"The amount of money she has raked in from corporations, from executives of corporations who at the same time are receiving special tax breaks and benefits from the state is a corruption of our democratic system," says the Democratic gubernatorial candidate.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Faced with a barrage of attack ads from his better-funded Democratic primary opponent, gubernatorial candidate Matt Brown on Wednesday nearly accused Gov. Gina Raimondo of corruption while proposing to push for new campaign finance laws if elected.

"Under Governor Raimondo, there’s an unwritten rule: if you want a government subsidy or tax incentive, you have to donate to her," Brown said in a news release under the heading "Raimondo's corruption."

But at a State House news conference Wednesday, Brown did not provide evidence of an actual quid pro quo in the Rhode Island Commerce Corporation of state government and indicated that Raimondo's prodigious corporate fundraising was a corruption of the system — even if not illegal.

"The amount of money she has raked in from corporations, from executives of corporations who at the same time are receiving special tax breaks and benefits from the state is a corruption of our democratic system," Brown said when asked multiple times if he was accusing Raimondo of criminal behavior. "That is an instance where our government is clearly looking out for corporations and Wall Street interests instead of looking out for the people."

Campaign staff clarified that the fundraising created a "culture" of corruption that he would end by not accepting donations from corporate PACs, lobbyists or companies with business before the state.

With Raimondo's corporate connections in the foreground, Brown proposed a series of campaign finance reform policies — many of which state lawmakers have tried unsuccessfully to pass in recent years — including banning campaign contributions from lobbyists or executives of companies with state contracts, state incentives and regulatory matter before the state.

He also proposed beefing up the enforcement resources of the Board of Elections, linking state financial with campaign databases and making candidates pledge not to coordinate with independent expenditure groups. Coordination between candidates and outside groups is already illegal, but Brown said candidates often escape consequences when coordination is found.

Brown's ethics announcement came a day after his campaign's lawyer wrote a cease and desist letter to Raimondo asking her to stop airing ads that accuse him of stiffing campaign workers in his 2006 Senate campaign.

Although Raimondo's financial advantage has given her a near monopoly on pre-primary Democratic advertising, outside groups have also jumped in to help her with mailers linking Brown to "money laundering" or saying he "nuked" his old nonprofit Global Zero against an image of a mushroom cloud.

To support his claim that Raimondo engages in "pay to play," the Brown campaign cited the lengthy list of donations, which they say ads up to $430,000, from employees of businesses that have received incentives from the Rhode Island Commerce Corporation, or law firms that represent them, since she took office in 2015.

The names are familiar to most Rhode Islanders: General Dynamics, CVS, Citizens Bank, law firm Adler Pollock & Sheehan and developer The Procaccianti Group.

Although $430,000 is real money in a small state, its only roughly 3 percent of the more than $12 million Raimondo has raised since 2013.

The Brown campaign also decried $3 million in "dark money" that has been channeled through political action committee to support Raimondo over the years, although many of the donors have been disclosed, making them no longer "dark."

Raimondo campaign spokeswoman Emily Samsel responded to Brown's attack with this statement calling the former secretary of state "unhinged" and circling back to Brown's 2006 campaign-finance problems.

"Matt Brown is a remarkably negative and angry candidate, and he is becoming increasingly unhinged as another one of his failed campaigns comes to an end. Brown knows Governor Raimondo follows every rule and law that governs campaigns," Samsel wrote in an email. "If Brown were sincere about wanting to clean up the system, he would never have used a loophole in the law during his last campaign, by raising money into the Hawaii, Maine and Massachusetts Democratic parties to enable his max-out donors to give his campaign more money than the law intends."



"The FEC may have concluded Brown didn’t break the law. But that doesn’t make it right and it was an embarrassment to our state," she added.