Rivulets of sweat coursed across Pawtucket Mayor Don Grebien’s face and Gov. Gina Raimondo tried gamely to keep her piano key smile frozen as a gaggle of pols, state officials and union and business poohbahs crammed into a steamy Slater Mill this morning to try to put their spin on the loss of the Pawtucket Red Sox to Worcester.
A conga line of mayors – including Providence’s Jorge Elorza and North Providence’s Charlie Lombardi –showed up at the press event at the historic mill to say nice things about each other and vow that the loss of the Boston Red Sox top minor league team to Massachusetts won’t stop Pawtucket from an economic revival.
The Blackstone Valley pols slapped each other’s backs and did their hihowahyas. But hanging over the event was the reality that is Pawtucket these days: in the space of about a year the city has lost its theatre, the Gamm, its hospital, Memorial, and now the baseball PawSox. The city’s leading corporation, Hasbro, is seeking to move its headquarters outside the city that spurred America’s Industrial Revolution in the 18th century.
Conspicuous by their absence was anyone from the Democratic General Assembly leadership. Neither House Speaker Nick Mattiello, D-Cranston, nor Majority Leader Joe Shekarchi made an appearance. Ditto for Senate President Dominick Ruggerio, D-Providence and his chief lieutenant, Majority Leader Mike McCaffrey, D-Warwick.
It was an event at which all the pols could do is show up and pretend they weren’t at a wake for a much-loved relative.
There wasn’t a lot of finger pointing or blame-laying. Yet at one point, Raimondo, without mentioning Mattiello by name, said, “the speaker has his own mind.”
There was, of course, the usual grousing about the 38 Studios hangover and how jaded Rhode Islanders must get over it. Well, maybe it’s time for the pols to stop blaming every public-private economic development failure on Curt Schilling, Don Carcieri, Gordon Fox and Teresa Paiva Weed. It’s been eight years since the sordid 38 Studios deal was done.
Raimondo’s argument is that she tried hard and spent many hours trying to get a deal done. She and Grebien both said that they were confident that had the House gone along with a deal crafted by Raimondo and the Senate, the team would have stayed in Rhode Island instead of taking the money and running to Worcester.
Democrat Raimondo’s other thrust was to road-test a message that may get a lot of mention between now and the November general election – that she couldn’t protect the state’s taxpayers and match the Worcester deal, which was many more millions in government subsidies than Rhode Island offered.
One element is clear – Raimondo’s opponents are hammering away at her performance. It’s the silly season of campaigning. The problem is that her critics – especially those who want her job—must think we’re all dumb. Their salvos drip, drip, drip with hypocrisy.
Republican Allan Fung, the Cranston mayor hoping for a rematch of the race he narrowly lost to Raimondo four years ago, went after the governor, saying it was a “failure of her leadership” that lost the team. Joe Trillo, the bombastic former Republican state rep from Warwick who is running as an independent, blamed, surprise, surprise, Raimondo.
“This deal could have been done without putting taxpayer dollars at risk,” said Trillo in a statement. “Without having the ability to be in direct negotiations with all the key players, it’s clear the deal has fallen apart because of ineffective leadership. Gov. Raimondo is a disappointment to the state of Rhode Island and to all its taxpayers.”
And Matt Brown of Providence, the Democrat challenging Raimondo in the September primary, lamented that “we’re losing a cherished institution that has been big part of life for so many of us. It’s disappointing, but not surprising, that Gov. Raimondo is trying to shift the blame. But the fact is: this is what happens when we have a governor who is more focused on out of state fund-raising than being here at home…”
Facts are stubborn things. What they show is Brown, Trillo and Fung did nothing but oppose any government subsidy to keep the team in a new stadium in Pawtucket.
In June, Fung said in a news release that a stadium with a taxpayer subsidy would amount to “bailing out billionaires” and that Raimondo is “putting your taxpayer dollars on the line to support her donors private venture.”
Neither Trillo, Brown nor Fung ever put forward a viable proposal for keeping the team. They just used the PawSox as a whipping post for their political ambitions.
As for Raimondo, she will have plenty of time to defend what happened between now and November, if she wins the primary, which is likely. Did she really do everything she could?
Voters may contrast her stance with the way former governors Bruce Sundlun and Linc Almond shaped successful initiatives. That was the airport rebuild for Sundlun and the Fidelity development by Almond.
Worcester residents clearly wanted the team. None of the Massachusetts media has vetted the rich deal the city and state have cut with the PawSox/WooSox owners. Maybe this comes as scant surprise –one of the actual billionaires who is part of the ownership is John Henry, an owner of both the Boston Red Sox, the parent club, and the Boston Globe, the Bay State’s top media outlet.
It is a fact that Larry Lucchino, PawSox president, felt he was being jerked around by Rhode Island pols. Whether he will say more about this, well, who knows. It’s no longer in his interest to fan this flame; he and his team have to play at McCoy Stadium for the next two years. Lucchino never was a Curt Schilling figure. He is a very successful baseball executive who has built major-league stadiums in San Diego, Baltimore and helmed the successful renovations to Fenway.
If you don’t believe that baseball stadiums can be economic development lodestones, check out what has happened at Baltimore’s inner harbor, San Diego’s Gas Lamp District or around Fenway.
As far as Mattiello goes, it appeared toward the end of the legislative session that he didn’t really care whether the team left. Perhaps this is what his conservative constituents desired. It sure isn’t what the more than 300 building trades members who live in his district wanted. So far, Mattiello has blamed the team for being “disloyal.” Couldn’t he come up with something better than what Brooklyn pols said about Walter O’Malley when the Dodgers left for sunny California in the 1950s?
The event was held at Slater Mill, which gave all the pols a chance to invoke Pawtucket’s past as a springboard to future economic flourish. But neither Sam Slater nor Ben Mondor, the avuncular longtime PawSox owner is walking through Pawtucket’s door.
