With more than a week since the 2024 Election concluded, America wakes up to a new reality: Donald J. Trump is once again President-Elect of the United States. The candidate who started his campaign: surviving two assassination attempts (one with a bullet to the head); has become the first President in more than 120 years to win re-election in nonconsecutive terms (first since Grover Cleveland); was compared to Hitler for holding a rally at Madison Square Garden (according to the Democrat National Committee). He is also the first convicted felon to win the oval office.

Throughout this election, Trump swept all seven swing states (including historically blue Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Nevada); won the U.S. presidency both via the Electoral College and the Popular Vote. Republicans have won a clean sweep, including a U.S. Senate majority, a U.S. House Majority (according to NewsNation at press-time), and 8/11 governor’s races (including neighboring state New Hampshire) with Republican governors running most states nation-wide.

Although Harris won in Rhode Island by a double-digit margin (earning 55.3% to Trump’s 42%), continuing Democratic presidential nominees’ winning the Ocean State since 1988, with even RIGOP Chair Joe Powers denying a ‘Red Wave’ occurred, a strong silver lining still endures.

Locally, Trump’s Rhode Island performance improved since 2020, spanning all 39 cities and towns, winning every municipality that supported him in 2020, flipping Woonsocket (which hasn’t voted Republican since 1984), and showing Republicans can make strong gains in the state’s traditional Democratic strongholds.

Trump’s victory also underscored major regional gains, winning 11-of-19 communities in Bristol County, Mass. (doubling his victories from 2020. Although Democrats still won Massachusetts, it shows a growing divide between political leadership and the people they serve.

Republican and conservative voices still have a home in New England.

Yet Rhode Island’s elected leaders – representing a state that is still a plurality of unaffiliated voters – show poor form in defeat, remaining tone-deaf on those they serve. U.S. Senator Whitehouse chalked Republican victory to “… I think they’re there for purposes of plunder …” and his only solution, when NBC 10 asked what democrats need to do differently moving forward, Whitehouse simply said “win.”

Gov. Dan McKee, meanwhile, stated he will not take part in any new immigration policies under the upcoming Trump administration, cutting off his nose to spite the state’s collective face.

With the election complete, the nation evolves to new people, parties and solutions for tomorrow. President-Elect Trump has tapped Susie Wiles, the first female selected as Chief of Staff in history. Sadly, Rhode Island is once again detached from reality and out of the mainstream of national politics. Both with our federal delegation and our local representation in the state house.

We suffer from Stockholm Syndrome – with hostages, in this case our leaders, continuing to fall for their captors, or party bosses. As Einstein once said “… the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting differing results.” When local voters directly call on our elected leaders to show bipartisanship, can we move Rhode Island forward together as a country.

Will Sousa Grapentine
Bristol

Will Sousa Grapentine is Vice Chair of the Bristol Republican Town Committee and a delegate of the Rhode Island Republican Party State Central Committee.