Rhode Island House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello concedes he made a mistake by exceeding state campaign finance laws by about $72,000 in the midst of a very tight re-election fight for his Cranston state representative seat in 2016. But he said the violation did not make a difference in the outcome of his 85-vote win over Republican Steven Frias.
Mattiello said he had more than enough at the time to draw the $72,000 from his personal campaign account, and he likened the campaign violation documented by the state Board of Elections to using the wrong checking account to pay a bill.
“It was a mistake,” the Cranston Democrat told reporters in his third-floor Statehouse office, ahead of Wednesday’s meeting of the House of Representatives. “The wrong account was used. The board did exactly the right thing. Some folks are trying to make it into something it’s not. The wrong account was used, the expenditures were appropriate — we always had enough money, there was no tactical advantage.”
Rhode Island GOP Chairman Brandon Bell described the matter in more serious tones, and he called for Mattiello to resign.
In a tweet after Mattiello’s media availability, Bell said, “Not a simple 72k bookkeeping error. This is 72k worth of illegal expenditures to benefit Speaker Mattiello. The only thing ‘fake’ about this situation is that Speaker Mattiello is claiming he had no knowledge that his PAC or campaign aides were engaged in illegal activities.”
RI House Minority Leader Patricia Morgan, who is making a GOP run for governor, joined Bell in calling for Mattiello to step down.
“After reading the Rhode Island BOE’s damning report, it is clear that Speaker Mattiello showed incredibly poor judgment and, more likely, knowingly broke the law in a desperate attempt to save his political career,” Morgan said in a statement. “The $72,067.80 that Mattiello spent was used to pay for voter contact, including his workers who visited nursing homes and senior centers to gather absentee ballots – if not for this expenditure, it is doubtful Mattiello would have won the election. I am calling on Mattiello to resign as speaker, as he has lost all public trust and his behavior has perverted our democratic election system.”
Mattiello pointed to the hectic nature of campaigns in saying he was not sure who was responsible for the overspending from his political action committee.
Richard Raspallo, the speaker’s legal counsel at the time and now a Superior Court magistrate, served as Mattiello’s PAC treasurer in 2016. Mattiello said he has hired CPA Ed Galvin to bring more diligence to his campaign spending and he vowed to avoid errors in the future.
“These are simple mistakes that lots of people make,” Mattiello said. “Because I’m the speaker and I spend a little more money, the numbers are a little higher, but it’s the same exact mistake a lot of people make. I will tell you I’m not perfect. I do make mistakes.”
During a Monday night meeting, the Elections Board voted to issue a warning against Mattiello. The speaker signed onto a consent order acknowledging his campaign violated spending limits in 2016 and agreed to repay his Leadership PAC $72,067.80 from his personal campaign account. Mattiello said he repaid that money Tuesday.
The Board of Elections also voted to schedule show cause hearings against two operatives who worked on the speaker’s 2016 campaign, Matt Jerzyk, a former lawyer for House leadership, and Jeff Britt, said the BOE’s director of campaign finance, Richard Thornton, “as to why they should not be held in contempt for failure to answer or ignored subpoenas issued by the board.”
The same vote applies to Shawn Lawton, who ran against Frias in a GOP primary in 2016, and Teresa Graham, who had the same address as Edward Cotugno, the mail ballot specialist who helped Mattiello squeak to a victory in 2016.
Republican candidate for governor Allan Fung offered a softer judgment than Bell and Morgan: “It is important that all campaigns play by the rules. I am glad the Board of Elections took the GOP’s allegations against Speaker Mattiello and his campaign staff seriously. They leveled a significant fine and the Speaker has acknowledged his mistake. It will be up to the voters of Cranston in November if he should be allowed to keep his seat in the House of Representatives.”
Frias, a lawyer who is considered a contender to be Rhode Island’s next top federal prosecutor, referred comment to Bell. Frias has said he remains undecided about staging a potential rematch against Mattiello in November.
Michael Raia, communications director for Democratic Governor Gina Raimondo, offered this comment: “Speaker Mattiello’s campaign made a serious mistake. The Governor has fought hard every year to strengthen Rhode Island’s ethics and campaign finance laws. We’re hopeful that this will lead the Legislature to take action on reform. All elected officials are expected to keep the public’s trust, and the public deserves to have confidence that all elected officials follow the rules.”
Mattiello was first elected to the House in 2006 and he became speaker in 2014, after a corruption investigation led Gordon Fox to step down.
The speakership is often called the most powerful political office in Rhode Island, because of the speaker’s control over state spending and personnel decisions.
