Published Fri Feb 07 2020 19:58:55 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)

by Ian Donnis

Question of the Week: Can Democrats overcome the disarray of their primary season to mount an effective challenge to President Trump? A lot of people are wondering about that, and the story has a local angle. 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.

It’s not exactly news that prominent Rhode Island pols like House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello and Senate President Dominick Ruggerio sometimes dine at such venues as the Capital Grille. But the sheer volume of the two leaders’ spending from campaign funds on food and drink – more than $630,000 since 2007 – attracted a lot of notice after my story this week. Ruggerio and Mattiello downplay the significance of the spending, a longtime tradition for Statehouse leaders. “It’s kind of like the normal thing to do,” said the Senate president. That’s true -- 70 percent of the top RI spenders from campaign funds on food/drink since 2002 are current or former lawmakers. At the same time, that illustrates the power of the General Assembly among the state’s three branches of government. And critics like John Marion, executive director of Common Cause of Rhode Island, call the big spending on food and drink one of the ways in which leaders like Mattiello and Ruggerio keep themselves in power: “That’s because the money, particularly from lobbyists, is flowing to those who have the power to make decisions -- who hold the fate of legislation in their hands,” Marion said. “And then the legislative leaders can use that to maintain their coalition of support and maintain power. There’s a feedback loop, essentially.”

2) The ongoing grand jury probe related to Speaker Mattiello’s call for an audit of the RI Convention Center (and the subsequent cancellation of the request) has left a dark cloud parked over the Statehouse. Where this will lead is unclear, but openly five of the 65 Democratic reps in the House have openly challenged the speaker. “I think it because there is still that cult of fear that exists,” Rep. Teresa Tanzi (D-South Kingstown), a longtime critic of Mattiello, said on Political Roundtable this week.

3) Speaker Mattiello’s big spend of campaign money on food and drink is particularly objectionable to Tanzi and others who believe candidates should be able to spend campaign contributions on childcare. During a Boston Globe forum in Providence last month, Mattiello questioned the merit of that idea. “You start opening up the scope of what people can use campaign money on, and it could be a slippery slope and subject to abuse,” the speaker said. “We’ve already had too many elected officials get in trouble with misappropriating campaign funds. So I’m just leery to do it for that reason alone.” For her part, Tanzi noted how Mattiello has spent almost $9,000 in campaign funds at a single cigar bar.

4) In less than a week, Gov. Gina Raimondo went from facing jeers after being introduced at a URI basketball game to hearing cheers while setting the stage for Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg’s appearance in Providence. The former NYC mayor and the Rhode Island governor have enjoyed mutual admiration for one another for a long time, so Raimondo’s endorsement of Bloomberg (his first by a governor) was unsurprising. The pairing offers benefits for both; a string of former Raimondo loyalists and former aides have joined Bloomberg’s campaign: David Allard, Gabe Amo, Cara Cromwell and Jon Duffy of Duffy & Shanley (the latter two were closely involved with Engage RI, the group that helped build support for Raimondo’s much-heralded pension overhaul in 2011). Raimondo, who is taking part this weekend in a Democratic Governors Association event in DC “to highlight how [governors] success at the state level on kitchen table issues like health care, education, and jobs,” can help boost Bloomberg in other states. With a net worth in the tens of billions, Bloomberg has the scratch to run a lot of ads and build a big operation (800 staffers in California, for example). And yes, there’s a long way to November. But if Bloomberg’s unorthodox campaign proves successful, it’s not hard to imagine Raimondo getting a cabinet post like secretary of commerce.

5) About those boos at the URI game: Raimondo, perhaps, should have heeded the advice of the late U.S. House Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill, whose book, All Politics Is Local, outlined a series of political rules, including this: “Never get introduced to the crowd at sports events …. People go to sports events to enjoy the action. They feel intruded upon if some outsider imposes on what they paid good money for.”

6) The early adapter advantage: remember how Lincoln Chafee, not long after he left the GOP to become an independent, endorsed Barack Obama in February 2008? You can draw a direct line between that and how Obama declined to endorse Democrat Frank Caprio in the 2010 gubernatorial race – sparking Caprio’s ill-fated “shove it” flap, and winning Obama’s lasting gratitude.

7) Attorney General Peter Neronha’s office invited reporters in this week for a wide-ranging conversation with the state’s top prosecutor. Some highlights: 1) Neronha, who declined comment on the Convention Center probe, said he has zero tolerance for leaks from his office and will fire anyone who violates that. 2) Neronha said his office reached out to Twin River’s Marc Criasfulli after Crisafulli said he was threatened by Brett Smiley (Smiley denies that), but that since Crisafulli didn’t respond, “that case is closed.” 3) “Those two things on its face are very different,” Neronha said of the case involving Jeff Britt and legislative leaders’ big spend on food and drink, since the latter comports with state Board of Elections rules. 4) Neronha, who has downplayed his interest before in running for governor, ruled out the prospect of shooting for that office, and said he expects to seek re-election in 2022.

8) Can a broad coalition convince the General Assembly to support the process for a constitutional amendment that could create an independent commission to redraw legislative districts? That’s a big lift, since legislative leaders are loath to cede their power. But the potential exists for a unified front among liberals, centrists and conservative groups like the Gaspee Project and the RI Tea Party (which signaled their support via Twitter). There’s also the downside to the status quo. As Common Cause of RI notes in a statement, “Without the amendment, the state legislature will continue to oversee the redistricting process. Past redistricting efforts have become exercises in political power, creating districts that split communities of interest and are geographically dispersed. All-too-often, the legislature’s maps have ended up in court. Lawsuits after the 1980 Census cost Rhode Island taxpayers more than $1 million in legal fees, as the legislature tried to defend a series of maps that were each ruled unconstitutional. When fair maps were finally used in 1983, the GOP tripled its number of seats in the state Senate, bringing the number of Republican Senators to 21 of 50. Maps drawn after the 2000 and 2010 Censuses were also challenged in court. A ‘partisan efficiency gap’ analysis found that Rhode Island’s 2012 House of Representative plan is the most Democratically partisan gerrymandered in the United States. Other measures of partisan gerrymandering include "partisan bias" and "mean-median." By each of those measures in 2002, 1992, 1982 and 1972, Rhode Island maps were partisan gerrymanders."

9) Give a listen to these interviews by NPR’s Steve Inskeep. U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff tells him the impeachment process was “absolutely worth it.” Rudy Giuliani tells Inskeep that the next step should be a probe of Joe Biden.

10) Mike Bloomberg’s appearance in Providence this week offered a bit of a reminder of 2008, when the close Democratic fight between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton gave Rhode Island’s presidential primary unusual significance. The divisions among local Dems could be seen back then in how Eli Zupnick, a young staffer for Lt. Gov. Elizabeth Roberts, took a leave to work on Obama’s campaign. Roberts was a Clinton supporter, as was Zupnick’s girlfriend, Allison Kerbel, who worked for the Clarendon Group, whose boss, Christine Heenan, was the comms director for Clinton’s RI campaign. (Zupnick, now a comms consultant, went on to work in DC as comms chief for Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, while Kerbel works for the DC schools.) To bring things full circle, Heenan is maintaining a New York base after working for Harvard, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, and her reconstituted Clarendon Group now includes Joy Fox, the former comms director for Gov. Raimondo.

11) The New Hampshire primary – coming up on February 11 – used to be a make or break affair. Not so much any more, as Scott MacKay notes.

12) Rhode Island Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea’s office has created a useful online tool for scrutinizing legislation and lobbyists. As her office explains, “Data Exploration Tool users can explore broad trends, such as the number of registered lobbyists in a given year, or the number of bills introduced in the General Assembly on a given subject. With just a few clicks, users can also narrow their focus to explore the activity of an individual lobbyist or the progress of an individual bill …. All lobbying and legislative information contained in the Data Exploration Tool is public, but until now was not easily sorted. For more details on lobbying in Rhode Island or to view lobbying reports, visit the Secretary of State’s Lobby Tracker. To read the text of a specific bill, visit the Rhode Island General Assembly’s Legislative Information page.

13) A bill that would let undocumented immigrants to get driver’s licenses is moving forward in Massachusetts. Gov. Raimondo campaigned on that issue in 2014, but not much has happened with the topic.

14) How online dating is changing us as a society.

15) “Can journalism be saved?” – an interesting read from Nicholas Lemann.

16) Boatloads of tax dollars get poured into what President Eisenhower presciently dubbed the ‘military industrial complex.’ So if you want to gain some insights, you could do a lot worse than checking out The Bunker (“military intelligence for the rest of us”) from Mark Thompson, began his career at the Pendulum in East Greenwich.

17) Let’s see. NESN gave Don Orsillo his walking papers. The Red Sox have the highest ticket prices in MLB. Alex Cora seemed like the epitome of leadership, but was part of a cheating scandal with the Astros (and the extent to which that was present with the Sox’ world championship in 2018 remains to be determined). And now Mookie Betts, one of the most exciting players in the game, has been dealt to the Dodgers, for the rough equivalent of a toaster and a few broken bats. Is that about it?







