Candidate For Governor Spent Just $35 And Got 22 Percent Of The Vote

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Rhode Island gubernatorial candidate Bob Healey waged a one-man war against money in politics this election season, spending only $35 on his campaign.

More surprisingly: He took away 22 percent of the vote.

“It’s amazing what $35 can do,” he told local station WPRI on Wednesday. “As I’ve been saying, if we only spent $75, $80, we might’ve won the race.”

The Providence station described Healey’s takeaway as “a big surprise” as results rolled in Tuesday night. When asked, he told WPRI that no one from the two major parties contacted him and asked him to bow out.

Healey is a lawyer and businessman who has been involved in state politics since his first run for governor in 1986. He went on to found the Cool Moose Party in 1994. This year, however, he ran on the Moderate Party ticket.

“One out of every five voters is saying: We’re tired of negative campaigning, we’re tired of campaign spending, we’re tired of the way people just negatively go at each other,” he said. “And we had a positive message all the way through.”

Haley said he believes his administration would’ve been better than any alternative.

“But, the people choose and that’s their choice,” Healey said. “And as my grandmother used to say, if you burn your butt, you sit on blisters.”

h/t Mediaite

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Notable Replies

  1. Love this! There should be a franchise in every state.

  2. Fred Tuttle did it first. He even won the GOP primary to face Pat Leahy that year.

    Of course, Tuttle did it so that he could stop the carpetbagger who the GOP put up against Leahy, but still…

  3. I guess this makes a cute story, but as a Rhode Islander, I am pretty sick of hearing about Bob Healey. One thing this article (or hardly any of the press) mentions is that he’s a far right Libertarian. He didn’t take campaign donations from anyone, so I congratulate him on coming by his horrible ideas honestly. He conned a lot of liberals in Rhode Island into voting for him with his “holier than thou, I’m above the political process” schtick, but very few of them had any idea what he actually stood for. I was not surprised at all that he pulled in 22% of the vote, only relieved that he did not manage to swing the election to Republican Allan Fung.

  4. Avatar for mantan mantan says:

    I guess another $35 for a haircut and beard trim with a $10 tip could have given him 45% of the vote.

  5. What do you like? The “rogue” element? Check the guy out. He’s a nutcase with horrible right wing ideas.

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