“For the first time in a very long time,” Larry Berman, an aide to the state’s House speaker, said merrily, “Rhode Island’s primary actually matters.”
Campaigns of yore would be forgiven for paying little attention to Rhode Island, which has 33 Democratic delegates and just 19 on the Republican side. Charles Bullock, a professor of political science at the University of Georgia, said Rhode Island tends to play a significant role in the primary season only tends to play a significant role in the primary season only in close contests like the one in 1976 between Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, or in 2008, when Hillary Clinton was trying to make up ground lost to Barack Obama.
But, Professor Bullock said, with Donald J. Trump “trying to get to 1,237 on the Republican side, then getting 19 may be important.” On the Democratic side, he said, “Bernie Sanders needs to get everything he possibly can.”
Both Mrs. Clinton and Gov. John Kasich visited the state on Saturday, and Mr. Sanders held a rally in Providence on Sunday morning, delighting the politically minded in a state accustomed to observer status in presidential politics (and other things, too).
“Usually the die has been cast, and it’s just really a formality,” said Bob Durant, 51, a lawyer who was making phone calls at Mr. Kasich’s campaign headquarters here last week. But this year, with candidates still scrapping for delegates, “literally every vote will count,” Mr. Durant said.
A contested presidential primary in Rhode Island — a compact state that, with about one million people, has the population of a large city — is by necessity a cozy affair.
“The circle of leaders in Rhode Island is very small, very active — and absolutely everyone knows everyone else,” said James A. Morone, the director of the Taubman Center for American Politics and Policy at Brown University. “It’s like a big Italian family.”
The campaigns for all three remaining Republican candidates, for example, are working out of the same shopping plaza: A strip mall between an airport and a clotted main road here in working-class Warwick.
One afternoon last week, people were assembling signs in Mr. Trump’s campaign office, decked out with a cardboard cutout of the candidate with a bald eagle. Several doors away, volunteers for Senator Ted Cruz were readying mailers, and, on another side of the plaza, a handful of volunteers were making phone calls for Mr. Kasich.
Jean Hudson, 65, stood in the parking lot in the middle of it all, and said she was delighted that the uptick in political significance had finally gotten her home state coverage on Fox News, her cable news network of choice.
“I hear our name mentioned more than usual,” Ms. Hudson said, giddily. “Even when we have hurricanes and storms they talk about Mass. and Connecticut, never Rhode Island. It’s like we don’t exist.”
The state’s Democratic establishment has thrown its weight for the most part behind Mrs. Clinton — and that, too, has come with a Lil’ Rhody touch.
When Bill Clinton was campaigning last week, also here in Warwick, the state’s speaker of the House, Nicholas A. Mattiello, called ahead to a pizzeria in nearby Cranston to make sure there would be vegan food for the former president, now herbivore in chief.
Even Mr. Morone has found himself fielding questions on the primary from strangers who recognize him from his television appearances. It is not an entirely uncommon occurrence in such a small state, although Mr. Morone is more accustomed to being asked about local races than national ones.
“I walked into the train station this morning and I had someone come up to me and say, ‘What’s going on? Who’s going to win Rhode Island?’ And I just usually don’t get that kind of stuff,” Mr. Morone said.
The primary here could provide observers with valuable information about the dynamics of the race because, Mr. Morone said, Rhode Island is demographically similar to Massachusetts, where Mr. Trump pulled off a landslide victory in March.
So, Tuesday’s primary — one of five on the East Coast — will be another test of his popularity in a state with a large portion of white, independent or Democratic-leaning voters.
“It’s a very good measure of what’s happened to the Trump campaign as he’s taken this kind of withering attack that he’s been under,” Mr. Morone said.
The Democratic Party’s candidate has won Rhode Island in nine of the past 10 presidential general elections (Ronald Reagan’s 1984 re-election victory being the exception).
Wendy Schiller, a political-science professor at Brown, described Rhode Island as a “union, blue-collar-at-its-core Democratic state” — but one where Mr. Trump could appeal to voters.
“If Trump does really well here,” she said, “if Hillary Clinton loses here to Bernie Sanders, it really does suggest a way in which the Trump campaign can try to peel off a chunk of Democratic voters in November.”
Punditry aside, some Rhode Islanders are simply trying to have some fun with their moment in the presidential spotlight.
Take Denise Rachiele, who was surprised to see a presidential campaign office — Mr. Trump’s — pop up a few doors down from her pet store, All About Pets. Now, her windows are decorated with fake campaign posters for her cat, Stump.
“He felt he was more qualified, or at least as qualified, as Mr. Trump,” joked Ms. Rachiele, who said she has not decided whom she will support on Tuesday.
This post was written by: Raymond Jack
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