Expect the unexpected in local politics, even in the relatively quiet run-up to the end of December. That truism played out this week, so thanks for stopping by for my weekly column. As usual, your tips and comments are welcome, and you can follow me through the week on the twitters. Here we go.
1) A pertinent political observation – “the cover-up is always worse than the crime” – has been with us since Watergate. Yet Laufton Ascencao, who had been a rising star in Rhode Island’s progressive movement, took that aphorism to an extreme. Under fire from the Warren Democratic Town Committee, Ascencao acknowledged this week that he failed to follow through on a pledge to send mailers on behalf of Warren Town Council candidates. While that seems like a minor lapse, Asencao exacerbated the situation by creating a fake invoice and taking a photo of a check for money that was never spent. On Wednesday, one day after the controversy went public, he stepped down from the House District 68 state rep seat he won in November. While the 25-year-old Ascencao calls his reaction “a stupid and immature thing,” political observers continue to scratch their heads over the young politico’s contortions and wonder if there’s more to the story. For now, Rep. Marcia Ranglin-Vassell (D-Providence), whose 2016 campaign was managed by Ascencao, has left the so-called Reform Caucus, so that group’s ranks have fallen from 21 to 19. Meanwhile, another member of the group opposed to House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello, Rep. Moira Walsh (D-Providence), offered this message on social media about Ascencao’s decision to step down: “I’m glad everyone is happy with his choice, but can we stop with the eating our own stuff? I remember how quickly I was shunned after commenting on the drinking at the state house. It was IMMEDIATE. We have a speaker who actively tries to kick out Democrats. I know what it’s like to play for a team that is just WAITING for you to fail so they can attack. His coverup was bad, but I’m willing to bet it was because he was so nervous of letting down such an unforgiving party. So, yes Laufton stepped down. Now can we stop treating him like a monster? Cuz this dude has done more for the party than I ever have ….” Meanwhile, two other Reform Caucus members had their own past campaign issues: Rep. Joseph Almeida (D-Providence) pleaded no contest in 2015 to a charge of using campaign funds for personal use, and the state Board of Elections fined Rep. Art Handy (D-Cranston) $6,000 earlier this year for improper reporting of campaign contributions and expenditures. (Speaker Mattiello was also in the news this year for a mistake – exceeding state campaign finance laws during his 2016 battle with Republican Steve Frias.) Finally, with a new legislative session starting in just over three weeks, the Ascencao mess marks another blow to the public perception of the General Assembly.
2) Who’s running in the special election race to fill the House seat won by Asencao in November? Andy Tyska, a Bristol Democrat who ran in the September primary is considering it, is Rep. Ken Marshall (D) of Bristol, who had decided earlier this year not to seek re-election, and Warren’s June Speakman (D). Warren Town Council President Joe DePasquale (D) is in the hunt, as is Bill Hunt, a Libertarian who ran against Ascencao in November, and Bristol Town Council vice chairman Timothy Sweeney (D).
3) The Providence City Council is poised on Tuesday to override Mayor Jorge Elorza’s veto of a zoning change for the proposed 46-story Fane tower. Elorza delighted a vocal portion of his constituents with the veto, yet the political benefit of the move is limited. Term limits prevent the mayor from seeking re-election, and the veto will make it even more difficult to win support for Providence’s legislative agenda, considering how Speaker Mattiello and Senate President Dominick Ruggerio support the Fane tower. Public opinion on the project remains split. Opponents call it an example of spot zoning, and they object to the tower’s size and design. Supporters say the $300 million Fane tower is an important investment that will help catalyze more growth in Providence.
4) Bloomberg News reports that concerns about accusations of harassment have become so acute on Wall Street that male business leaders are adopting strategies to avoid women, a phenomenon likened to “the Pence Effect” (after VP Mike Pence’s practice of not spending time alone with a woman other than his wife). Here’s reaction from Hilary Levey Friedman, president of the Rhode Island chapter of the National Organization for Women, who guested this week on The Public’s Radio’s Bonus Q&A: “The solution to this problem is not to avoid women, because institutionally, if we’re fighting for equality, if you’re going to only associate with men then in certain situations, that’s really not going to alleviate the problem. It just creates a new one. The moral of the story is that we act as good people, we don’t harass others. We certainly don’t assault others. But I do think it’s helpful in many cases to have very clear policies. So there is obviously a call in Rhode Island, both for businesses and the business community and the educational community, but also in the legislative community, to set those guidelines out very clearly.”
5) U.S. Rep. David Cicilline has been outspoken in his criticism of Facebook and what he calls the social network’s inability to regulate itself. But will the House of Representatives really move to impose regulation on tech giants like Facebook, Google and Amazon? “I think so,” Cicilline, who hopes next month to become chair of the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform, Commercial and Antitrust Law, told me during an interview this week. “I think there ought to be bipartisan support for this. I mean, if you look at the underlying principles of anti-trust, it’s about pro-competitive policies, it’s about having a market that works, that creates greater choices and lower prices for consumers. In the area of the technology platforms, it also relates to our ability to get trustworthy reliable information. These are all really important issues. I think there’s a lot of interest. We’ve created an anti-trust caucus in the House because of our interest in these issues. I hope we’ll be able to build some bipartisan support and to be able to take this issue on, because there are not easy answers to this.”
6) While Gov. Gina Raimondo has used interviews with The Public’s Radio to rule out leaving office during her second term, she’s gone even further in the last week, telling the ProJo’s Kathy Gregg that she has no interest in becoming a member of the U.S. Senate (“I will go on the record as saying I am never going to run for the U.S. Senate, Congress. Don’t want to go to Washington”) and advising The Hill that there’s no way she’ll be a presidential candidate in 2020.
7) Back in the summer 1988, your humble correspondent worked in the Boston office of The Associated Press while John King (now of CNN) followed Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis on the presidential trail. Dukakis started with a strong lead over Republican George H.W. Bush, but that advantage melted in the face of aggressive attacks from the Bush campaign. The signature was the Willie Horton ad – labeled by critics as racist and fear-mongering. (Dukakis also failed to muster an effective response to the GOP attacks. While the image of him looking silly while riding in a tank remains an indelible image of the ’88 campaign, the reasons for his eventual loss were more complex.) Now, after Bush’s death at age 94, he’s remembered for other things, particularly the depth of his government experience and how he served during the demise of the Cold War. Yet despite the nastiness of the 1988 presidential campaign – which was later renounced by Bush’s campaign manager, Lee Atwater – the former president stands out in large degree as a genteel contrast to the bombast of President Trump. Meanwhile, Bush’s losing re-election run in 1992 bears some similarity to Rhode Island’s 2014 presidential race. In both cases, a third candidate snagged a significant chunk of the vote, denying victory to the GOP candidate.
8) Rhode Island Senate spokesman Greg Pare confirms that the chamber’s holiday party is solely for incumbent senators. Sen-elect Sam Bell (D-Providence) has likely not endeared himself to Senate leadership due to his outspoken approach, but Pare said the incumbents-only seasonal party is nothing new: “It has nothing to do with anyone’s statements or stance on anything,” he said, via email. Nobody is being ‘excluded.’ We’re not in middle school. This is a gathering for all sitting senators. All senators-elect were invited to the dinner following the caucus. Since you ask specifically about Senator-elect Bell, I would note that he was welcomed to that after-caucus dinner and attended. The Senate welcomes his voice to our chamber. However, it may be awkward to have sitting senators, such as Senator Calkin, sitting beside the challengers who unseated them, such as Senator-elect McKenney, at a celebratory holiday gathering. This is the first such gathering President Ruggerio is hosting following an election. All sitting senators were invited to attend, as they were last year and as we anticipate they will be next year.”
9) Kudos & congrats to Elisabeth Harrison, news director at The Public’s Radio, who’s leaving to become managing editor for news content at WBUR in Boston. We’re sorry to see Lis go, because she’s a great story editor and a very nice person, but I know she’ll do great work in her new gig. Her experience at The Public’s Radio goes back about a dozen years, to when we were known as WRNI, and has included stints as Morning Edition host and education reporter. Before coming to RI, Elisabeth was an assistant online news producer at CBS News in New York. A native of Los Angeles, she is a graduate of Wellesley College and earned joint Master’s degrees from New York University in Broadcast Journalism and French Studies. At WBUR, Lis’ responsibilities will include leading two separate content verticals, one on business and the other on healthcare. The Public’s Radio plans to put temporary newsroom leadership in place while the station seeks a permanent news director.
10) In another noteworthy local media departure, Maria Caporizzo has left her role as digital editor at The Providence Journal, after 15 years on Fountain Street. She declined to specify her next move for now, but tells me that she remains grateful for her opportunities at the ProJo: “Among them: Back in the day, as a young multimedia project editor, I gained invaluable experience working on big on interactive pieces with our talented digital team and staff writers, including Felice Freyer’s ‘The Price of Miracles’ (on the then-new Women & Infants’ NICU) and the late Bill Malinowski’s ‘Gangs of Providence’ and ‘State of the Mob’ — how we miss him; Digital journalism has grown up during my 15 years at 75 Fountain St. It wasn’t taken very seriously in earlier days. It has been a rewarding challenge participating in and then leading the varied ways we’ve worked to move a legacy print newsroom strongly toward digital. Most notably, in 2017 I authored and implemented our newsroom-wide digital strategy, our first time articulating position-specific digital approaches and goals for every manager and staffer. I have been part of a small team that designed our multi-platform primary- and election-night live tools, which we revisit and refresh every 2 years. These interactive social streams, tables and maps powered by Board of Elections data, bring out our audiences to watch election results come in with us in real time, precinct by precinct. We’ve offered these during the last several presidential election cycles – as well as the midterms. Perhaps most significant to me, I served as digital lead during ‘Race in Rhode Island’, our year-long public service project in 2015 …. Done right, digital tools can democratize our report. If we are not careful, they can have the opposite effect. As the demographics of Rhode Island change, our report and the tools we choose and how we use them must as well … Lastly, it has been a joy and a privilege to collaborate daily with such hard-working, smart, dedicated and professional colleagues, at the newspaper I grew up reading. I will miss them dearly and look forward to continuing to be informed by their work when it comes to the issues that matter most to Rhode Island. I wish them well.”
10) With housing costs in the Boston area hitting the stratosphere, can Rhode Island capitalize on the situation with a mix of more rental housing in the Blackstone Valley and the kind of transit connection that would make for a decent commute?
11) You might not expect Hilary Levey Friedman, as president of the RI chapter of NOW, to have a favorable view of beauty pageants. But Friedman’s interest in the subject extends beyond her day job as a sociologist, as she explained on Bonus Q&A: “One thing some people know about me, but not everybody does, is that my mother is actually a former Miss America. And the year that she won is the year that they actually burned bras on the [Atlantic City] Boardwalk. So the 1968 demonstration, they were still good girls, they didn’t burn their bras. She won in 1969, she was Miss America 1970. Very interestingly, one of my students at Brown was Miss America last year during the Me Too scandal that rippled through the Miss America organization. This is a young woman who has aspirations to be governor of her home of North Dakota. She wrote her honors thesis with me. This is not just about objectifying women — it’s about providing a platform for them to speak out on the issues that they care about. The National Organization for Women and beauty pageants might have a very different approach in some sense of how to do that, but at the end of the day they’re seeking out the same goal, which is equality for women.”
12) Short Takes from U.S. Rep. David Cicilline: The former Providence mayor tells me he doesn’t have a pro or con view on Fane tower because it’s not his lane …. He opposes the move by Nexstar (owner of WPRI) to buy Tribune Media since Nexstar already owns close to 40 percent of the TV market. “That kind of consolidation that would go above and beyond the existing cap, I think, is very problematic.” …. Cicilline expects “30 or 40” Democrats to run for president on the way to 2020 …. With his rise in the House leadership, Cicilline might have more to lose than CD2 counterpart Jim Langevin if Rhode Island sheds one of its two congressional seats in 2022. But like Langevin, Cicilline contends that possibility is far, far, far away. “I think it’s much too early. I just got elected. I don’t think anyone is thinking about 2022. But it would be bad for Rhode Island lost a congressional seat …. I’m hoping we won’t lose a seat. If we do, we’ll have to make a decision.”
13) U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse is a former U.S. attorney and attorney general, so he has some insight into the legal process. Here’s a thread from Whitehouse about Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation.
14) The U.S. Supreme Court may weigh in on a high-profile redistricting case in North Carolina.
15) Providence-based Aaron Samuels recently raised $6.5 million for Blavity, a media startup focused on raising under-represented voices, particularly African-American millennials.
17) While Amazon has blown up its business by removing friction for consumers, the culture of instant delivery brings its own downside. This podcast from The Daily, via The NYT, is well worth the listen.
18) Excluding the AG race, where Peter Neronha lacked a GOP rival, Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea was the best-performing RI Democrat in the November election.
19) With the passing of President George H.W. Bush, it’s worth remembering that the national network of soup kitchens and food pantries increased dramatically as what was intended to be a temporary response to the 1992 U.S. recession. Yet even though the economy improved, the problem of hunger only intensified – and the infrastructure to help hungry people remained in place. The current estimate is that about 40 million people in the US struggle with hunger, including more than 12 million children. (On a related note, the Rhode Island Community Food Bank is staging an open house from 9 am to noon on Saturday, December 8. The Food Bank says it serves 53,000 Rhode Islanders each month, a third of them children. “The Holiday Open House is a great opportunity for families to visit and learn more about the work we do to provide food for our neighbors in need,” Andrew Schiff, CEO of the Rhode Island Community Food Bank, said in a statement. “Everyone is welcome to take a tour, enjoy some music and refreshments, and donate a non-perishable food item to help ensure no one goes hungry this holiday season.”
20) Just six French fries per serving, really?
