Renewables are the answer, but the technology is not there yet; they are still unreliable and very expensive.”

Old guard is getting old

Until last Wednesday night, the Bristol Democratic Town Committee was getting a little long in the tooth; on that, most agree. “Our group (moderates) are older,” admits Gablinske. “The liberal socialists are young, energetic, passionate believers.”

“I’m 70, and I’m not going to do this forever,” said Mr. Rego. “The people getting on board are younger, they are going to carry the torch moving forward. If people want to come on board, who are we to stop them?”

Mr. Haselhurst had high praise for Mr. Rego’s inclusive leadership. “Tony has been excellent; he’s been able to run a meeting where everyone gets to participate.”

Whether or not there’s room for moderates under the new Town Committee’s “big tent” is a major point of disagreement between the new guard and the old guard.

Mr. Gablinske previously represented District 68 from 2007 through 2010, when he was defeated by Richard Morrison after being targeted by state labor unions.

John Leidecker, the deputy executive director of the National Education Association of Rhode Island, was in 2011 found guilty of a misdemeanor for cyberstalking Mr. Gablinske during the campaign and sending out emails from a “Rep. Gablinski,” misrepresenting Mr. Gablinske’s positions on issues. That conviction was cleared in 2014 by a judge who cited Mr. Leidecker’s First Amendment rights.

That battle sowed the seeds of Mr. Gablinske’s disillusionment with the Democratic Party — a disillusionment that has continued to grow over the years.

“Our party has been overtaken,” said Mr. Gablinske. “This is not the party I grew up with, or want to be a part of.

“I’ll be resigning from my position in the party, effective Friday.

“This is not easy for me, but it’s a change that’s been coming for a long time.”