Your faithful correspondent took most of this week off, in large part to rake leaves, so this week’s column is a bit abbreviated. Happy Thanksgiving and thanks for stopping by. As usual, your tips and comments are welcome, and you can follow me through the week on the twitters. Here we go.
1. Governor Gina Raimondo continues to draw sharply contrasting reactions as she reaches the mid-point of her four-year term. Wall Street Journal editorial writer Allysia Finley, a long-time Raimondo fan, offered an example of the elite out-of-town view of the governor with a laudatory piece last week entitled, “An Island of Rationality in Blue-State New England.” The article, perhaps prompted by a post-election visit by the governor to the WSJ, praises Raimondo for focusing on targeting economic growth, in contrast to the identity politics played by some Democrats. “While Rhode Island still suffers from the ninth highest unemployment rate in the country,” Finley writes, “jobs growth has picked up since her pension reforms passed. Over the past two years, its GDP growth has surpassed every state in New England, save Massachusetts. This might seem like a low bar for measuring achievement, but Rhode Island was dead last in the years between the prior two recessions.” Closer to home, the ProJo’s editorial board sounded a more reserved note in writing about local job cuts at CVS: “The fact is, Rhode Island’s economy is still sputtering, and its leaders must look at what can be done to make the state an attractive place to do business, with or without incentives that can be used to sweeten the pot. Rhode Island’s leaders need to scale back regulation and red tape, reduce tax burdens and improve the reputation of a state that routinely places near the bottom in rankings for business friendliness. It also must get serious about improving public education. Thus far, the governor’s efforts in that area have been weak and timid.” Raimondo’s communications director, Mike Raia, not surprisingly, favors the message of the WSJ opinion piece. “What was made clear in that story is that because of Governor Raimondo’s focus on economic development, businesses are taking a fresh look at Rhode Island,” Raia said, “and in many ways we’re positioned better than our neighboring states.” He might be right. But a lot of Rhode Islanders are still being left behind in the economy, and as we’ve noted here before, some of the governor’s initiatives will take time to bear fruit. Yet recent election-season polling put Raimondo’s approval rating north of 50 percent, she retains a potent war chest as we move closer to 2018, and it remains unclear for now which Republican(s) will emerge to run for governor.
2. How will President-elect Donald Trump impact the First Amendment? Was the mainstream media slanted in covering Trump’s campaign? What does it say that Trump was elected after being the subject of so much appropriately tough reporting? And is there hope for moving past a media landscape in which many Americans rely only on sources that mostly reinforce their existing political beliefs? These are some of the questions I put to former Providence Journal investigative reporter Mike Stanton, now a journalism professor at the University of Connecticut, in an interview that aired earlier this week on RI Public Radio. You can listen to it here.
3. If not a kingmaker, state Republican Chairman Brandon Bell has emerged as a good person to know for Rhode Islanders hoping to land a federal appointment in the Trump administration. Bell said he’s been contacted by a couple of dozen people interested in the post of US attorney and other federal jobs that could include US marshal, a regional Social Security role, and potentially judgeships. “It’s like hitting the lottery and all of your distant cousins who you never met are contacting you,” Bell said. (He declined to identify the people who have contacted him.) The Republican chairman is a person of influence in this process due to how Rhode Island’s congressional delegation includes no Republicans. “I’m told that I’ll play a role,” Bell said, possibly advisory, in helping to examine applicants; he said the precise process has not yet been spelled out. Bell also noted that it could take a while for appointments to be made since they sometimes occur months after a new administration takes power. That hasn’t stopped aspirants from calling Bell for a meeting and sending him unsolicited resumes.
4. It tells us a lot about America’s 2016 Thanksgiving season that the media was full of stories about how to talk politics over turkey without being a complete jerk.
5. The New Yorker profiles Middletown native Mike Flynn, national security advisor for President-elect Trump. Like some other media accounts, this article describes Flynn almost as two separate people. Here’s an excerpt on the earlier incarnation: “A lot of reporters and other civilians found Mike, as everyone called him, refreshing. A plucky Irish Catholic kid from Rhode Island, he wasn’t impressed by rank. He told his junior officers to challenge him in briefings. ‘You’d hear them say, ‘Boss, that’s nuts,’ ” one former colleague said. The colleague asked not to be named, as did others I talked to for this story, either because they wanted to maintain a positive relationship with Flynn or because they did not want to criticize the incoming Administration. “When he would walk in a room, they would look up like little dogs. They just loved him.’ “
6. State Rep-elect Ken Mendonca (R-Middletown) thinks President-elect Trump should do more to repudiate the hateful individuals who view him as a champion. “I think he really should just come out and say, I don’t need their support and I don’t represent then,” Mendonca said on this week’s RI Public Radio Bonus Q&A. During an interview this week with The New York Times, Trump disavowed hate groups. Yet that remark — like Mendonca’s — came in response to a question. Some observers continue to call for the president-elect to offer a stronger response to white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and their ilk. As an example, the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank pointed to George Washington‘s message of acceptance to the Jews of Newport in 1790. “There is room for cooperation on much of Trump’s agenda,” Millbank writes. “But cooperation is difficult, if not impossible, when a president gives sanction to bigotry.”
7. I’d like to extent thanks to the readers of this column; to the Rhode Islanders who help to sustain Rhode Island Public Radio; to my colleagues at other news organizations; and to the people who play a role in politics and public life in the Biggest Little. Meanwhile, if you care about civic life in the Ocean State, you can help strengthen it by subscribing to the ProJo, contributing to RIPR, or supporting your preferred news organization.
8. Via NPR: “We Tracked Down A Fake-News Creator in the Suburbs. Here’s What We Learned“
9. Watch for gun issues to remain a topic at the General Assembly in 2017. RI for Gun Safety, the group backed by Alan Hassenfeld, helped knock off John DeSimone in Providence, and spent heavily against House Judiciary Chairman Cale Keable, who emerged with a narrow victory over his Republican opponent. The Rhode Island Coalition Against Gun Violence plans to maintain a focus on the three bills it championed in 2016, and those on the other side of the issue can be expected to mount a vigorous defense.
10. Contra the self-flagellation practiced by some Ocean Staters, Llewellyn King writes a love letter to Rhode Island. Excerpt: “People, you have a little treasure here; a bolthole for the world-weary, a welcoming and pleasant place with great restaurants, a wonderful selection of beaches, interesting countryside and the warmest people this side of I know not where — and I have traveled to more than 100 countries and lived on three continents.”
11. How heritage turkey breeds made a comeback — and how we need to eat them to save them.
