Yes, Virginia, there are fewer than **five months** until RI’s 2022 primary election. Your tips and comments are welcome. You can follow me through the week on the twitters.
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STORY OF THE WEEK: Exactly nine years to the day when the last Bank of America employee left the Industrial National Trust Building – aka the ‘Superman Building’ – top state and city leaders gathered at the Statehouse this week to support a plan for revitalizing the vacant Jazz Age tower. The $220 million proposal calls for creating 285 apartments. Reaction broke along familiar lines: supporters celebrated the idea of bringing new vitality to a prominent downtown building that has been idle for almost a decade. Critics, generally a mix of Republicans and progressives, lined up against what they call an excess of public subsidy to benefit private interests. Supporters make the point that lessons have been learned from blunders like 38 Studios; the state money in this case won’t become available until after a certificate of occupancy is issued for the project (they also note how the funding does not include a new outlay of state money, but comes instead from existing programs). Opponents note how an envisioned multi-decade loan from Providence would come with a 1% interest rate, and how the cash-strapped city would need to kick in $5 million to boot. Aside from the back and forth, bringing fresh life to the Superman Building could shape up as a political win for Gov. Dan McKee and Commerce Secretary Stefan Pryor, who is expected to leave that gig soon to pursue a run for general treasurer, and a legacy-polisher for Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza. While nothing is written in stone, this revitalization project has broad political support, and it appears far more likely to come to fruition than not.
THE POLITICS OF INVESTIGATION: Timing to politics is kind of like what location is to real estate. That’s why Gov. McKee’s Democratic rivals in the race for governor quietly celebrated when the FBI recently became involved in the state-federal investigation of the ILO Group contract awarded early in his administration. McKee defends the contract and he rejects the idea that his administration did anything wrong. But news coverage of the controversy will wind up in televised campaign commercials in the months ahead, so the question of when the investigation gets resolved – and how – has big implications for McKee’s hopes of retaining the governor’s office. During an interview this week on Political Roundtable, Attorney General Peter Neronha said his general practice is to discuss the results of a well-publicized investigation once it’s completed, regardless of whether it results in charges. But as far as the timeline for concluding the probe of the ILO Group contract, Neronha is offering no assurance that it will come ahead of Rhode Island’s September 13 primary election. “Look, we always try to move things as quickly as we can,” Neronha said. “…. What we need to do is exercise our jobs and duties in a way that is adherent to the law and the facts and we’re going to take whatever time we need to do this right.”
THE RACE FOR GOVERNOR: Not everyone follows the news, but everyone is affected by the economy. That truism might help Gov. McKee, as Rhode Island’s economy bounces back from the pandemic. According to the state Department of Labor and Training, the number of Rhode Island-based jobs climbed by 400 from February to March, as the unemployment rate ticked down to 3.4% (compared to 6% a year earlier). At the same time, Helena Buonanno Foulkes remains an X factor in the five-way Democratic primary. For months, McKee’s supporters have generally considered Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea his top rival. But Foulkes is assembling an imposing campaign account – her campaign this week trumpeted bringing in a Raimondoesque $1.3 million in Q1, and she also released a detailed plan on one of the state’s top issues – housing – that includes a call, among other things, to allow single-family homes built before 1980 to be converted into multi-family dwellings and to create a new tax credit for residents of multi-family units. With the months dwindling until the September 13 primary, time will tell whether Buonanno Foulkes’ campaign team made the right call by holding off on launching television ads to boost her name recognition across Rhode Island. However, in a sign that the broadcast launch is drawing closer, Bounanno Foulkes has hired as a consultant Tad Devine, the Providence native-turned-nationally known messaging maestro.
PREYING: Cases involving allegations of sexual harassment of students in East Greenwich, and inappropriate behavior in West Warwick, follow reports about the “fat tests” that took place in North Kingstown. Asked about this, AG Neronha said there’s a wider problem with children being victimized in Rhode Island. “Over the last five years, over 400 children have been the subject of sexual assaults in the state of Rhode Island. That’s a tremendously high number that I think flies below the radar screen. I have 70 prosecutors here in the office – 10 of them are assigned to the unit that handles those cases. That’s the largest unit of lawyers I have in the office; I think it speaks to the problem. So yeah, it’s a significant problem in the state of Rhode Island. One thing that worries me very much about that problem is there is a lack of sufficient mental health resources for children that are victimized both in the context of sexual abuse, but also broader mental health concerns. And that’s one place where I think we really need to invest as a state in making sure that those mental health resources – counseling, et cetera – are available to all children that are victimized or facing mental health issues arising from other sources.”
COVID: When Gina Raimondo was among the high-profile Democrats who recently got infected, it was a harbinger of a rising rate of COVID in the Northeast. In fact, Rhode Island this week had the highest rate of new COVID cases, according to The New York Times. Despite that, as my colleague Lynn Arditi reports, state Health officials are sticking with making recommendations on masking rather than a new mandate. As interim Health Director Dr. James McDonald told Lynn, “In other words, what we’re really trying to do is not overwhelm our healthcare system. That’s the philosophy of the United States, it’s very different [from] China, which [has] a zero-COVID policy. This is not the policy the United States has ever taken.”
CD2 GOP: If a primary between state Sen. Jessica de la Cruz and former Cranston Mayor Allan Fung loomed as a psychic X-ray of the ideological leanings of Rhode Island Republicans, well, so much for that. Less than a month after formally launching her campaign in CD2, de la Cruz announced Thursday night that she will instead seek re-election to the state Senate and toss her support to Fung. With less than $100K in her campaign coffers, compared to more than $500K for Fung, and a thinly populated base in northwestern Rhode Island, de la Cruz arguably read the writing on the wall. Fung still faces a primary against former Cranston Rep. Bob Lancia (who visited Mar-a-Lago this week, in a sign of his possible support among the Trump faction within the GOP), although he can also maintain a focus on fundraising and preparing for the post-primary fight against whichever Democrat emerges in CD2.
LET’S CHANGE THE SUBJECT: Speaking of former President Trump, two Rhode Island Republicans – Sen. de la Cruz and state GOP Chairwoman Sue Cienki – recently referred, in separate interviews, to the idea of ‘Trump living rent-free in Democrats’ heads.’ Making pivots is a longtime staple in political discourse; Democrats do the same thing. But attempts by de la Cruz to bat away my questions about Trump, and Cienki’s effort to do likewise during a 10 News Conference appearance with Tamara Sacharczyk, reflect a disinclination to engage with some of the serious questions raised by the Trump presidency, including his spreading of the false belief that widespread fraud marred the 2020 election. Regardless, the idea that Trump has somehow moved on from politics is a non-starter. The mogul/entertainer-turned-president continues to flirt with another run in 2024, he stages rallies around the country, and Trump and the ‘Save America PAC’ flood in-boxes with a relentless flow of come-ons.
CD2 DEMOCRATS: The emergence of progressive darling David Segal as a confirmed candidate marks a new story line in Democratic side of the CD2 race. Segal vows to have enough cash to get his message out, and he brought in close to $300,000 in a few months after announcing an exploratory campaign. That’s significantly less than the $1.4 million touted by Seth Magaziner, but a lot more than the lesser-funded candidates in the seven-way Democratic field, including Omar Bah, founder of the nonprofit refugee dream center. As I reported this week, Bah – as a refugee who overcame torture and persecution in The Gambia – has the most dramatic personal story of any candidate in CD2. He also has a concise three-part message: protect the American dream, protect democracy, and fight for the future. But with roughly $12,000 in contributions in Q1, Bah epitomizes the challenges faced by under-funded candidates who struggle for visibility in campaigns dominated by television advertising.
A POX ON BOTH PARTIES: John Marion of Common Cause of Rhode Island is one of the state’s top experts on campaign finance. (Back in 2005, one of John’s predecessors, Phil West, helped lead an effort to try to level the influence of money in Rhode Island politics.) A series of court decisions has made it a lot tougher to move ahead with such efforts. On the national level, Marion calls Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell a leading obstacle to advancing federal campaign finance reform, aka the For The People Act. (Interestingly, McConnell was the headliner for a Providence fundraiser for Lincoln Chafee cited in the link earlier in this item.) Yet ambitious Democrats are hardly shy when it comes to exploiting elements of campaign finance. A bygone element of McCain-Feingold allowed federal candidates facing self-funded opponents to raise money in far larger increments, rather than the standard increment of $2,900. Marion said that before that provision got struck down by a court around 2008, the candidates using it included a future president, Barack Obama, when he ran for U.S. Senate in Illinois in 2004.
LG-LAND: Lt. Gov. Sabina Matos launched her campaign this week with establishment support, a litany of endorsements, and a compelling personal story of rising to the state’s second-in-command as a native of the DR who arrived in the U.S. with little English. Her rivals in the Democratic primary are state Sen. Cynthia Mendes of East Providence, Matt Brown’s running mate, who has the backing of the progressive RI Political Cooperative, and state Rep. Deborah Ruggiero of Jamestown, who boasts strong messaging chops and who is trying to tap into Rhode Islanders’ ambivalence about the LG’s office by citing its unrealized potential.
FISH STORIES: Don’t miss a great two-part series by my colleagues Sofie Rudin and Antonia Ayres-Brown about attempts to raise the culinary profile of the humble scup and how climate change is creating new options for seafood lovers who want to eat local.
HARM REDUCTION: Rhode Island last year became the first state to legalize supervised drug-injection centers. Supporters say these centers reduce overdoses. But even with the state’s support, it’s expected to be months before the first such center is up and running in Rhode Island.
KICKER: Is it quintessentially Rhode Island to name something (the Newport campus of CCRI) after a former legislative leader who is very much still alive? And for Sen. de la Cruz to support this, and Sen. Cynthia Mendes (D-East Providence) oppose it, because of former Senate President Teresa Paiva Weed’s stance on abortion rights? TPW, now head of the Hospital Association of Rhode Island, made history as the first woman to head the Senate. The Newport Democrat was a canny pol, and certainly conservative on social issues, although she also helped pave the way for Rhode Island’s 2013 legalization of same-sex marriage through her earlier selections to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Ian Donnis can be reached at idonnis@ripr.org
