Question of the Week: How will House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry affect the outcome of the 2020 presidential race? That will play out through next November, and there will be a lot of news along the way. 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) While Democrats call President Trump’s behavior egregious, the Senate appears likely to acquit the president if he gets impeached by the House, and American voters are set to pick a president in little more than a year. So why proceed with an impeachment inquiry? The response from U.S. Rep. David Cicilline, a part of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s leadership, team is that the president’s behavior is so troubling that Democrats have to take action. “It’s undermining our national security. It is undermining his oath of office and the integrity of our elections,” Cicilline said on Political Roundtable on The Public’s Radio this week. “And we simply cannot sit by and allow this to continue to happen and so I think that’s why the Democrats are going to move forward expeditiously to gather up the balance of the evidence and then present articles of impeachment to the full House.” Fallout from the inquiry has already hurt Joe Biden, and it’s far from certain that Elizabeth Warren (or some other Democrat) will win in November 2020. So will the impeachment process backfire on Democrats? Cicilline’s view: “[T]he election is going to be won on whether or not Democrats have delivered for the American people and whether or not our Democratic nominee speaks about the important priorities of the American people and I have every confidence that whoever our nominee is that that person will defeat Donald Trump in 2020.”
2) House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello reinforced his hold on Smith Hill through the 2019 session. At the same time, the impact of an ongoing grand jury probe related to Mattiello’s 85-vote win over Republican Steve Frias in 2016 remains unclear. The issue includes the question of who bears ultimate responsibility for a campaign mailer, ostensibly sent by Shawna Lawton, engineered with help from Mattiello’s campaign and financial support from his supporters. Patti Doyle, a spokeswoman for the speaker’s campaign, calls this old news: “We don’t intend to look backwards at past campaigns but instead, remain focused on issues of import today.” But John Marion, executive director of Common Cause of Rhode Island, says the Lawton mailer raises significant issues, even if the money spent on it (about $2,000) was hardly a king’s fortune: “The importance here is that if illegal coordination is allowed to happen, that creates a back door through which money can flow into a campaign.” (Meanwhile, news broke Friday of a grand jury looking at questions related to Dr. Victor Pedro, the Cranston chiropractor who was in the headlines earlier this year.)
2B) It’s worth noting how this grand jury probe has happened on the watch of Attorney General Peter Neronha. The state Board of Elections, which has emerged as an increasingly strong campaign finance watchdog in recent years, previously issued warnings to Mattiello and Lawton on the mailer issue. But things appeared otherwise dormant – until this week — after the BOE referred the matter to then-AG Peter Kilmartin. Asked about the timing, Neronha spokeswoman Kristy dosReis said, “I can confirm the referral of that matter to this Office by the Board of Elections and that it has been reviewed by this Office. Upon taking office in January, Attorney General Neronha had that matter assigned to our Public Integrity Unit. Beyond that, I am not able to comment.”
2C) Will Steve Frias take a third shot at running for state rep against Speaker Mattiello in 2020? “Let’s see what the grand jury reveals and what Mattiello does on the IGT no-bid deal,” Frias tells me.
2D) Does the grand jury probe, combined with a state Ethics Commission investigation related to Gov. Gina Raimondo’s support for the IGT extension, really represent a new ethical low for the state? That’s what RI GOP Chairwoman Sue Cienki asserted in a news release this week. But Sam “Mentioned in Weekly News Round-ups” Howard made a salient counter-argument with this tweet: “RI’s ethical low was when a governor had to rummage in a trash can to retrieve the bribe he’d accidentally thrown out a few years after the Chief Justice plead guilty to embezzling and the capital’s mayor kidnapped and tortured his ex-wife’s boyfriend.”
3) With a brief lull in legislative hearings on the proposed IGT extension (the next is in Senate Finance on October 22), House Republicans sounded a call for an independent study to examine the key questions at the heart of the debate. The Raimondo administration responded by saying the issue has already been studied.
4) Media observer Ken Doctor reports that there’s a 90 percent likelihood that the mega-merger between Gannett and GateHouse Media – which owns the ProJo, Newport Daily News, Fall River Herald News, New Bedford Standard-Times and scores of other newspapers – will move forward. And the fallout sounds bleak for staffers and news consumers, particularly considering how the newsrooms at these papers have already been sharply reduced: “Expect aggressive early moves to begin achieving the $300 million in cost-cutting synergies the dealmakers have claimed to justify the deal. More than 10 percent of the chains’ combined workforce — about 25,000 in the United States — will likely get the dreaded call from HR that their services will no longer be needed. How big a cut will that be? If the headcount reduction reaches 3,000 — which would be 12 percent of the workforce — that’s the equivalent of McClatchy’s entire employee count. And McClatchy will be the second-largest newspaper chain in America after this merger is complete.”
5) While the fate of developer Jason Fane’s envisioned 46-story tower in the 195 District remains unclear, relations between Fane and the 195 District Commission took a terse turn this week. In a letter to Fane, 195 District Chairman Robert Davis approved a requested delay in submitting a tax stabilization application with Providence until December 1. But Davis wrote that the commission was given “pause” by how Fane planned to seek an addition extension. In essence, Davis wrote, Fane is slow-walking a process laid out in the purchase and sale agreement for the site for the tower. “To keep your project on track with the schedule underlying the purchase agreement, we must advise you that there will be no further extension of the filing date for the TSA,” the chairman wrote. “Further, we remind you that you are obligated to submit a pre-development schedule to the commission for its review and approval no later than than November 1st ….” Fane spokesman Dante Bellini fired back, describing how Fane “has committed several years of his time and energy as well as a significant amount of resources to constructing this iconic residential tower. But it is unfortunate that Chairman Davis chose to send a public letter, rather than picking up the phone and working through a simple deadline issue that is misplaced to begin with. To set the record straight on the matter of the TSA application: it is in the wrong place in the schedule. This project required a highly negotiated document with hundreds of details and deadlines. The TSA Application should have been placed much later in the process. We have been in touch with Secretary Pryor and Chairman Davis and will hope to work out this detail shortly in a positive and collegial manner.”
5B) Writing in the ProJo, Mark Patinkin asks whether Providence is turning into ‘a city of No,’ and he offers this assessment: “[W]hether you’re for or against the Fane Tower — it’s not a good message that the approval process has now dragged on for three years.”
6) It sure sounds like David Cicilline is going to endorse U.S. Rep. Joe Kennedy in his challenge to U.S. Sen. Ed Markey. But Cicilline is backing U.S. Rep. Richard Neal in the face of a primary with one-time Cicilline intern Alex Morse, now the mayor of Holyoke, Massachusetts. The Brown Daily Herald has a longer look at Morse, a 2011 graduate of Brown.
7) It’s hard to draw broad conclusions from two isolated elections. Nonetheless, it’s worth noting how candidate on the left and right sides of the political spectrum came up short in special elections this week. In Providence, Monica Huertas had the backing of the Rhode Island Political Cooperative, the new progressive group, and she was very visible on social media. But Huertas placed last in a four-way special election for the Ward 10 City Council seat formerly held by Luis Aponte; the winner was Pedro Espinal, who triumphed despite publicity about how he owes almost $100,000 in property taxes. (Espinal has run for office numerous times, so his name was familiar to voters, and he also boasted a strong mail vote operation.) … Meanwhile, in Tiverton, voters recalled two Town Council leaders, including Justin Katz, who is known for his conservative viewpoints.
8) During a public forum at the Providence Public Library earlier this week, Mike Stanton, Amanda Milkovits and yours truly agreed that while a lot of good reporting is still happening, in Rhode Island and elsewhere, the presence of far fewer reporters than in the past is not good for the public interest. But what to do about that? Classified ads were once a lucrative source of newspaper revenue, but that was destroyed by the Internet. The retail sector is weakening, so that means fewer ads. And tech giants like Google and Facebook have elevated and enriched themselves by using news content while offering little in return. U.S. Rep. David Cicilline has introduced a bill that would allow newspapers to collaborate on negotiating with the big tech platforms. Cicilline said the measure has bipartisan support and he expects to move forward. “Everyone recognizes that market concentration in this context is not just related to the sale of widgets,” Cicilline said on Bonus Q&A this week. “This is about our ability to have access to trustworthy reliable news information at the local level, and that’s critical to the functioning of our democracy.”
8A) In counter-distinction to my observation that the Journal was run as a public trust when it was family-owned, with stronger than typical investment in the newsroom, Stanton noted how the Journal was once gifted with a silver tea set, made from melted coins, for opposing the Dorr rebellion.
9) California legalized public banking earlier this month. According to the Guardian, the measure signed into law “will allow city and county governments to create, or sponsor, public banks. Those banks will in turn provide public agencies access to loans at interest rates much lower than they could find at private banks. Supporters say the change sets the stage for funding infrastructure demands or providing loans to developers to help meet affordable housing needs. Assemblyman David Chiu, who co-authored the legislation with assemblyman Miguel Santiago, said the bill’s ‘signing sends a strong message that California is putting people before Wall Street profits.’ ” Back in Rhode Island, Providence City Councilor Kat Kerwin tweeted that public banking – (which is similar to a measure proposed last year by Matt Brown) – “could be a chance to replace predatory lending with banking with lower barriers.”
10) Nina Totenberg offers a look at the new U.S. Supreme Court session: “The Supreme Court may be eager to portray itself as an apolitical institution. But this term, political questions writ large are knocking at the high court door. The upcoming term will almost surely be a march to the right on almost every issue that is a flashpoint in American society. Among them: abortion, guns, gay rights, the separation of church and state, immigration and presidential power. Also headed to the court are cases testing the power of Congress to get information from the executive branch and elsewhere, information that is relevant to congressional oversight and potentially, to impeachment. Clearly, President Trump had something like that in mind when he said of the current impeachment inquiry, ‘It shouldn’t be allowed. There should be a way of stopping it, maybe legally through the courts.’ And if that isn’t enough, pending before the court is a sleeper case testing the very structure of our presidential election system.”
11) Welp. Just one Rhode Island pick (#195) on Pitchfork’s list of the 200 best albums of 2010s.
12) The RI Community Food Bank cites these key findings from its latest report on hunger: “66 percent of households that visit food pantries include a child (0-17 yrs old) or senior (65+ yrs old); 45 percent of respondents report being in poor or fair health (as opposed to good, very good, or excellent); 69 percent of households with children have an employed adult yet 89 percent live below the poverty line; 75 percent of respondents are enrolled in SNAP (which the USDA plans to cut, leaving 11,000 Rhode Islanders without food assistance including 5,000 children)”
13) In the #MeToo era, does a star chef in Oakland who sexually harassed women deserve a second chance at helping to run a kitchen – or should he be permanently banished?
14) Megan Hall, formerly the healthcare reporter at what we now call The Public’s Radio, has been curating an ongoing series for the station. It’s called ‘Possibly’ and features short reports on the environmental impact of different choices made by individuals. Megan is now producing a new effort involving her alma mater, Brown University. It’s a podcast called Faculty in Focus and it highlights some of the big brains on College Hill, starting off with the perspicacious Tricia Rose talking about hip-hop, racism and more.
15) Bragging rights for two former staffers for Gov. Raimondo will be on the line when the National League Championship Series gets played. Stephen Neuman, a former chief of staff for the gov (he now works for American Airlines in DC), is a Missouri native who grew up rooting for the St. Louis Cardinals. Former Raimondo communications director Mike Raia, now with Nail, hails from Maryland and is (as a quick scan of his Twitter will show) a devout fan of the Washington Nationals. With this clash in mind, a bet was set in motion: If the Nationals win, Neuman will send Raia “a six pack of watered-down crap from St. Louis, delicious Ben’s chili, and buy beers at the Dubliner [in DC].” If the Cardinals win, Raia will deliver to Neuman “Rhode Island’s best working man’s lager, a six pack of my favorite DC-based beer, delicious (but not quite as delicious) NY System chili, and I’ll buy beers at the Dubliner.” … Elsewhere in playoff baseball, there are lots of Yankee fans in #RIPoli – Joe Paolino, Nick Hemond, Stephen Iannazzi and Lou DiPalma, to name a few (a situation stemming from Joe DiMaggio’s time as an Italian-American icon) – but the only RI-Houston connection we can think of centers on Allison Gaito, who formerly did strong work at WPRO and WPRI-TV and is now special projects manager for an ABC station in Houston. Play ball!
