By RUSS OLIVO

WOONSOCKET — Decoding the behavior of voters is often a little like trying to read tea leaves, and the decisive victory they handed longtime City Council President Leo T. Fontaine is one of those occasions.

Just what was the electorate, or at least that narrow minority of it that turned out to vote, trying to tell us when they elected an incumbent in the midst of one of the most turbulent and economically disastrous periods for the little guy in modern times?
A couple of thoughts come to mind, some of them quite troubling. One is that the vast majority of voters are either too lazy or just don't feel personally affected enough to get out to vote. Some 70 percent of the city's registered voters stayed home, which means a relatively tiny fraction of city residents decided who will be representing the majority. Just another sad indication, perhaps, of how irrelevant and unresponsive they feel the political system has become in their everyday lives.
Given the circumstances in which the city finds itself, however, it should have been little trouble for Fontaine's opponent, former state representative Todd R. Brien, to paint the longtime incumbent as part of the problem and stir up some interest in political change. Upheaval in the city's tax base in recent months, the combined result of tax increases and a citywide property revaluation, have hiked residential tax rates sharply while shifting much of the burden onto small businesses and what little is left of manufacturing. Indeed, the prospect of further cuts in state aid combined with growing municipal deficits raises the specter of continued middle-class flight, increased poverty and a further diminution of the commercial base.
Woonsocket should be on guard, now more than ever, for, if these trends continue, in a few years the city might end up looking like a far different place than it does now, an even emptier shell of the onetime industrial colossus that it once was.
The people who live here need to find a way to pull Woonsocket back from the brink.
Certainly, Brien tried to tether the incumbent to these problems, casting him as the candidate who helped create them. But despite his perseverance, the tactic did not work – a failure that may say as much about Brien as it does Fontaine. Brien, perhaps, making what many assumed would be his last grab for the chief executive's spot, and approaching the job with a certain amount of political baggage of his own, was not the man to pursue this line of attack.
But even Brien's frustration with the logic of the results dominated his reaction to his defeat, a moment other politicians might have swallowed hard and mustered something like a gracious congratulatory remark for the victor. But Brien, the former lawmaker and police sergeant who had, arguably, run the best of his three campaigns for mayor, couldn't help but evince the obvious.
The city, he said, had endorsed the status quo. He might have added, “Incredible.” He didn't, but you could hear the disbelief in his voice.
Fontaine certainly isn't the only benefactor of this seemingly contradictory protect-the-incumbents trend in the city. Voters overwhelmingly reaffirmed their confidence in the sitting members of the City Council, adding just one new member, which was inevitable since Fontaine was pursuing the mayor's race. They did the same on the School Committee, re-electing everyone save for a newcomer, Vimala Phongsavanh – the first Laotian-American ever elected here – to fill a spot emptied by retiring Michelle Williams.
It might seem incongruous to win this kind of loyalty from a populace that presumably should be quite disenchanted with the direction the city is moving in. The School Committee, especially, should be suspect, having flipped-flopped on budget numbers so many times in the last two years that its current claim of having eradicated a projected $6 million deficit in the coming year is questionable.
Okay, so maybe voters don't care or they don't think it matters whether they show up at the polls. Maybe the challengers weren't persuasive or charismatic enough to displace the incumbents. All those are possibilities. But another one has to do with the very presumption that voters are displeased with the behavior of their elected officials. Maybe they don't think they're doing so bad after all and they like what the current crop of representatives stand for and the things they've done  in the last two years.
It's not so far-fetched. Maybe voters think their elected officials have done the best they could during a time some have dubbed The Great Recession. Perhaps they prefer to lay the blame for the city's woes where many say it belongs, on the doorstep of the General Assembly and Gov. Donald Carcieri. After all, Woonsocket is not alone in wrestling with a financial crisis, one many say is exacerbated by the inability or unwillingness of state officials to change an education funding formula that unfairly punishes the Woonsockets and Pawtuckets of Rhode Island.
It is perhaps noteworthy that Fontaine's ascendancy to the fourth floor of City Hall after 16 years as a councilman challenges the conventional wisdom that Woonsocket is a Democratic town. This assumption was a cornerstone of his Democratic opponent's campaign – an assumption that might be, well, just all wrong. Mayor Susan D. Menard, re-elected six times, is a Democrat but her antagonism of the city's labor unions was more stereotypically Republican and her her policies on social services and the poor sometimes seemed they like they were inspired more by Charles Darwin than President Obama.
And speaking of Obama, Brien's appeal to Democrats may have come at a time when some think the president's brand of progressive liberalism is on the rise. There are those  who would like to cast the victory of a diehard Republican who once chaired the Republican State Central Committee – Fontaine –   as a sign that the trend, if there is one, has taken it on the chin in Woonsocket.
Certainly, this is what the current state Republican chairman wants people to believe. In a statement he released yesterday, GOP chief Giovanni Cicione said Fontaine's victory was especially significant because “Woonsocket has long been a stronghold for Democrats.” Cicione noted that Woonsocket favored Obama by a 32.2 percent margin in the national elections a year ago and the same voters now gave Fontaine a 14.8 percent margin of victory. For the record, the official tally had Fontaine with 3,928 votes to Brien's 2,917.
“To see such a dramatic swing in voter interest in a one-year period is stunning,” said Cicione, “and is even more telling given that Leo is strongly identified as a Republican, having served as state party chair. A win like this certainly helps put to rest any concerns about the Republican brand in Rhode Island.”
Or does it? Do voters in Woonsocket care that Fontaine is a Republican any more than voters in New Jersey cared that Obama stumped hard for Gov. Jon Corzine, to no avail? My guess is that the answer is no. My guess is that voters are weary of the Red State-Blue State schism, and they're more tired than ever of labels, party locksteppers and political gridlock. They want people who solve problems, period.
One can only hope that the voters' hearty endorsement of Fontaine means what the candidate himself says it does – that it's a recognition of his loyalty and commitment to the civic good,  an affirmation of his honesty and integrity, a ballot cast for a man in the most productive years of his life who is willing to thrust his energies into solving some of the most vexing problems the city has faced in years. Perhaps the message in the tea leaves is as simple as School Committeewoman Anita McGuire-Forcier said on election night. “The best man won.”