Four candidates for Rhode Island governor repeated familiar campaign themes and clashed over issues of immigration, taxes, education, the state’s economy and abortion rights in a spirited debate Monday night at the University of Rhode Island’s Kingston campus.
The hour-long joust at Edwards Hall was held before a live audience, was broadcast statewide by The Public’s Radio and distributed online by The Providence Journal and URI –the three debate sponsors. It drew Republican Cranston Mayor Allan Fung, incumbent Democratic Gov. Gina Raimondo, Republican turned independent Joe Trillo and Moderate Party candidate William Gilbert.
With three weeks until Election Day, the debate was the second of the general election campaign. Raimondo and Fung, the front-runners according to recent public media public opinion surveys, tried to focus on each other, with each underscoring arguments from their campaigns and television commercials.
Raimondo, riding the lowest Rhode Island unemployment rate in nearly a generation, sought to downplay her administration’s liabilities, such as UHIP, the online public benefits system that has never worked properly. Her message was reminiscent of 1998, the last time the state’s economy was flourishing to the degree it is now. Over and over, she urged voters to stay the course and let her “finish the job” she was elected to four years ago. The 1998 gubernatorial candidate who used that message –effectively as it turned out – was then-Republican Gov. Lincoln Almond, who was in the audience last night. (Almond is supporting Fung.)
Raimondo, the state’s first woman governor, was the lone female in the debate, and she reminded voters of her status.
“Every other man on this stage wants to undo what I’m doing and go back to where we came from,” said Raimondo. “Our progress hasn’t been by accident.”
Fung countered with criticisms of the governor, saying she has neglected Rhode Island small businesses in favor of luring national companies, such as Johnson & Johnson and a division of General Electric, to the state by spending too much taxpayer money on tax breaks for these large corporations.
“She’s had four years and it isn’t working,” said Fung, arguing that the state is headed in the wrong direction and that it is time for a change at the Statehouse. The Cranston mayor also said he has focused on building businesses and creating jobs at such Cranston venues as the Garden City retail complex.
Trillo is known for his bombast and in the first debate, called Fung “wimpy.” He was a bit more subdued last night, but asserted that the state needs a leader who wouldn’t be “laid back.” Instead, the former Warwick stated representative said he be an “in your face” governor who wouldn’t be beholden to special interests because he is self-financing his campaign, unlike Fung and, especially Raimondo, who have harvested gobs of campaign cash from lobbyists, corporate executives and interest group political action committees.
Hours before the forum, Trillo backtracked on a statement he made last week about Fung. Trillo said he didn’t care what his polling numbers were and that he would stay in the race primarily to ensure that Fung didn’t become governor. But yesterday, he said he is in the contest to win.
“This is not a personal vendetta against Allan Fung,” Trillo asserted.
Trillo tried a pox on both Fung and Raimondo strategy, while the governor and Cranston mayor largely avoided engaging Trillo.
Gilbert, getting his first major exposure of the campaign –he wasn’t allowed in the WPRI television debate—called for more civility in politics. He decried the negative tone of contemporary campaigns and the nasty television ads that supporters of Fung and Raimondo have launched.
“Half the people don’t want to participate,” he said, and few want to run for office amid the swirl of mud-tossing.
Gilbert also said the state needs more vocational training so that young people who don’t want to attend college can become plumbers or electricians. He said there will be many jobs in the trades because so many current workers are nearing retirement. And he said technology can be put to better use battling water pollution in Narragansett Bay.
On immigration, Trillo fired his usual salvo about Rhode Island becoming a “sanctuary state” that coddles undocumented immigrants and doesn’t allow the state police and municipal police to cooperate closely enough with federal immigration authorities to thwart crime.
Fung said he wants closer collaboration with police and federal agents when serious crimes –he mentioned major drug dealing- are involved.
But Raimondo said that immigration is a federal issue and that Congress must find a way to deal with it. She also said that her administration “follows the constitution” to ensure that people can exercise their rights.
Raimondo said she would push the General Assembly to approve a state law preserving the Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court abortion standard in case the current U.S. Supreme Court overturns the landmark 1973 decision. Fung said he supports abortion rights but not what he labeled “late term” abortion. Gilbert said he backs abortion rights and Trillo said he is anti-abortion.
Much of the debate focused on the economy and taxes. Trillo asserted that Rhode Island has high taxes and overly generous social welfare and medical programs that are making the state “a poverty state.” And he claimed that high estate taxes are pushing people to move to more tax-friendly states.
Fung and Trillo both called for dropping the state’s 7 percent sales tax, while Raimondo said she does not support lowering sales levies. Raimondo parried Fung’s charge that her economic policies are “corporate welfare” by insisting that her administration is ushering in better economic times. She cited the low unemployment rate, job-training initiatives and her free tuition program at the Community College of Rhode Island, which she hopes to expand to URI and Rhode Island College.
Raimondo said when she took over as governor, the state’s economic development philosophy was “38 Studios” a reference to the failed taxpayer-subsidized video game company run by former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling. She was trying to brush away a question about why she never followed through on a 2014 campaign promise to launch an investigation of the company’s deal with the state.
That was a bit of a history rewrite on the governor’s part. The 38 Studios deal was done in 2010 in the waning days of the administration of then-Gov. Don Carcieri. Independent Lincoln Chafee became governor in 2011, and it was his administration that began the legal challenge that clawed back most of the $75 million or so the state lost in the company’s bankruptcy.
The debate was marred by several outbursts from the audience. At the end, a group of Black Lives Matter Rhode Island Chapter members confronted Trillo to question him about allegations that he used the n-word during an altercation that drew police in the mid-1970s.
“I never used that word,” said Trillo. Gary Dantzler, spokesman for the Black Lives Matter group, cited a police report where Trillo allegedly used the racial slur and said they do not believe his denials.
