The former Providence Journal reporter Elliot Jaspin once called Rhode Island a theme park for journalists. The same could be said for advocates of good government. Although there have been fewer cases of public corruption in recent years, issues of government accountability and transparency remain front and center. One person closely monitoring these issues is John Marion, who has served as executive director of Common Cause of Rhode Island since 2008. He keeps a watchful eye on state government and spends long hours at the Statehouse monitoring the General Assembly. Over time, Marion and predecessors including Phil West have been an important voice for reform in Rhode Island. But is that enough when many people believe democracy is on the ballot this November? What is the effect when Donald Trump perpetuates a false narrative about crooked elections? And why are we not seeing more robust competition for legislative seats in Rhode Island? This week on Political Roundtable, political reporter Ian Donnis goes in-depth with head of Common Cause of Rhode Island, John Marion.
TRANSCRIPT:
This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Donnis: There are fewer people running for the General Assembly this year and fewer contested primaries next Tuesday than we’ve seen in many years. I think we could agree one reason for the reduced activity is kind of the dormancy of a progressive group that had been active in the last two cycles, the Rhode Island Political Cooperative. But beyond that, what would you point to in explaining why there’s less competition?
Marion: Yeah, I think there are multiple factors. I think progressives made a lot of gains in the last decade or a little less than a decade. Working Families Party came in first, followed by, sort of, the remnants of the Bernie campaign in the Co-op, as you mentioned. You know, they’re not challenging incumbents because they have a lot of incumbents. So in some instances they’re protecting some seats like up in Pawtucket and down in Exeter. But that’s part of it, I think, in the primary. And then in the general, the Republican Party is having a hard time recruiting candidates. The same is true across the nation where – it’s called partisan – sort of, one party becomes dominant and the other party really sort of recedes. As the dominant party takes over, it just becomes more difficult to recruit candidates.
Donnis: Are there any changes that Common Cause would support to encourage more competition?
Marion: Yeah, first of all, we should have an independent redistricting process. You know, if you look at the quantitative measures after the most recent redistricting, Republicans could have gained more seats had the redistricting not been basically run by the Democrats. Public financing of state legislative elections, the evidence from Connecticut and Maine is there’s more competition and a more diverse set of candidates where there’s public financing for state legislative seats.
Donnis: You mentioned the challenge of Republicans getting more Republican candidates. Some people say the quality of governance would be better in Rhode Island if there was a more balanced two-party system. As it stands, Republicans hold only 14 of 113 legislative seats. What in your view is holding the GOP back from building its legislative presence?
Marion: I think there’s infrastructure questions that they face. Sort of on a map nationally, it doesn’t make sense for the party to probably invest in Rhode Island because they’re only going to make marginal gains in Rhode Island. There’s also just problems with, sort of, reputation, right? The national party has been taken over by a movement, and that may not trickle down as well at the local level where we had formerly sort of Yankee Republicans who were more liberal, and that has made it probably more difficult for them to attract candidates.
Donnis: On a related note, there’s debate about whether Rhode Island should stage a constitutional convention. Supporters say it would be a way to get around the supermajority of Democrats in the legislature and maybe usher in an inspector general or something like that. Opponents say it would unleash a wave of reactionary forces. How does your organization come down on it?
Marion: Yeah, it’s interesting. So we are not taking a position. We didn’t take a position 10 years ago because, quite honestly, I have a local board of about 15 Rhode Islanders and they disagree. I think some would like to see it happen and some definitely don’t want to see it happen and so we are doing education. So when I’m asked to speak, I go to groups, and explain like what a convention might look like. We testified to the Preparatory Commission about what a convention might look like based on the 1986 convention. And so there are merits on both sides. I think it is a way to get around the legislature when we don’t have voter initiative like about half the states, but there are real threats to our civil rights and civil liberties if they’re put on the ballot and subjected to a majority vote.
Donnis: Let me stop you there because we’ve got a lot of ground to cover. Let’s switch gears and talk about the presidential race. Republican candidate Donald Trump continues to lean heavily on lies about elections as he makes his campaign. How is that affecting the presidential race in your view?
Marion: Yeah. You know, it feels like a replay of what happened in 2020, which is there’s this sort of gaslighting occurring about possible problems with elections that we know aren’t happening. It’s sort of setting up for election denialism 2.0 and setting up for him to challenge the results if he doesn’t like the results. That’s a scary place for us to be in as a country. Fortunately, I think a lot of folks are out mobilizing our Secretary of State here in Rhode Island to try to bring a lot of transparency to our elections and show people with real proof that there’s a lot of integrity behind elections in this state and this country.
Donnis: Trump’s critics say the guardrails that help to protect democracy are weaker now and that he would be a bigger threat if he retakes the White House because he has the experience of having been there before. How do you see the outlook for the state of democracy if he wins?
Marion: Well, so, I think it’s mixed. There was one congressional reform, the Electoral Count Reform Act. So I don’t think the events of Jan. 6 could necessarily repeat themselves because Congress has reformed what happens on that day. But I think, yes, I think, you know, he has shown a willingness to, kind of, blow through norms and not face consequences for blowing through norms. And so I think we’re going to see more of that and I think it is a threat to democracy.
Donnis: Let’s bring it back to Rhode Island. Your organization, Common Cause, was among the groups supporting a major overhaul to the state’s open records law this year. That did not make it through the legislature, perhaps because it called for a very large number of changes. What is the plan for trying to move that forward in the future?
Marion: Yeah. So we’re going to come back. We’re part of a coalition called Access for Rhode Island, along with the ACLU and others, and we’re going to come back. As of now, our plan is to bring the bill back and try to make our case to the legislature again. I’ve had some conversations with the Speaker. I think the House is going to maybe want to dig into sort of the details of the bill in a way that they didn’t last session and hopefully, if they put some attention on it, we can find a bill that all parties might not love, but all parties can live with.
Donnis: How do you assess the quality of government transparency in Rhode Island right now?
Marion: Yeah, I mean, there are some real challenges. The reason the bill contains more than 40 changes to the public records law is because there are lots of problems with our public records law, and nobody knows that better than the working media like yourself and the obstacles you face in getting records. And I think the Washington Bridge has highlighted that, right? The public’s in the dark about a lot of things. And APRA has been used to shield.
Donnis: APRA is the Access to Public Records Act.
Marion: Yeah, thank you. I think while we have some good laws on the books, we’ve got to keep, sort of, sharpening the tool because it’s an incredibly important tool of transparency.
Donnis: Thank you for bringing up the Washington Bridge, the obsession of many Rhode Islanders. I wonder if you think it’s myopic for the state to be suing a number of companies that worked for the state on the bridge over the years without even considering the possibility that the state might have any responsibility for what went wrong.
Marion: Yeah, that’s a great question. I think, I feel good that the Attorney General, who does a lot of litigation and a lot of complex litigation, has sort of gotten involved here because he clearly is not a fan of the McKee administration. If he thought they were trying to use this just solely to, kind of, cover themselves, I don’t think he would have gone forward with the litigation. That said, I’m concerned that it’s going to delay the so-called day of reckoning, where we kind of learn who made the mistakes and what those mistakes were. The Boston Globe has some reporting about Senator Zurier [who] is sort of pushing transparency in the litigation, and I hope that goes someplace.
Donnis: I think we’re fortunate to still have a fairly robust media landscape in Rhode Island, but one thing that has changed with the diminution of the Providence Journal and the fading away of its bureaus over the years is that there are many outlying areas of Rhode Island that get much less media scrutiny in the past. Do you see any signs that this is worsening problems with corruption in areas outside of the media spotlight?
Marion: Yeah, it’s a great question. There’s actually empirical evidence. There are political scientists who’ve looked at where the media deserts occur in the United States and seen an increase in corruption. I think that it’s hard for us to say that it’s happening in Rhode Island because we don’t have the media exposing it, so we don’t know what we’re not seeing. But I see stories all the time that I think, boy, if there had been a ProJo bureau in that community, that would be not just a one-day quick story. That would be a week story, or that would be a beat reporter covering that for months and getting to the bottom of that. And that’s a real problem for democracy.
Donnis: You started on the beat at Common Cause way back in 2008. From a good government perspective, how do you assess how the General Assembly has changed since then?
Marion: Yeah, you know, it’s fascinating. Each leader brings a different style. I think it was sort of chaotic under Fox. They went through the night a lot. there were debates that were raging and sort of brought the place to a halt. And Mattiello enforced a sort of discipline. Now Shekarchi has a very different style, and that’s just the House. The Senate has changed as well. I think there are still problems. Peter Neronha has said on a couple of occasions, and I think this is a great way to look at it, that it’s a dictatorship. Right now it’s sort of a benevolent dictatorship, particularly in the House, when it can be a malevolent dictatorship as it sort of was under Nick Mattiello. In the end, we need to get it away from being a dictatorship, and I think eventually if enough rank and file – as they did in 2018, the so-called Reform Caucus – demands changes, there will be changes. I think it’s got to come from within in many respects because it’s got to come with the threat to withhold your vote for leadership.
Donnis: We’re out of time so we need to leave it there. Thank you so much for joining me, executive director of Common Cause of Rhode Island, John Marion.
Marion: Thanks for having me.
