Did you know that Bob Walsh ran a kick ass grassroots campaign for the 1st District Congressional seat in 1992?  In fact, Walsh lost by only 2,414 votes in the Democratic Primary and the person who beat him got clobbered in the 1992 General Election.

from the Providence Journal, 9-1-92

Bob Walsh lives amidst the disorder of a College Hill apartment with an unframed Brown University poster on his living room wall, pizza delivery flyers on his fridge at right angles to his latest collection of Doonesbury cartoons, and records that range from Elton John to the Kingston Trio.

But on the campaign trail, in grey pin-striped suit, horn-rimmed glasses and the red-striped tie he bought for his dark horse race for Congress, Robert A. Walsh Jr., the 31-year-old financial consultant and former banker, is all business.

In water-contaminated Pawtucket, he handed out bottled water (“Four for a dollar at the IGA”) instead of the usual campaign detritus.

In Bristol, two aides were already standing by with trays of Dunkin’ Donuts and punch when Walsh arrived at the Benjamin Church Manor one recent morning to introduce himself as one of the three Democrats vying for Republican Rep. Ron Machtley’s 1st District seat. There, in rapid-fire tempo, he spelled out his views on health care, defense spending and congressional perks:

“Free parking, reduced price lunches, barber shops just for them. . . . I’m going to lead by example, show there is no more royalty in America.” He promised he would, if elected to Congress, “come to Rhode Island for my haircuts.”

Back home, in the apartment-cum-campaign headquarters where he has lived since graduating from Brown in 1983, he unearthed a letter to President Bush and the response he received.

The topic: the “one for two” government spending plan that Walsh has made the centerpiece of his campaign, and the theme of a 30-second TV spot in which he takes a politically risky stance against building more Seawolf submarines.

Walsh wants to cut the $300 billion defense budget in half, and spend 5 9cents of every dollar cut on “putting Americans back to work” by rebuilding roads, for instance, and the other 50 cents to cut the deficit.

A Bush aide replied, “President Bush will not jeopardize the security of the United States by decimating the defense budget.”

Walsh who, after years of toiling on the campaigns of others, including also-ran Scott Wolf’s 1988 congressional campaign and his own losing battle for a Providence council seat two years ago, has shown no reluctance to take controversial stands.

Taking part in a recent Gay Pride March, for example, he explained: “I’m straight, but not narrow.”

Opponent David R. Carlin Jr., a six-term state senator, captured the Democratic party’s endorsement. By the end of June, however, Walsh had outdone both of his opponents (Carlin and Suzette Gebhard) in fund raising, paid advertising, and seizing on issues likely to draw media attention, such as Carlin’s padded-legislative-pension record.

By June 30, the last federal reporting deadline, Walsh had raised $24,613, pumped another $14,613 of his own money into his campaign and spent $27,780, including the $2,100 a month he is paying Strategy Corp., the political consulting firm run by Ronald DiOrio, a top aide to former Gov. Edward D. DiPrete.

Still, Walsh knows he is unknown to many outside Cumberland, where he went to high school, and the liberal and academic circles he frequents that led him to seats on the boards of Planned Parenthood, the Coalition to Preserve Choice, and Volunteers in Providence Schools.

Born in Pawtucket, Walsh describes himself as the kind of kid who chose books over sports.

He says he took on his first political fight when he covered a school board debate, for his high school newspaper, on a new attendance policy that would have taken points off students’ grades for absences. So incensed at “what I thought was a really dumb policy,” he mounted a petition drive, “mouthed off to the Providence Journal and the Pawtucket Times,” and rallied a crowd to the next meeting, where, he says, the board rescinded the policy.

At Brown, he was student council president. Right after college, he spent several years in banking.

He took a hiatus to help run Wolf’s 1988 congressional campaign, then landed a job in commercial lending at Fleet National Bank, which he left last year to found his own financial consulting business, Elton Associates.

Walsh says he began the 1992 campaign season “thinking seriously” about offering his help to other potential candidates, and then decided this was his year “to put my money where my mouth is,” when they opted not to run.

“I didn’t want to look back in 10 years and kick myself,” he says.

I would say that the last line of this story is a good reminder for Walsh this time around as well.

The “Draft Bob Walsh for Rhode Island” movement has ventured into the social networking world and now has a FACEBOOK group.

Are you tired of Republican Governors and Democratic General Assemblys who offer the same old stale ideas year after year: more tax breaks for the rich and more scapegoating of unions, immigrants and the middle class?

There is an answer!

This is a grassroots movement to draft Bob Walsh to run for Governor of Rhode Island in 2010.

We have 59 members and we have only just begun!!

Please ask all of your friends, family, neighbors and co-workers to sign-up!

You can also visit Bob Walsh’s personal Facebook page and “friend” him!

It was great to see that the Draft Walsh movement has percolated to the top of the Political Scene in the Providence Journal.  Rightly so, since so many political observers were chatting about it at the Follies on Friday night.  Read all about it here.  

With over 200 visitors to this site within the last 12 hours and dozens of people emailing us their interest in the “Draft Walsh movement,” the dire need for a true progressive candidate for Governor has become apparent.  Join us by emailing WalshForRI@gmail.com!

It is great to see that the state’s largest newspaper – the Providence Journal – is reporting on their political blog that Walsh is thinking about running for Governor.

Every week it seems another Democrat signals interest in the 2010 governor’s race.

This week we can add Bob Walsh to the list. Walsh, the well-known executive director of the National Education Association Rhode Island and a State House regular, put his own name into consideration today in a posting on the left-leaning political blog Rhode Island’s Future, which is run by his colleague, deputy NEA director Patrick Crowley.

But in a subsequent e-mail to The Journal this afternoon, Walsh said it doesn’t necessarily mean he is staging a run to replace outgoing Republican Governor Carcieri.

In early January, Walsh suffered a stroke during surgery and is still recovering, he reports.

“As I noted in the blog entry, the main purpose was to start the dialogue to put together the type of platform on which I would like a progressive candidate to run for governor,” Walsh tells us. “As for me being that candidate, right now I have to focus on fully recovering from my health issues, although I have been overwhelmed with the positive response I have received in the short time the entry has been posted on RI Future, and therefore have a lot of thinking to do.”

In the original posting, he outlines his position in a succinct sentence: “progressive, pro-public education, pro-labor, pro-job creation and economic development, pro-choice, pro-environment, pro-marriage equality, and supportive of a fair tax policy for our state.”

Walsh is no stranger to political races. In 1992, the then 31-year-old financial consultant ran unsuccessfully for Congress.

In case you are interested, click here to see the 1992 Congressional results.  Walsh lost by only 2,414 votes in the Primary and the person who beat him got clobbered in the 1992 General Election.

I was glad to read that the conservative blog Anchor Rising picked up on Walsh’s announcement that he was contemplating running for Governor.

While some of the commentators at AR can be a real nasty bunch, I think that the contributors, for the most part, are intellectually engaged and civil – characteristics largely missing in the Rhode Island political debate.

This morning on the RIFuture blog, Bob Walsh announced his intention to contemplate running for Governor of Rhode Island:

By now, many of you are asking yourselves a simple question – is Bob Walsh crazy enough to actually consider running for Governor, or is he up to something else? Would Rhode Island voters even vote for a Brown graduate, former banker, East Greenwich resident for Governor? Could a candidate with deep roots in both the labor and progressive communities win a multicandidate Democratic primary against so many current office holders at a time when people are so cynical about anyone currently holding elected office? How about an actual campaign organization – does he have the contacts with the experienced campaign managers, fundraisers and field operatives to actually make this work? How would he hold up in debates?

Maybe 2010 won’t be my year to run for Governor, and this will actually be my attempt to create a forum where issue-by-issue, a real discussion can be held in the virtual Rhode Island Future world about the development of a real progressive campaign platform, so that can become the standard by which progressives judge the many candidates vying for our support.  Maybe some of those candidates will even adopt ides developed right here.

You already know the basics about my perspective – progressive, pro-public education, pro-labor, pro-job creation and economic development, pro-choice, pro-environment, pro-marriage equality, and supportive of a fair tax policy for our state. But there are lots of details to be filled in on those issues, and many other issues to consider, some of which we cannot even predict yet, as a 2010 gubernatorial platform gets developed. So let’s do some work on Rhode Island Future so we have something to share with candidates for Governor, as well as establish some standards by which to judge them.

I think this is a great idea!  You?