By RUSS OLIVO

WOONSOCKET — Most of the drama of the General Assembly races is already over for city residents, but there is still one legislative contest for them to decide on Election Day.

Republican challenger Harvey F. Nabozny will take a stab at unseating State Rep. Jon D. Brien, who is making his first bid for re-election to the District 50 seat.
This is actually Nabozny’s second attempt to best Brien. He and Brien were both vying for the open District 50 seat in 2006 when Brien won a decidedly lopsided victory, amassing 2,883 votes to Nabozny’s 633. Nabozny also ran unsuccessfully for state senator previously.
An electrical technician who works for lottery giant G-TECH, Nabozny, 48, of 406 Front St., says it’s not easy being a Republican in Woonsocket. And it may be harder than ever trying to get elected on the GOP ticket this year. But Nabozny says he’s not giving up because the General Assembly needs more of his kind to balance out the political hegemony of the Democrats.
See RACE, Page A-2
“It’d be a step in the right direction,” he says. “Probably the best thing I could do is protest what’s going on down there.”
Nabozny says some of his biggest legislative priorities are supporting domestic drilling for oil, reducing business taxes and making the Ocean State a “right to work” state, relieving certain employers of the obligation of hiring union help.
“That’s a biggie, although I hesitate to say it because I know I’m going to get beat over the head for it,” says Nabozny. “But we have to get these public sector unions under control.”
If Nabozny had his druthers, he says he would eliminate a third of all union teachers from the payroll and replace them with non-union student teachers.
But Brien, 37, of 521 South Main St., says Nabozny is out of touch with what constituents expect from their House members. Nabozny, for example, has made drilling for oil a lynchpin of his campaign, but one of the few places in the United States where it’s feasible is Alaska. It’s OK to support it, says Brien, but it’s probably not an issue the folks who live on Sayles Street want their designees in the General Assembly to put at the top of their to-do list.
But Brien gives Nabozny credit for getting it half right. He says legislators should support weaning the country off foreign oil, but not simply by drilling for more homegrown crude. Energy independence means exploiting a variety of alternatives, including wind, solar and nuclear power — resources the Ocean State can exploit to jump-start its own laggard economy.
“I think Rhode Island would benefit from a nuclear power plant,” asserted Brien. “It would get us off the National Grid and it would create jobs.”
Brien says the state should invest in alternative energy business as a way out of what many analysts are calling the worst recession in years, marked by the highest unemployment rate in the nation, nudging the 9 percent mark. He says the state should also expand cargo container operations at Quonset Point.
A lawyer, Brien used to work at the same place as Nabozny until last December, when he and his wife, Stella Guerra Brien, a member of the City Council, decided to become partners in their own law practice. Now they’re Brien & Brien, located at 62 Hamlet Ave., an office building that’s been in the family for three generations. His father, Albert G. Brien, also a former state representative and former city finance director, also ran an insurance and real estate business there.
As a freshman member of the General Assembly, Brien’s perhaps most visible issue was saving World War II Veterans Memorial State Park from premature demise this summer as the state Department of Environmental Management threatened to close the park, citing budget cuts. Brien and fellow freshman Rep. Lisa Baldelli Hunt (D-Dist. 49), spearheaded a grassroots campaign to keep the park open — a campaign Brien says will likely continue into the next legislative session if the park is to survive.
Brien also sponsored or backed legislative efforts to beef up funding for education in urban school districts and to require employers to verify the immigration status of prospective workers. He says he will keep pushing to see those reforms become law and work on new efforts to require electors to carry some type of voter identification when they cast ballots.
“If you want to start a movie membership you have to show an ID,” said Brien. “There is no reason you shouldn’t have to show an ID when you cast a ballot at the polls.
There are four other state representatives and senators whose names will be on the ballot Tuesday, but none faces an opponent.
One of the officials, Christopher Fierro, won a six-way Democratic primary for the House District 51 seat this September in his first bid for public office. His stiffest competition, Kay’s Restaurant owner David Lahousse, has reportedly ruled out launching a write-in campaign against Fierro. There is no Republican on the ticket.
Also unopposed are State Reps. Baldelli-Hunt, State Sen. Roger A. Picard (D-Dist. 20) and State Sen. Marc A. Cote (D-Dist. 24), who is seeking his seventh term.
The polls will be open from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Tuesday. The ballot will also include several statewide referendum questions, candidates for congressional offices and, of course, the combatants for U.S. president, John McCain and Barack Obama.