Talking politics: This week in politics, media and more

Hi there! I’m Ian Donnis, the political reporter at Rhode Island’s NPR member station, The Public’s Radio (89.3 FM, online at thepublicsradio.org). I write a weekly column to look back at the top RI political stories of the week and to share some other poli-media tidbits. Thanks to a kind offer from John Howell, you can now find my column in these pages. I hope you enjoy it. You can follow me through the week on Twitter, @IanDon.

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Go outside on a nice spring day in Rhode Island and you might be able to forget the pandemic for a few seconds. As the state moves ahead with the initial relaxation of COVID-19-related restrictions, becoming the first state in the region to do so, Gov. Gina Raimondo said the time is right. She points to a good stock of PPE, plans for a significant expansion of testing, a plateau in some key health indicators, and how the health care system has enough capacity to respond to a rise in cases. “I am leading from a position of confidence and strength and quite frankly, trust in the people of Rhode Island,” Raimondo said recently. “I am trusting that people are going to do the right thing and use good judgment,” by wearing masks, maintaining social distance from others, and limiting their social contacts. Moving ahead, the proof will be in the pudding. If cases surge amid fewer restrictions, elected officials like Raimondo will be accused of moving too quickly. But if things stay stable, the process of slowly reopening Rhode Island’s economy will continue. For many, the longing for that is intense, particularly considering how more than 200,000 Rhode Islanders have applied for unemployment benefits since early March. But across the U.S. more than half the states don’t meet White House guidelines for reopening, and the nature of the virus suggests that America’s recovery will be a long time coming, with a series of stops and starts.

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U.S. Sen. Jack Reed is proposing a new $600 billion relief package geared toward states, cities and towns. Reed said his proposal “makes it clear that lost revenue is a cost” and offers greater spending flexibility than the earlier CARES package. The senator points to a Slate analysis indicating that five of the top seven with COVID-19 related deficits are red states. “Nobody is immune from this crisis,” Reed said in a statement. “It’s great to hear some of my Republican colleagues urge flexibility for the funds currently available, but that’s not going to fill the widening budget black hole facing governors and mayors around the country. They’ll need more cash than we’ve provided so far. President Trump’s lazy, laissez-faire approach to this pandemic is leading the country toward mass layoffs, education cuts, and huge tax increases. We can’t let that happen. I urge Republicans to work with us to help protect the people they represent. Failure to respond in a timely manner will only result in more layoffs and a longer recession.”

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About 60 of the 66 RI House Democrats took recently part in a closed virtual caucus via the Zoom video-conferencing app. Sources say the top concerns expressed by reps include the staff and patients at nursing homes and the fiscal challenges faced by the state’s cities and towns. Rep. Anastasia Williams (D-Providence) delivered impassioned remarks describing the coronavirus-related hurt of people in her district, at a time when some people are fortunate to be distanced from the impact. A couple of reps floated the idea of overriding the governor’s emergency rule, but most believed such a move would cause far more harm than good. House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello led the meeting from state Democratic HQ in Warwick, joined by Democratic caucus Chairwoman Rep. Grace Diaz  (D-Providence). Mattiello outlined some of his views a bit earlier in the week during a conversation with Laure White of the Providence Chamber. The speaker said he opposes tax increases, hopes to maintain his signature phaseout of the car tax, expects a slow recovery of Rhode Island’s economy, and is strongly against voting the budget after the July 1 start of the next fiscal year. “Not doing a budget is not an answer, and it’s just a way to run out of money real fast,” Mattiello said.

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T. Kevin Olasanoye, the former executive director of the Rhode Island Democratic Party, was the person who invited Democratic state reps to the caucus via email. That shows how Olasanoye, who left in 2019 for a post with New Jersey Democrats, is advising the party while Ann Gooding serves as interim ED for the RI Dems. Meanwhile, Olasanoye’s successor, Cyd McKenna, who left in February to work on Mike Bloomberg’s ill-fated presidential campaign, is now chief of staff for the Collective PAC, which promotes African-American candidates like Kamala Harris and Cory Booker. (Bloomberg has donated $2 million to support related efforts to register African-American voters in swing states.) 

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Gov. Raimondo, who has long shown a penchant for attracting national media attention, has kept up a steady stream of media appearance with sources from outside in Rhode Island in recent weeks. She’s been on the BBC, CNN, WBGH’s Greater Boston, and Freakonomics Radio, to name a few. During a recent post-briefing conference call, I asked the governor why she’s making these appearances when she’s busy leading Rhode Island’s COVID-19 response. “It’s purposeful,” she said, pointing to how an earlier appearance with Wolf Blitzer, in which she outlined Rhode Island’s struggle to get PPE, sparked a call that night from the head of a large diagnostics company. Perhaps in part since little Rhode Island is leading the nation in per-capita testing, Raimondo’s office gets a lot of out of town media inquiries – about 20 to 40 a week. She said she rejects almost all of these. “But if I think there’s going to be value for Rhode Island,” Raimondo said, she’s happy to talk. Of course, the governor has also been touted for years as a Democrat to watch, so it’s not that surprising that she gets occasional mentions in outlets like The New York Times.

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During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing about eight years ago, then-Chairman Michael McCaffrey (D-Warwick) praised the tradition of Rhode Island lawmakers becoming judges. The strong legislative-judicial link can be seen in other ways, including the various legal counsel who have moved up to the bench and how former Senate President Joseph Montalbano, now a Superior Court judge, gets a very warm reception whenever he returns to the Statehouse. RI GOP National Committeeman Steve Frias took up a related theme when he submitted a 12-page letter to the Ethics Commission regarding Senate Judiciary Chairwoman Erin Lynch Prata’s interest in becoming a state Supreme Court justice: “This is not about the qualities or qualifications of Senator Lynch Prata to be a judge,” Frias wrote. “This is about requiring all legislators to follow an ethical requirement: the revolving door prohibition. If Lynch Prata is permitted to seek and be appointed to the Supreme Court, legislators who are more powerful and less principled than her, more questionable and less qualified than her will seek a seat on the Supreme Court in the future. In recent years, Rhode Island has seen powerful legislators, who were attorneys, engage in unethical conduct. If the revolving door to the Supreme Court is open to these type of legislators, one can imagine the type of unethical lengths they would go to secure themselves a position at the Supreme Court if they wanted it. Furthermore, once the Ethics Commission interprets the law to permit sitting legislators to seek a Supreme Court appointment, undoubtedly other legislators will seek to extend that interpretation to other courts. The more often the revolving door swings open for legislators, the more likely the trading of votes for judgeships will creep back into the legislature. Rhode Island cannot move forward by going backwards on ethics.”

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Congrats to Brown University alum Ira Glass and his team at “This American Life” for winning a Pulitzer. You can hear “This American Life” on The Public’s Radio every weekend. And at the end of each show, Ira mentions our GM, Torey Malatia, as a bit of a homage to their time spent working together in Chicago.