With less than a week until the primary election, accusations are flying in the Democratic race for governor. Matt Brown, the top primary opponent to Governor Gina Raimondo, is running a progressive challenge to Raimondo from the left.
Rhode Island’s economy has improved since Gina Raimondo took office as governor in 2015. Unemployment is down to a level not seen since 2000, and the state has more jobs than at any time in its history.
“By any measure of our economy – jobs, wages, cranes, projects, development, investment – we’re on the move. We have economic momentum like we haven’t had in decades,” Raimondo said.
Not surprisingly, Raimondo points to a sense of progress whenever she gets the chance, like during a recent ribbon-cutting for Citizens Bank’s corporate campus in Johnston.
Still, despite the positive economic news, Rhode Islanders have not embraced Raimondo. Polling shows that her approval rating remains below 50 percent. That means Raimondo is less than a sure thing for re-election this year. The first obstacle in her path is fellow Democrat Matt Brown. He jumped into the race for governor in April after a long absence from local politics. Brown has been criticizing Raimondo for her signature achievement – the pension overhaul she spearheaded as state treasurer back in 2011: “I want to hear from people in this room about how the pension-quote pension reforms, the pension cuts, affected you, your thoughts about it.”
Brown finds a receptive audience during a recent campaign event at a community center on Providence’s West Side. The pension overhaul attracted national attention and set the stage for Raimondo’s win in 2014 as Rhode Island’s first woman governor. But retired state workers like Mary McKenna are still furious about losing an annual cost of living adjustment, or COLA.
“We worked hard, I worked hard,” McKenna said. “I signed a contract. The state owes me a COLA on a yearly basis. For the last six years I haven’t seen anything and it hurts. And there’s very little that has been said or done about it.”
Matt Brown has something to say about it. He’s latched onto the criticism that Raimondo’s pension overhaul, combined with high fees for hedge funds, transferred wealth from working Rhode Islanders to Wall Street. Brown says he’s fundamentally a different kind of Democrat than Raimondo, with this as his core belief: “Government in democracy has one job and one job only: and that’s to look out for the people.”
Brown said Rhode Island can be a place where everyone can go to the doctor without fear of going broke, where all children can get a quality education — “…. Where we can lead the country in renewable energy and return the profits to the people. Where everyone can have a job that pays, they can have a home they can afford, they can have a future for their children. And I also know that we can restore annual pension increases to our retirees and workers.”
Brown said he’d find the money to restore COLAs through better investments and lower fees for the state pension fund. But there’s no guarantee that this plan will work. And Brown said he’ll figure out how to pay for some of his other proposals, like a single-payer healthcare plan, after taking office.
“We’re going to assess the options, as I said when I announced it, with a team of healthcare experts and economists when we get in,” he said, “and put together a plan that makes sense for the state.”
The 48-year-old Brown was once a rising star in Rhode Island politics. In 2002, he beat an establishment candidate to win election as secretary of state. But Brown’s U.S. Senate run flamed out in 2006. He then moved to Washington, D.C., and helped launch a nonprofit working to reduce the spread of nuclear weapons.
But the challenge facing Brown can be seen in the size of the audience at his ‘Restore Our Pension’ town hall forum – just about 125 people. A WPRI-TV poll in August found that nearly half of voters didn’t know Brown’s name – and his campaign lacks the money to air commercials that would raise his profile.
WPRI pollster Joe Fleming said turnout could be an important factor for Brown in the September 12th primary.
“If it’s a small turnout and he has groups of people, such as labor unions, public sector unions who may have a problem with the governor, strong progressive groups that are supporting him – if he can motivate those people and get them out, it could really move him up depending on the size of the turnout,” Fleming said.
Brown has criticized Raimondo for being unwilling to debate him. But Raimondo regularly takes questions from reporters at news events, and she spoke with me after the ribbon-cutting at Citizens Bank.
The governor defended her support for the pension overhaul criticized by Brown, and she tweaks her rival by pointing to how he wasn’t living in Rhode Island at the time when the issue was being discussed.
“We were really struggling,” she said. “I mean, Central Falls had just gone bankrupt, we had one of worst-funded pension systems in the country, and there was a risk that hard-working state employees and teachers wouldn’t have the pensions when they needed it. So we had to take action. “
Raimondo pointed to how much Rhode Island’s economy has improved during her time in office. She said she gets frequent reminders of that, like during a recent clambake staged by unionized electrical workers in Middletown: “And I met a lot of people there who said to me that they’re working now. Four years ago, when I did that same clambake and shook hands, they were struggling. Most of them are out of work. So I’m feeling good, I’m working hard and out and about as much as I can to talk to and listen to Rhode Islanders.”
Still, the pension overhaul is one of the factors cutting into Raimondo’s popularity. There have been ongoing problems with the state’s costly IT system for human-service benefits, known as UHIP and self-inflicted wounds, like the state’s short-lived Cooler and Warmer tourism campaign.
But Raimondo flashes humor when she campaigns at the Elmhurst Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center in Providence. Seniors get ice cream sundaes and cards with information about the governor’s campaign.
“We got the cards in front of you. By the way, this was when I started. I looked a lot younger – did you notice that?” she asked to laughter from residents.
Raimondo takes her time making her way around the room, talking with residents and staff. She’s joined by Rhode Island’s popular senior U.S. senator, Jack Reed. He praises a Raimondo initiative that prepares workers to build submarines at defense contractor Electric Boat.
“Creative innovative programs teaming up with the Community College of Rhode Island, the Westerly school system, Electric Boat, other training enterprises. And we now have this flow of highly skilled workers going into Electric Boat, not just for a couple of years,” Reed said. “We’re talking about 20 or 30 years of employment, we’re talking about a career.”
When it’s Raimondo’s turn, she sid she wants to build on her first term as governor.
“We need your vote, we need you to get out and vote,” she said. “Right now in Rhode Island, we’re fixing the roads, people are back to work, CCRI is affordable, we’re continuing to protect your healthcare. Since I’ve been in governor, I’ve twice doubled money that we give to senior centers.”
A third Democrat, former state representative Spencer Dickinson, is also running in the primary. But the fight is mostly between Raimondo and Matt Brown. The Democratic governor entered the race with millions of dollars in her campaign account, and her campaign has flooded the airwaves with commercials touting her record and attacking Brown. Whether that’s a sound strategy – or a sign of concern about the threat posed by Raimondo’s progressive rival – will become clear during the primary election next Wednesday.
