Secrets and Scandals: Reforming Rhode Island 1986-2006, Chapter 52

Monday, February 29, 2016

H. Philip West Jr.

Between 1986 and 2006, Rhode Island ran a gauntlet of scandals that exposed corruption and aroused public rage. Protesters marched on the State House. Coalitions formed to fight for systemic changes. Under intense public pressure, lawmakers enacted historic laws and allowed voters to amend defects in the state’s constitution.

Since colonial times, the legislature had controlled state government. Governors were barred from making many executive appointments, and judges could never forget that on a single day in 1935 the General Assembly sacked the entire Supreme Court.

Without constitutional checks and balances, citizens suffered under single party control. Republicans ruled during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; Democrats held sway from the 1930s into the twenty-first century. In their eras of unchecked control, both parties became corrupt.

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H Philip West's SECRETS & SCANDALS tells the inside story of events that shook Rhode Island’s culture of corruption, gave birth to the nation’s strongest ethics commission, and finally brought separation of powers in 2004. No single leader, no political party, no organization could have converted betrayals of public trust into historic reforms. But when citizen coalitions worked with dedicated public officials to address systemic failures, government changed.

Three times—in 2002, 2008, and 2013—Chicago’s Better Government Association has scored state laws that promote integrity, accountability, and government transparency. In 50-state rankings, Rhode Island ranked second twice and first in 2013—largely because of reforms reported in SECRETS & SCANDALS.

Each week, GoLocalProv will be running a chapter from SECRETS & SCANDALS: Reforming Rhode Island, 1986-2006, which chronicles major government reforms that took place during H. Philip West's years as executive director of Common Cause of Rhode Island. The book is available from the local bookstores found HERE.

Part 4

52 Déjà Vu (2006)

Don Carcieri and his staff expected a gubernatorial challenge from the blueblood Yankee Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse. But Whitehouse set his sights on the U.S. Senate, where Lincoln Chafee’s ties to the Republican Party of President George W. Bush made him vulnerable. Instead of Whitehouse, Carcieri found himself facing Charles J. Fogarty, a cheery populist whose political roots reached Rhode Island’s bedrock. Although Democrats held a huge numeric advantage, Republicans had occupied the governor’s office for all but four of the last twenty years. Pundits suggested that independents — and even many registered Democrats — routinely chose Republican governors to counter perpetual Democratic majorities in the General Assembly.

Carcieri launched his 2006 reelection campaign by decrying “long-entrenched lobbyists, public union bosses, special interests and career politicians.” He declared that they were “trying once again to make state government their private playpen. They will fight me with everything they have, because I will never do their bidding. Never.”

But Fogarty also promised reform. “The main reason I’m running for governor is to fundamentally change the way Rhode Island does business,” he told reporter Mark Arsenault. “We have a great state but we’ve been held back by this cloud of corruption, individuals as well as institutions that have zapped the confidence of Rhode Islanders. We need to turn that around.”

On the last night of the legislative session, both the Senate and House passed Fogarty’s loophole-closing Public Accountability and Reform Act of 2006. When Carcieri allowed this legislation to become law without his signature, Fogarty tweaked him for not signing. “What’s your problem with the bill?” the challenger asked. “What about it don’t you like?”

Jeffrey Neal, Carcieri’s press secretary, fired back that Fogarty’s legislation failed because “self-employed lawmakers — such as lawyers and insurance brokers — are not required to disclose who their clients are or from whom their income is derived.” Neal dismissed the new law as “a recipe for continued conflicts of interest.”

Neither Neal nor the governor seemed to grasp a central premise of the 2004 Celona Law, which Carcieri had signed: the rules of lawyer-client confidentiality barred attorneys from naming their clients. That fact may have been too technical for a sound bite. Most media ignored it entirely. The Providence Journal explained it in a single story.

Throughout the 2006 campaign season, the corrupt practices of John Celona kept making headlines. From stories in the Providence Journal, Operation Clean Government had distilled three complaints involving the former senator’s work for CVS, Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Rhode Island, and Roger Williams Medical Center. On July 25, Celona stood with clasped hands and smelling of sweet cologne before the Rhode Island Ethics Commission.

Chairman James Lynch read a list of ten specific “knowing and willful violations” from a negotiated settlement. With attorney Lauren Jones at his shoulder, Celona admitted to each count and then read a prepared statement: “I’m sorry that I let my personal financial needs overwhelm my duty to act ethically and be a good senator. While I might not have started out intending to violate the code of ethics, at some point I knew I had stepped over the line and I failed to correct my conduct. I do not blame anyone but myself.” He closed: “I hope that by trying to do the right thing now, I can salvage whatever honor I may have left.”

The Ethics Commission could have levied a fine of $25,000 for each of the ten violations, but prosecutor Jason Gramitt recommended lower fines for eight charges, and commissioners agreed. Even so, the final tally of $130,000 became the highest ethics fine in Rhode Island history. I guessed that Celona would never pay. He had burned through everything he earned.

Celona also agreed to plead guilty to three federal felonies. His plea bargain required his testimony against those who had bought his services.

Federal prosecutors made him a star witness at the September trial of Roger Williams Medical Center and three top executives accused of stealing his “honest services.” At the gray U.S. District Courthouse on Kennedy Plaza, the three faced charges of paying Celona more than $260,000 over six years “to cause him to use his influence, power and authority as a state senator to benefit the political and financial interests” of the hospital.

I had never met the hospital’s vice president, Frances P. Driscoll, or Peter J. Sangermano Jr., who managed its assisted living complex called the Village at Elmhurst, but I remembered the institution’s president, Robert A. Urciuoli, from our work on the Blue Ribbon Commission that proposed downsizing the General Assembly and raising legislators’ pay. Urciuoli and I had not seen each other or spoken since December 1993, when the panel issued its final report.

The prosecution and defense agreed that Celona had approached Urciuoli in the summer of 1997 for a job. When Urciuoli hired him as a recruiter for the Village at Elmhurst, Celona’s pay flowed from the hospital through its subsidiary.

In his opening statement, Assistant U.S. Attorney Luis M. Matos told jurors that Urciuoli and his subordinates secretly paid Celona to raise reimbursement rates from insurers, increase ambulance runs to their hospital, and promote the hospital’s position on key legislation. “A corrupt politician doesn’t act on his own,” Matos declared. “He needs someone to pay him and tell him what matters to work on. And he needs someone to help him hide his actions.” The prosecutor pointed to Urciuoli as the one “who bought, and agreed to buy, John Celona’s corrupt services.”

Boston defense lawyer Richard M. Egbert countered that Celona had used a “sob story” about his failed lawnmower business to plead for sympathy. Urciuoli hired him for legitimate work with senior citizens. At the time Celona was hired, Egbert told jurors, he “was without influence, power, or authority. He could open no doors.”

Whatever the truth was when John Celona began work in 1997, he became immensely more valuable to Roger Williams Medical Center in 2000, after he helped William Irons seize control of the Senate. At that point Celona succeeded Irons as chair of the powerful Senate Corporations Committee — later renamed the Commerce, Housing, and Municipal Government Committee — that handled hospital and health care legislation.

The prosecutor elicited damning testimony from his prime witness. Celona told of using his leverage as committee chair to push higher reimbursements from insurers to the hospital. In cross-examination Egbert reminded jurors that Celona’s work for the Village at Elmhurst had been no secret. In fact, it was listed in his profile in the Rhode Island Government Owner’s Manual.

The hospital’s attorney, James R. McGuirk, testified that Urciuoli had approached him in 1997 about hiring Celona and he had warned against it, in part because of potential conflicts of interest. At Urciuoli’s request, McGuirk prepared a consulting contract and a letter requesting an advisory from the Ethics Commission. Significantly, both documents named the Village at Elmhurst but not Roger Williams Medical Center. McGuirk testified that Urciuoli never told him Celona was legislating for the hospital.

The Roger Williams Medical Center trial also exposed the banality of backstage legislative discourse. Celona testified that Senate leaders designated bills they intended to bury as “NGN — Not Going Nowhere.” Stories from the trial stoked newspaper headlines, television news, and talk radio. The scandal hung over Rhode Island like smoke from burning oil.

I never cared for fashion shows or knew why a nonprofit called RISE asked me to be in one. RISE stood for Rhode Islanders Sponsoring Education. Its motto was “Empowering children of incarcerated parents.” Founded by Brown University physicians, RISE aimed to break cycles of addiction, poverty, and violence. An incongruously expensive boutique fitted me with tapered shirt and paisley tie. The clerk handed me a velvet jacket he estimated was worth a thousand dollars.

“What about pants?” I asked.

He asked if I had old jeans that were ripped and splattered with paint. I said I did. “Wear those,” he said. He promised to have my outfits waiting in the men’s dressing area.

The event fell on a September Saturday across Kennedy Plaza from the federal courthouse. A vast white tent covered the skating rink, filling at dusk with a well-heeled audience. As daylight faded, campy models pranced to the end of a spot lit runway and pirouetted. Two candidates for lieutenant governor — Democratic Sen. Elizabeth H. Roberts and Republican Reginald A. Centracchio, the retired adjutant general of the state’s National Guard — wowed the crowd in bipartisan splendor.

Organizers paired me with Mark S. Weiner, who had famously raised phenomenal amounts of money for Democrats, most recently as finance chair for John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign. We sashayed to the turnaround, where he ripped off his jacket and flung it to the audience. We shook hands, high-fived, and bowed to the crowd.

I spoke briefly backstage with Dr. Pablo Rodriguez, a leader in the 2002 Latino redistricting lawsuit and the medical director of Planned Parenthood. Nineteen months earlier, he and family members had been riding an airport van on a Texas highway when a drunk driver slammed into them. Rodriguez and his son landed in intensive care with life-threatening injuries, and his niece died.

I slipped out of the tent and watched from the darkness as a bent figure in a bathrobe, wearing a gray wig and oversized medical sunglasses, pushed a walker haltingly onto the runway. The audience hushed. The invalid struggled to the end where, with perfect comic timing, he shoved his walker aside, cast off the wig, dark glasses, and robe. In a bright blazer and faded jeans, Pablo Rodriguez waved in triumph and boogied to music. The audience leapt up, cheering and dancing with him.

Mark Weiner and I had both come through bouts with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. His had been in the newspaper. Mine had not. We shared our experiences and a survivors’ hug.

I had never spoken with Fred Butler — a diligent member of the Ethics Commission — outside the commission’s office. Now, at this light-hearted fundraiser, we were joined in a cast of goofy characters, as the visionary nonprofit turned our shenanigans into $100,000 worth of scholarships for the children of prisoners.

As the event ended, people lingered to talk. I was turning to leave when Bob Urciuoli stepped out of the shadows. We had not shaken hands in years, and his voice cracked with stress. He explained that his wife chaired the RISE organizing committee, and he had come to support her.

Testimony in his trial had just ended. Urciuoli had not taken the stand in his own defense but wanted to talk. He told me of meeting John Celona at church in the late 1970s. In 1997, when Celona’s lawnmower business went under, the new senator asked for work. Urciuoli said he had felt Celona’s desperation and looked for some legitimate way to help. One obvious answer lay in marketing the Village at Elmhurst to seniors, a population Celona had courted successfully in his campaigns for the North Providence City Council and state Senate.

Urciuoli explained that from our work on the Blue Ribbon Commission he knew the ethical dilemmas of a part-time legislature. Aware that unions and businesses employed many legislators, he had directed the hospital’s attorney to seek an advisory opinion from the Ethics Commission. To avert potential conflicts Urciuoli distributed copies of the advisory to senior staff at the hospital and its extended care affiliate. He assured me that Celona had recused himself from scores of Senate votes that involved the medical center. He insisted that Celona had delivered many times in patient fees what he had been paid.

The former hospital president and I stood alone in a shadowed corner among hundreds of empty chairs. Jury selection had dismayed him. Prosecutors had dismissed business owners who might have understood his plight. “We got a jury of people who have never been to the legislature, don’t know how a bill gets introduced, don’t understand how people lobby for and against bills.” He complained that prosecutors had presented an email from Celona about working to defeat the cancer council as if that proved criminal conspiracy. He shook his head at the absurdity. “Phil, you remember that boondoggle. The Hospital Association, Brown University, and Common Cause all opposed it.” He sagged under an ominous awareness that these jurors seemed credulous of evidence as weak as Celona’s cancer council email.

I walked home along Saturday night streets, past bars and parties, pondering Urciuoli’s plight. I imagined how hard it would have been to turn Celona away when both men were communicants at the same church. Ethics laws were never intended to prevent institutions from hiring legislators. Rather, the law mandated financial disclosure and penalized conflicts of interest. Urciuoli had required that Celona disclose his work. CVS and Blue Cross executives had not. Had Urciuoli used the ethics process as cover? Was I gullible to take him seriously?

Two weeks later, on Friday October 13, the jury declared Bob Urciuoli guilty on one charge of conspiracy and thirty-five counts of “honest services mail fraud.” Each paycheck mailed to Celona became a mail fraud felony. Jurors found Frances Driscoll, the hospital’s vice president, guilty on a single count of mail fraud. They acquitted Peter Sangermano, of the Village at Elmhurst, on all counts.

“The verdict sends a loud message,” declared U.S. Attorney Robert Clark Corrente. “The people of Rhode Island are sick and tired of corruption and inside deals. To those who would accept these inside deals as ‘typical Rhode Island,’ today’s verdict says ‘not anymore.’ ”

Judge Ernest Torres scheduled sentencing for the spring. Meanwhile, the daily drumbeat of corruption stories permeated election debates as Don Carcieri and Charlie Fogarty each claimed the mantle of corruption fighter.

During the summer of 2006, Rhode Island courts had hurried to address the General Assembly’s repeal of a law that allowed a governor to place advisory questions on the ballot. In July, Superior Court Judge Stephen J. Fortunato Jr. upheld Carcieri’s proposed questions on voter initiative and property tax limits. Fortunato went beyond what the governor’s lawyers had argued, affirming Carcieri’s authority to place such questions on the ballot and opening the door for future governors to do the same. “It is the declaration of this court,” Fortunato wrote, “that the governor has the prerogative to submit questions for inclusion on the ballot, with or without any legislative action.”

Supreme Court justices came back from summer vacations to hear emergency arguments. They ruled that Secretary of State Matthew Brown no longer had “authority to comply with the governor’s letter” because the veto override had “extinguished the governor’s authority well before the secretary could prepare the ballot.” The justices added that Fortunato had overreached in declaring that Rhode Island governors possessed a constitutional power that neither side had argued.

Gov. Carcieri’s advisory questions would not go before state voters, but the Narragansett Indian Casino question remained. On August 8, U.S. District Court Judge William E. Smith dismissed a lawsuit that aimed to knock it off the ballot. “Courts should not wade into constitutionally torrid waters unless doing so is unavoidable,” Smith wrote. “That is not the case here.”

The Rhode Island Supreme Court also appeared wary of “torrid waters.” I took it for granted that House leaders had dispatched their request for an advisory opinion about legislators serving on CRMC to the high court. No one expected the justices to schedule briefs before a calendar conference early in September, but when that date passed without an announcement, I wondered what their silence meant. The mystery thickened when the high court’s October scheduling conference came and went without word.

On October 12, I went to the RIPEC annual meeting and dinner at the Marriott Hotel. Businesses hosted tables for executives, managers, legislators, judges, general officers, and a few public interest advocates. Across my assigned table sat Chief Justice Frank Williams. We had not spoken since the Ethics Commission’s meltdown five years earlier when he blamed “the ethics flap” on former director Martin Healey. I believed that Williams had hidden his own role and made Healey a scapegoat.

Throughout the dinner the chief justice and I sat too far apart in a talkative throng to communicate except for when our eyes locked. After the speeches and awards, I made my way to Williams in the crowd. Startled, he accepted my handshake. I asked why the September and October scheduling conferences had both passed without any announcement about briefs and arguments on the House request for an advisory opinion on the CRMC.

“We didn’t get to it,” he said abruptly and ducked away.

As people streamed toward the exits, I caught up with Bob Flanders and told him about my terse exchange with Williams. “Why would he say ‘they didn’t get to it?’ ” I asked.

Flanders burst into laughter. “They’re scared to death of it,” he said. “Imagine the reaction of their colleagues across the country if they were to rule — even after voters approved such a clear amendment — that Rhode Island still had no separation of powers. They would make themselves a laughing stock.”

Campaign spending wars dominated fall TV. Incumbent U.S. Senator Lincoln Chafee fought for his political life against Sheldon Whitehouse, while Gov. Carcieri battled Lt. Gov. Charlie Fogarty. Both contests drew national attention and money.

Pro- and anti-casino forces also squared off with vast amounts of money. Former Gov. Lincoln Almond led an anti-casino coalition called Save Our State (SOS). When the Providence Journal reported that between June 1 and August 31 Harrah’s had spent $5.2 million, Almond mocked the Nevada firm for “trying to buy our Constitution.” Save Our State, by contrast, had raised just over $1 million, half from Lincoln Park and half from Newport Grand. Chambers of commerce, hotels, and restaurants chipped in another $40,000. “It’s $5,000 here and $2,000 here,” Almond told reporter Scott Mayerowitz. “I expect we’ll have enough money to do our job.”

Common Cause joined Lincoln Almond’s coalition. Vice President Brian Heller explained to reporters that our organization had never taken a position either for or against gambling, but we were outraged that Harrah’s casino would be “planted permanently in the Rhode Island Constitution.” He cited a 2003 House gambling study: “Their own report called for a competitive process and creation of an independent regulatory body before the naming of a casino developer or host community. They produced a solid report and then trashed it.”

The Casino Amendment had bumped our Right To Vote Amendment from Question 1 to Question 2 on the November ballot. Our steering committee had no money for advertising or polling but developed a two-pronged strategy. We would organize in the state’s urban core — Providence, East Providence, Pawtucket, Central Falls, Woonsocket, and Newport — where eighty percent of disenfranchised ex-convicts lived. Our paid staff — mostly street-wise former prisoners — would lead teams of volunteers, mostly college students. They would canvass block by block, educate potential voters, and connect with prisoners’ families who could motivate their neighbors. We hoped this get-out-the-vote campaign could deliver enough urban support to overcome likely negative votes in small towns and suburbs.

Our second prong would rely on traditional reform allies to build support in outlying areas. Barbara Hurst, a public defender and member of the steering committee, recruited officials who had prosecuted crimes. Our list of supporters soon included retired judges, former attorneys general, U.S. attorneys, police, and parole board members. Many shared our belief that voting would lessen recidivism.

Mayors, city council members, state legislators, and members of Congress agreed to be listed as publicly endorsing Question 2. Gov. Donald Carcieri and Atty. Gen. Patrick C. Lynch refused to back the effort.

At the steering committee’s request, Providence Police Chief Dean Esserman and I published an opinion piece in several papers, and several of us began meeting with publishers and editors to secure their support.

Professional organizations and reform groups — particularly the ACLU, Common Cause, and the League of Women Voters — had volunteers distributing flyers. The AFL-CIO, teachers’ unions, AFSCME, and SEIU promised to encourage their members to support Question 2. The only statewide organization that publicly opposed restoring the vote was the Rhode Island Police Chiefs Association.

Right To Vote Coalition partners with religious roots — ranging from the American Friends Service Committee to the Unitarian Universalists for Social Justice — pulled together in support. The Rhode Island State Council of Churches scheduled a “Day for Justice” on October 22, when congregations would distribute information and urge “Yes” on Question 2. Urban churches with large minority congregations participated enthusiastically, while predominantly white suburban and rural churches were less supportive. Former prisoners recruited priests, pastors, and imams who had helped them behind bars.

We hosted an interfaith clergy breakfast where we distributed flyers and a sample sermon. In churches where I spoke, I asked worshippers to call out words at the heart of their faith. Their responses came like drops of rain: “Love . . . Compassion . . . Mercy . . . Forgiveness.” I preached from the question posed by the prophet Micah: “What does the Lord require of you? Only to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.”

Though Koren Carbuccia would never claim to be a preacher, she had testified and lobbied courageously to get the amendment onto the ballot. On a Monday night in the reception room at the Family Life Center she practiced her most crucial speech. In the morning she would face reporters, speaking for more than fifteen thousand former prisoners. Nervous, she kept interrupting herself.

Nancy Kirsch, hired by the campaign to focus our public message, reassured her. “Relax, Koren,” Kirsch coached, “you’re a natural, and you have a really important story to tell. Relax and take your time.”

Carbuccia started for the fourth time. “Good morning. My name is Koren Carbuccia. I’m a student at Community College of Rhode Island working toward a degree in substance abuse counseling.” Her eyes showed the stress she felt.

“Today I am a mother of four-year-old Vaskan, and we live together in Pawtucket. Today I took Vaskan to pre-kindergarten for the very first time. It was a proud moment. My life wasn’t always this good.” She told of life behind bars during the first two and a half years of Vaskan’s life. She had nursed him in the visiting area and decided, for his sake, to break with her past.

“I take care of my son. I read to him. I play with him. I’m a responsible parent now. I’m a responsible citizen.” Without bitterness, she went on to say that the state would not allow her to be the best parent she could be because it would not let her vote. “Voting is important to me,” she said, “especially in the school board election. Why? Because Vaskan has special needs that must be addressed. If I can’t vote in school board elections and local elections, I can’t speak for him. Under our current law, Vaskan will be fifteen before I can vote.” \

Hers was a gentle song in a minor key, its emotion beneath the surface. Her voice steadied like a cello. As she finished, I felt the sting of tears. “I’m crying,” I said. “You’ll touch their hearts in the morning.” If she could hold her composure, she would make unseen people visible to those who would rather not see them.

Next day, in the State House rotunda, reporters clipped their microphones onto a podium at one corner of the central landing. Carbuccia stood on the stairs in a black pants suit, waiting her turn while political leaders, civil rights organizers, and a preacher improvised. Finally, beneath a gleaming bronze lamp stand, she spoke. With tight curls closely cropped, large eyes, and scarcely any makeup, she conveyed quiet authority.

Afterward, reporters for the Providence Journal and Pawtucket Times wanted exclusive interviews with her. I held my breath as each, in turn, held their tiny recorders near her lips and asked tough questions. She spoke candidly about her drug crimes, experiences in prison, Vaskan’s special needs, and her hopes.

The next morning lead stories in both newspapers began with the same two words: “Koren Carbuccia.” Jim Baron of the Times told her story in tight paragraphs for readers in the city where she lived and longed to vote. Karen Lee Ziner at the Journal led with a crisp summary — “Koren Carbuccia is working hard to change her life after spending more than two years in prison for drug offenses” — that turned one ex-inmate’s story into a lens that focused on facts of felony disenfranchisement.

The New York Times ran a front-page story that made Rhode Island’s effort emblematic of a national need to help former prisoners reconnect. “What we’re witnessing,” state prison director A.T. Wall told reporter Erik Eckholm, “is a great turning of the wheel in corrections policy.” The story described more than 600,000 inmates emerging from the nation’s prisons each year and the dismal fact that more than half of those would return. Even with help from programs like the Family Life Center, the story continued, “odds against staying straight are formidable.”

The Westerly Sun ran a profile of Peter A. Slom, a sensitive former prisoner who had been convicted of selling cocaine fifteen years earlier, served twenty-six months in the Adult Correctional Institutions, been released, stayed straight, and earned a degree in social work. Reporter Chris Keegan described Slom’s efforts as a youth soccer coach, chair of a school building committee, and chair of the Right To Vote Steering Committee. But Slom could not vote and would not become eligible to vote for two more years.

Despite their reporter’s article and a campaign visit to their office, publishers of the Sun warned readers about another ex-convict who, while still on parole, blasted a Westerly woman with a shotgun. “Had his release shown he had turned his life around?” the editors asked.

Coventry Sen. Leonidas Raptakis sounded a similar refrain in an opinion piece that appeared in several papers. “While the advocates of Question 2 are careful to offer up heart-warming stories of felons who have turned their lives around,” he wrote, “the fact of the matter is that approval would restore voting rights to violent felons who may have little or no interest in contributing to the quality of life in our community. We are talking about giving voting rights back to offenders who may have killed, crippled, maimed or viciously attacked their fellow citizens.”

But the usually conservative editors at the Providence Journal turned Raptakis’s question around, suggesting that voters ask instead: “What policy would serve to promote the safety and other interests of most citizens?” As if the answer were self-evident, the editors answered: “It is in society’s interest to encourage felons to reconnect lawfully with their community.” The editorial closed by reminding readers that current Rhode Island law barred “blacks and Latinos from voting at rates higher than 37 other states. The Ocean State can join the American mainstream, removing this obstacle to minorities’ participation in civic life, by voting yes on Question 2.”

The New York Times chimed in as well: “Allowing former convicts to vote strengthens democracy, and helps them to integrate into society and move beyond a life of crime.” Its editorial encapsulated our entire campaign: “Felon disenfranchisement is a relic of another America. It was often done to keep blacks from voting, or to stigmatize ex-offenders. Rhode Island, which was founded by religious dissenters, can strike an important blow for inclusion by allowing people who have paid their debt to society to participate in democracy.”

From the start of the gubernatorial race, Don Carcieri and Charlie Fogarty had jousted over who would be tougher on corruption. At the Common Cause annual meeting in September they answered questions in a town hall format. Despite public civility and a smiling handclasp with board president Dan Siegel, their mutual contempt was obvious in body language as each listened to the other. But our audience got no advance notice of what lay ahead.

During the last week of October, a national Republican group mounted an attack ad aimed at the reform legislation Fogarty had coaxed to passage during the spring. “In Charlie Fogarty’s world,” an authoritative voice began, “life is good, if you’re an insider.” Video showed silhouettes of men in suits shaking hands and passing a satchel, while Fogarty’s smiling face appeared with the caption: “Fogarty’s Ethics Bill: ‘Lawmakers still aren’t required to name clients.’ ”

Four shadowy men marched into a police line-up beneath a caption: “Charlie Fogarty’s Supporters.” The ominous voice-over continued: “Fogarty wrote the law that allows bureaucrats like him to hide who’s paying them, opening the door to special interests, inviting backroom deals. Little wonder Fogarty’s big money political supporters look like a line-up.”

With faces obscured but still labeled “Charlie Fogarty’s Supporters,” the camera zoomed in on the caption “Mayor Buddy Cianci donated $1,000” in 1999. A red stamp declared in bold capital letters: “convicted of corruption.”

The next dark figure was a man tagged “Frances Driscoll donated $2,250,” as the red stamp appeared: “convicted of mail fraud.” Ironically, Frances Driscoll was female.

“Convictions! Bribery! Indictments!” the voice warned over two more silhouetted men in the lineup. The last was captioned: “House Speaker John Harwood donated $1,000 in 1998.” The bold red stamp read: “driven from office.”

The four shadowy men in the lineup swaggered as the announcement ended with, “Fogarty claims he wants to clean up Rhode Island. Why does he want to keep all of us in the dark?”

The screen went black, and a headline dropped to its center: “We Need Solutions.”

Another line knocked it away: “Charlie Fogarty is part of the problem.” Red letters squeezed in: “Charlie Fogarty is STILL part of the problem.”
At the bottom came disclosure in tiny block caps: “PAID FOR BY THE REPUBLICAN GOVERNORS ASSOCIATION.”

It looked as if the Republican Governors Association had taken a page from the playbook of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, who had turned John Kerry’s respected Vietnam record against him. This commercial misrepresented new transparency requirements, falsely implying that Fogarty actually added layers of secrecy.

Beyond its devious content, the commercial used illicit funds. This was the second time national Republican cash had funded an attack ad that helped Carcieri and violated Rhode Island’s campaign finance law.

Since 1992, Rhode Island’s Campaign Finance Law had outlawed aggregate contributions above $25,000 to any candidate or political party. But in October 2002, the Rhode Island Republican Party took $250,000 — ten times the legal limit — from the Republican National Committee for a commercial that cited “insider deals, scandal, corruption,” and “state spending out of control.” The ad promoted Carcieri as a “fresh start for Rhode Island” and directed viewers to his campaign website. At a Board of Elections hearing on October 21, 2002, a lawyer for the Rhode Island GOP claimed its commercial was only an “issue ad,” since it did not contain the words “Vote for Don Carcieri.” Carcieri’s campaign disavowed the ad, insisting it had been produced independently, although Ken McKay, Carcieri’s campaign manager, acknowledged that Carcieri welcomed national support.

The bipartisan Board of Elections had ruled unanimously that the Rhode Island Republican Party had violated state campaign finance laws and ordered the ad taken down, and the state Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal. The case dragged on for years with volleys of motions until Superior Court Judge Stephen J. Fortunato condemned the board for bungling the probe and barred further investigation.

Carcieri had won in 2002, and the 2006 commercial “In Charlie Fogarty’s World” followed an eerily similar path. But who had fed crucial intelligence to a production company paid by the National Republican Governors Association? Had Carcieri’s campaign broken the law? Though neither question would be answered before November 7, the commercial “In Charlie Fogarty’s World” was grotesquely dishonest.

With support of the Common Cause Rhode Island executive committee I sent a press release to media across the state to set the record straight. I summarized what I called “six new and significant reforms” in the law Fogarty had pushed. “What I find disturbing about this attack ad,” I wrote, “is that it disparages the lieutenant governor for conceiving this bill, and it blames the lawmakers who worked diligently to pass it. This new law constitutes real progress toward open, accountable government, but no one would know that by watching this commercial.”

I added details that had never been publicized: “Neither Governor Donald Carcieri nor his staff testified on this legislation. A huge and bipartisan majority in the House of Representatives approved the bill. Only one Republican and one Democrat voted against passage.” The governor had allowed the legislation to become law without his signature. And if Fogarty’s bill was as bad as this commercial claimed, why had Carcieri not vetoed it?

I wrote that Common Cause Rhode Island had never weighed in on any campaign commercial. “But this attack ad cries out for fact-checking. Besides dishonoring both Governor Carcieri and Lieutenant Governor Fogarty, it misleads Rhode Island voters.”

Print reporters phoned for further comment, and newspapers across Rhode Island ran stories on the deceptive ad. Joe Baker wrote in the Newport Daily News that I had never — even in off-the-record conversations — engaged in partisan politics. “In the countless times I’ve spoken with West, I have never heard him give any hint of endorsement for or against a state official.” That history, he wrote, gave my statement about the anti-Fogarty ad its “jaw-dropping impact.”

For several days, I wondered why television stations ignored such a blatant lie about Fogarty’s signature reform. The mystery ended when the Republican Governors Association filed a required report with the Board of Elections. Their report — ironically filed while trick-or-treaters were donning costumes for Halloween — revealed two payments only days earlier. One check for $25,000 went to Stevens & Schriefer Group for “media production” and a second of $595,000 to Stevens & Schriefer Group Media Inc. for “media buy.” Virtually all of that money would have gone to the network affiliate stations — ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox — to mesmerize voters with “In Charlie Fogarty’s World.”

Rhode Island law required anyone who made independent expenditures for or against a candidate to certify that they were “not acting in concert with any other person or group.” From a Washington office less than a block from the White House, Melinda Anderson had signed on behalf of the GOP governors that they were “not acting in concert” with Carcieri’s campaign, but no reasonable person could believe that. The ad’s message fit hand-in-glove with Carcieri’s criticism of Fogarty’s bill. It distilled and amplified the governor’s naïve demand that the legislation should have required lawyers to name their clients — even though such disclosure would have violated lawyer-client confidentiality.

As Rhode Island rushed toward the election, it appeared that Fogarty and Carcieri were neck and neck, each spending about $2 million. Republican governors had poured another $620,000 into Carcieri’s race — nearly twenty-five times what they could legally contribute. Would they tip the race to Carcieri?

With polls running against its proposed “Narragansett Indian Casino,” Harrah’s gambled that it could win voters over with a barrage of commercials. The Las Vegas giant spent $3.2 million in September — roughly $106,000 per day. Still behind in the polls, Harrah’s quadrupled its spending in October, shattering all previous Rhode Island campaign records. Save Our State, the anti-casino coalition, spent far less but clung to a lead in state polls.

By comparison, our Right To Vote Campaign drew $350,000 from progressive foundations for our entire campaign. We remained all but invisible, which our young field director preferred. Scrawny, unkempt, and brilliant, Dan Schleifer dodged reporters. His get-out-the-vote operation was a secret weapon that he kept hidden until after the election.

During two years since his graduation from Brown University, Schleifer had lived on a subsistence wage from the Family Life Center. As field director for the Right To Vote Campaign, he deployed former prisoners who were now students — Andres Idarraga at Brown and Bruce Reilly at Rhode Island College — to sign up their classmates as volunteers. Recruiters appealed to the students’ desire to make a difference. They promised that the work would be grueling but would end on November 7, leaving plenty of time to complete the fall term’s academic work. By mid-October, nearly two hundred student volunteers had joined. Fifteen paid canvassers — most disenfranchised former prisoners or their relatives — led the teams. Schleifer deployed his teams to gritty neighborhoods and monitored them by cell phone. He became a guerilla general, sitting on a curbstone, clipboard in hand, exhausted but calm.

I settled beside Schleifer to look at one sector map. During the final weekend, his teams would canvass their blocks three more times. “Our teams know people by name in every house on this block,” he said proudly. “We know who supports Question 2 and why. If they have a phone, we know the number.” On November 7, his teams would monitor each urban polling place. They would track who had voted and who had not. “We’ll cover our blocks in every city. We’ll call people, go to their doors, keep after them until they actually vote.”

When a last-minute grant enabled us to buy several newspaper ads and blitz the state with computer-generated phone calls, the steering committee asked me to record our message. And so the calls went out: “Hello, this is Phil West at Common Cause asking you to vote YES on Ballot Question 2 on November 7. Question 2 will restore voting rights to thousands of Rhode Islanders — U.S. citizens who have paid their debt to society and who now live, work, raise families, and pay taxes here in Rhode Island. Please vote YES on Question 2.”

On Saturday morning before the election, I ran my favorite path along the eastern shore of connected lakes in Roger Williams Park. From across the water came sounds of a political rally at the Temple to Music, so I rounded the spillway to see for myself. An audience of hundreds surrounded the marble stage. Classic columns framed Sheldon Whitehouse and a slim man I recognized from television as U.S. Senator Barack Obama.

The Senate race between Whitehouse and Lincoln Chafee had broken the mold. Chafee had beaten Cranston Mayor Steven Laffey, a far-right rival, in a bitter GOP primary, but he then pivoted to battle Whitehouse in the general election. While many in blue-state Rhode Island appreciated Chafee’s votes against the Iraq War, against President George W. Bush’s tax cuts, against drilling in the Arctic, and against cuts in Medicaid and Medicare, Whitehouse argued none of that would matter if Chafee’s first vote in a new term kept the U.S. Senate in Republican hands.

Whitehouse and the young presidential contender from Illinois embellished these themes to a crowd that filled the marble plaza, grassy half-circle, and slopes around the Temple to Music. Wearing my grungy sweatpants, I skirted the margins of the rally, careful not to compromise my nonpartisan role by clapping.

On the southern fringe of the crowd I found six Palestinian officials I had escorted around the State House the previous afternoon. All were from the West Bank, and I stood with them on the grassy slope until the rally ended.

“Who will win?” asked the only woman in the group.

“Probably Whitehouse,” I said. The day before I had described the campaign for separation of powers and shared with them the comment Sheldon Whitehouse had made in 1992 that without separation of powers Rhode Island would never “cut the deep root of corruption.”

“And if Whitehouse wins,” she asked, “will he block the policies of Bush?”

“I know he’ll try,” I said. Separation of powers was crisp as a concept but often messy in its application.

Election Day finally faded into night. Weary Right To Vote volunteers finished their phone calls, drove late voters home from the polls, and straggled to an upstairs reception room at Ada’s Creations on Broad Street in Providence. With finger foods, beer, and wine, weary campaign workers came to life again in the camaraderie of a shared cause.

Across Rhode Island the polls closed at 9:00 p.m. From that moment on, people chatted with eyes checking TV screens as the count came in. While Whitehouse built a growing edge over Chafee, many races remained in doubt. Numbers on the screen showed Don Carcieri and Charlie Fogarty hovering within a few hundred votes of one another.

“Casino,” someone yelled, and our crowd flocked to watch the wall-mounted flat-screens. From the first, it became obvious that in spite of Harrah’s extravagant spending, Question 1, the Casino Amendment, was being crushed. “They had no ground game,” one student said of Harrah’s operatives. “They had paid people trying to convince voters going into the polls. Way too late.”

A hush fell as numbers for Question 2 appeared. In Coventry, Sen. Lou Raptakis’s town, just over 55 percent rejected our amendment. In Westerly — despite the Westerly Sun’s negative editorial — 54.2 percent approved. The televised numbers cycled to other contests. People nervously switched channels and switched back, watching.

As we expected, several small towns went against us — Exeter, Foster, Glocester — but we lost those three by only 610 total votes. In Johnston, where Sen. Joe Polisena had railed against restoring the vote and was winning his race for mayor, voters rejected Question 2 by a relatively small 626-vote margin. Then tiny New Shoreham — Block Island — appeared on screen with its single polling place. Of 904 voters, 563 or 62.3 percent had approved restoring the vote. A cheer went up. As North Kingstown and North Providence reported with incomplete counts, we were losing both. We lost East Greenwich by 1,006 votes but won Barrington by 628.

Although I had not seen Koren Carbuccia in several weeks, I had loved seeing a color photo of her and her son on a billboard poster and the sides of busses with a checklist:

☑ I am a U.S. citizen.

☑ I live and work in Rhode Island.

☑ I raise a family in Rhode Island.

☑ I pay taxes in Rhode Island.

☐ I vote in Rhode Island.

She had spent the day at a polling place in Pawtucket and was startled by how many people recognized her. Several had sneered at her. “But I put on my game face,” she told me, “even to those who were negative. And other people started telling me: ‘Oh, I didn’t know you were a felon.’ And I’m like, oh . . .” Her voice dropped. “I didn’t realize how many people didn’t know. But people who really knew me said it didn’t matter to them.”

She said Vaskan was thrilled to see his picture on busses. “He doesn’t understand it all now, but he keeps saying, ‘Mommy, that’s me and you. Mommy, that’s me and you.’ I saved every article, so one day I’ll explain it all to him that we made history.”

I asked how she felt about the State House press conference. She laughed. “My self-esteem just soared. That was the right key to my car. It got my engine going and made it positive for me.”

As results began flowing from Rhode Island’s core cities, the tally shifted in our favor. Newport came through with a nearly fifteen percent victory margin, more than 1,100 votes. Tiny Central Falls showed 63.2 percent approving, a surplus of 611 votes. East Providence produced a cushion of more than a thousand. Returns from Pawtucket added two thousand. Each round of urban numbers brought a cheer. Even before the final districts reported, Providence delivered a landslide, better than 2-to-1, a surplus of more than thirteen thousand votes. The cities were providing a narrow statewide victory.

Trumpets blared from a doorway. Cymbals crashed. A commotion of drums burst into the room. A sousaphone player bent his unwieldy instrument forward to fit through the door and straightened up with an elephantine blast — Dan Schleifer flushed with triumph. Trombones and saxophones wailed — a wild mélange of John Philip Sousa, Bollywood, and hip-hop. Their sound could fill a football stadium. A second sousaphone bobbed through the door with the greeting “What Cheer?” painted brightly on its bell. Legend held that the Narragansetts welcomed Roger Williams with a greeting that combined the Elizabethan phrase with their word for friend: “What cheer, natop?” We had won. At Ada’s Creations on Broad Street, the roof lifted.

Later I asked Schleifer about their What Cheer? Brigade. What was that irrepressible music they played? He laughed. “Luddite hardcore,” he said. “No amplifiers, but very loud and danceable.”

In the six cities where Schleifer’s teams had canvassed block-by-block, Question 2 built up a margin of 18,719 votes. In the thirty-three cities and towns where we depended on reform groups, churches, and newspapers, we lost by 7,192. Our final count showed the Right To Vote Amendment had prevailed with a statewide margin of 11,527 — 3.1 percent. This was no small victory. With passage, Rhode Island voters became the first in the United States to approve a state constitutional amendment that authorized the restoration of voting rights to convicted felons the moment they walked out of prison.

In the highest spending contest ever recorded in Rhode Island, voters solidly rejected the Harrah’s-Narragansett Indian Casino. Question 1 lost by 100,199 votes, 26.1 percent of the votes cast.

Sheldon Whitehouse swept 53.5 percent of the vote and ousted Lincoln Chafee, largely by stirring fears of a Republican majority in the Senate. In two years leading up to the Senate election, Whitehouse had raised and spent $6.42 million, compared with Chafee’s $3.53 million.

Gov. Carcieri won with 51.01 percent: a margin of 7,804 votes out of 386,928 cast statewide. This was the first gubernatorial race in which one candidate, Charlie Fogarty, participated in the matching-funds program while the other did not. Fogarty raised roughly $863,000 in private contributions — enough to qualify for $981,000 in public matching funds. He also had the advantage of getting a 2-to-1 match for contributions below $500. Carcieri raised $1.57 million in private funds.

Although Fogarty had signed into the program while Carcieri opted out, they had traded leads in several polls, mostly within the margin of error, until the Republican Governors Association put its heavy hand with $620,000 on the scale. “In Charlie Fogarty’s World,” their devious ad broadcast nonstop for the last week, narrowly returned Don Carcieri to office for a second term.

On a frigid November night leaders of Common Cause threw a party at the Convention Center for my retirement. Anne, our sons, and daughters-in-law surrounded me at dinner in the main ballroom. More than five hundred people bought tickets with proceeds going to a quarter-million-dollar endowment to continue this work. Hasbro provided table favors with my face as a jigsaw puzzle while Anne presented a PowerPoint of photos and stories. Comedian Charlie Hall and his Ocean State Follies made light of scandals and attempts at reform. I called out thanks to activists and public officials who had put their careers at risk to promote reforms.

After the last handshakes and hugs, we hauled mementos to the street beneath the warm glow of a neon art installation and loaded our car. Looming across Sabin Street was the sedate brick headquarters of the Providence Journal where I had trained as a copy editor in the summer of 1988. I had failed at that because I kept trying to rewrite the news. My failure at the Journal had kept me searching the want ads until Common Cause posted its tiny announcement that changed my life. Now I could begin writing about scores of people who had worked together in our microcosm of a state to bend the moral arc of the universe toward justice.

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H. Philip West Jr. served from 1988 to 2006 as executive director of Common Cause Rhode Island. SECRETS & SCANDALS: Reforming Rhode Island, 1986-2006, chronicles major government reforms during those years.

He helped organize coalitions that led in passage of dozens of ethics and open government laws and five major amendments to the Rhode Island Constitution, including the 2004 Separation of Powers Amendment.

West hosted many delegations from the U.S. State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program that came to learn about ethics and separation of powers. In 2000, he addressed a conference on government ethics laws in Tver, Russia. After retiring from Common Cause, he taught Ethics in Public Administration to graduate students at the University of Rhode Island.

Previously, West served as pastor of United Methodist churches and ran a settlement house on the Bowery in New York City. He helped with the delivery of medicines to victims of the South African-sponsored civil war in Mozambique and later assisted people displaced by Liberia’s civil war. He has been involved in developing affordable housing, day care centers, and other community services in New York, Connecticut, and Rhode Island.

West graduated, Phi Beta Kappa, from Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., received his masters degree from Union Theological Seminary in New York City, and published biblical research he completed at Cambridge University in England. In 2007, he received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Rhode Island College.

Since 1965 he has been married to Anne Grant, an Emmy Award-winning writer, a nonprofit executive, and retired United Methodist pastor. They live in Providence and have two grown sons, including cover illustrator Lars Grant-West.

This electronic version of SECRETS & SCANDALS: Reforming Rhode Island, 1986-2006 omits notes, which fill 92 pages in the printed text.

Secrets and Scandals: Reforming Rhode Island 1986-2006, Chapter 52

Part 4

52

Déjà Vu (2006)

Related Slideshow: Rhode Island’s History of Political Corruption

Buddy Cianci

Joseph Bevilacqua

Thomas Fay

Brian J. Sarault

Edward DiPrete

Plunder Dome

N. Providence Councilmen

Charles Moreau

Joe Almeida

Gordon Fox

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Secrets and Scandals: Reforming Rhode Island 1986-2006, Chapter 52

Part 4

52

Déjà Vu (2006)

Related Slideshow: Rhode Island’s History of Political Corruption

Buddy Cianci

Joseph Bevilacqua

Thomas Fay

Brian J. Sarault

Edward DiPrete

Plunder Dome

N. Providence Councilmen

Charles Moreau

Joe Almeida

Gordon Fox

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