Buddy’s Back: Can Felonious Ex-Mayor Regain His Reign?

June 29--PROVIDENCE -- For people who live outside of the city limits, former Providence mayor Vincent "Buddy" Cianci Jr.'s odds of taking back the office he twice has been forced to leave due to felony convictions seem laughable.

But on the streets of Providence, his allies are not hard to find.

"He made all of this," said Bobo Marinelli, a retired boilerworker who was sitting with a group of friends on outdoor benches in the city's Federal Hill neighborhood Thursday, the day after Cianci announced his candidacy.

Marinelli pointed across the street to a city square, where smartly dressed young professionals were sitting beside the fountain and dining al fresco at upscale Italian restaurants.

"This was a slum. ... I grew up in that the yellow house on the end," Marinelli said. Cianci, he said, during a previous administration, allocated city funds to open a gym -- "Providence Boxing Academy, for the kids, young boys, to get off the streets."

A group of retired widowers and childhood friends who grew up in Federal Hill, the city's Italian section, scoffed at Cianci's corruption charges. "They got him on one count of 29," one of them said.

The fiery 73-year-old's announcement Wednesday that he was going to run for mayor again echoed throughout social and mainstream media, as supporters and critics reacted to a candidate whose first tenure ended with a felony assault conviction, involving a man he believed was having an affair with his ex-wife, and whose second tenure ended when prosecutors accused him of running a large-scale criminal enterprise out of city hall. He was convicted in that second case on a single count of racketeering conspiracy in 2002, and served five years in federal prison.

"I'm standing here knowing the assault is coming," Cianci said Wednesday night on his radio show, declaring that he wanted to finish the job he started, first in 1975, and again in 1991. "Almost like the assault on Normandy. I understand it."

The longest-serving mayor in city history, Cianci is credited with leading the "Providence Renaissance" -- orchestrating projects that turned the city from an industrial dump into a booming metropolis. A former Republican, Cianci is running this time as an independent, entering a 10-way race to replace Democratic Mayor Angel Taveras, who is running for governor.

Cianci's candidacy has already drawn national attention. In Providence, however, the mention of his name evokes stories of the city's golden years, as residents reminisce -- perhaps romanticize -- "Buddy's" time in office. Andrew Bairos, a recent Rhode Island College graduate, points to WaterFire, the floating bonfires that draw residents to the Providence riverfront for a spectacular light festival summer evenings. The riverwalks and downtown parks, Charlie Bargamian says, were all part of Cianci's urban renewal plan that brought arts, culture and green space to the city.

"Buddy allocated money to fix all these houses there for almost nothing," one of Cianci's friends said as he sat among the group of men on benches painted in Italy's red, white, and green, a crusty loaf of bread on the table between them.

The friend's long, gray hair is slicked back, and tattoos cover his weathered skin. He points across the street to the public square where on Wednesday night, Cianci held a campaign kickoff rally. "There was pushcarts over there," the friend said. "Now we can't afford to live there."

To these men, who meet at the street corner each day, Cianci could do no wrong. "We all love him. Can't say nothing bad about him," Vito Dicandito said from his wheelchair underneath a tree.

"I grew up couple blocks down the street, all of us did," said Tom Norton, who retired 14 years ago from the insurance business. "But we don't live in Providence no more."

That, many who were interviewed Thursday said, could be a deciding factor in whether Cianci's third run for office is a charm or a strike. His most loyal supporters have moved outside of the city to surrounding towns, including Bargamian, the truck driver, who now lives in North Providence.

"Buddy is a great guy," Bargamian said. His face fell when he added, "I can't vote for him."

In order to win, Cianci will need to appeal to city residents who did not live there during his earlier reigns. And the skeptics are out there.

"He committed crimes. ... I think it makes us look like idiots," said Tara Yousif, 24.

But others in the younger generation are drawn by vintage Buddy.

"It was the Providence Renaissance," says Bairos, who graduated from Rhode Island College two years ago with a degree in political science and now lives in Providence. Bairos said that although the corruption "bothers him," he still plans to support Cianci and wants to work on his campaign.

<p>"He could definitely win," said Dan Charest, 23, also a graduate of Rhode Island College. "People love him. ... The corruption stuff didn't affect them."

Charest said Cianci has achieved near-celebrity status in Providence. "He's a public figure because he has his own radio show ... [and his own] pasta sauce," Charest said, referring to the "mayor's own marinara," the sauce Cianci launched during his second administration.

"He could definitely win," Charest said. "This city was a craphole and he turned it around."

Wendy Schiller, an associate professor of political science and public policy at Brown University, said that "when a politician is personally beloved but gets into trouble with the law over corruption ... voters are willing to say, 'well he did his time, he went to jail and the city was good when he was there.'"

"There's a lot of nostalgia driving this particular case," she said. "He was such a big cheerleader for Providence, people just want to have someone say 'this is going to be OK.'"

Althea Gadula-Alfaro Bing, 49, said that when "Buddy" was mayor, she worked two jobs -- as a manager at McDonald's and a part-time employee at CVS. Two years ago, she was laid off, and she is still unemployed.

"I've been here 16 years, and for me, he did good," she said. "He did a great job."

Bing's friend Betty, who declined to give her last name, said she hopes that if "Buddy" is elected, her 29-year-old son will be able "to work in Rhode Island instead of taking a bus to Massachusetts" where he works the night shift at an IHOP in Attleboro, Mass.

"Everybody deserves a second chance," Betty said. "For him it'll be a third chance. But he deserves it."

A Courant profile of Cianci in 1981 observed that his "ability to take political heat, to turn apparent defeat into personal success, may be the most remarkable aspect of his tenure as mayor."

And that appears to still be the case throughout the four-decade saga. Acknowledging the backlash he is likely to face, Cianci said on his talk show Wednesday, "I've got a pretty thick skin having been through what I've been through.

"If you want to buy into it, buy into it, I hope you will," Cianci said. "And if you don't buy into it, vote for someone else."

It's that straightforward, outspoken nature, his refusal to shy from a challenge when odds are against him, that has endeared him to many in his beloved city. Several people who were interviewed said: "No one loves the city as much as he does."

"He's got a popular kind of mystique," said Steve Williamson, 47, a graduate student at UConn. Williamson has been a Providence resident since 1993, and said he does not support Cianci.

"He's had two shots at the job. It's time to let someone else do it," he said. "He did do a lot of corrective things last time around, but also a lot of that was federal money that was brought in for big projects. ... The federal government isn't so free with the checkbook anymore."

Williamson pointed to the fact that many of Cianci's loyal supporters now live elsewhere, and said it would be "interesting to see" if Cianci is as popular within city limits.

In order to win, it appears Cianci will have to rely on his faithful following to invigorate the younger residents. He seems, very early in the process, to be sticking with his trusted circle; he asked Alfred Passarelli, the person who filed his candidacy papers in 1990, to file them in 2014. Passarelli grew up in Federal Hill, but no longer lives in the city.

"He ran in 1990 last minute, and I was the one that delivered the papers back then, so it was kind of a sentimental thing he asked me if I wanted to deliver them again if he decided to run," Passarelli said. "I said of course. Right around 3:30 he called me and said file."

Cianci's campaign, Passarelli said, will have to be put together "virtually overnight." But he said Cianci's support is not limited to old-timers. He said he was shocked by how much support he saw as he watched the news and social media Thursday morning, in the wake of Cianci's announcement.

"It's not the old Buddy Cianci, typical Buddy Cianci person," he said. "There are young people and there are middle-aged people and there are so many positive things. ... When people get desperate, they just want results."

Asked if he believes if Cianci has what it takes to beat out the nine other candidates in the race, Passarelli said, "Not one of them could hold a candle to the driving energy this 73-year-old guy has."

Schiller, the Brown University professor, is reserving judgment. She said some aspects of Cianci's past administrations could "haunt him" this time around, as current Providence taxpayers are putting millions of dollars to city pensions he engineered -- some of them with 6 percent cost-of-living adjustments.

Democrats, Schiller said, "are going to have a big head start against Cianci," as the primary process will force them to mobilize behind a candidate.

Mayor Taveras has said he will endorse the Democratic candidate, and Schiller predicted that if his campaign for governor gains strength, it could boost the Democrats in the mayoral race.

Ultimately, she said, the only way the party can beat Cianci handily is if they "chip away at the 'Buddy' myth."

"I am very surprised the extent to which the current batch of politicians in Providence are literally fearful of saying something bad about Buddy Cianci," she said. "It just goes to show you the residual power of a reputation -- or a myth."

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