Tiny district, high stakes: Mattiello-Frias race a referendum on the status quo

Oct. 27--CRANSTON, R.I. -- Going door-to door this year in his home district in Cranston, House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello says he rarely encounters the "anti-incumbent" mood that nearly cost him his legislative seat two years ago.

"It's a very different election cycle from two years ago," Mattiello said recently, over escarole-and-bean soup at Tommy's Pizza on Oaklawn Avenue. "Extraordinarily different. People are happy."

"The economy is doing much better. But it is more than that. People, they are just very pleased ... [with] how I handled the PawSox," he said of his campaign to spare taxpayers from responsibility for millions of dollars in subsidies to wealthy team owners. And they are pleased, he said, with the phaseout of the car tax.

"I hear very regularly that I am doing a good job," Mattiello said. "I think they are also pleased with government in general."

That is not, however, what Democrat Mattiello's Republican challenger, Steven Frias, heard on the campaign trail on a recent Saturday, when he made a second pass through a neighborhood at the northern edge of the district, near the Johnston border.

Here, with a reporter in tow, he was greeted by voters like Joe McKenna, 45, who said they are hungry for change at the Rhode Island State House.

"We need to get rid of the country-club atmosphere up in the General Assembly, especially with Mattiello and all of the shenanigans he's pulled over the years, especially with this 'Montanaro,'" said McKenna, referring to Frank Montanaro, a $159,049-a-year top aide to Mattiello entangled in a free-tuition controversy.

"He should have definitely been fired," McKenna said about Montanaro, who got caught by WPRI-TV a year ago utilizing a tuition waiver reserved for full-time staff at Rhode Island College -- three years after taking a leave from RIC to work for Mattiello.

Montanaro subsequently promised to repay the money, over time. But his name is still a flashpoint in Cranston's House District 15.

"The guy is still working for him making $150K a year on us, while collecting 50 grand in free tuition," McKenna said. "We're all fed up. We're tired of the games. Tired of the politics as usual in Rhode Island."

Mattiello and Frias are competing, for a second time, for the 10,754 votes in a district that reaches from the state prison on the east to the Cranston Country Club on the west, and from the West Warwick-Warwick border on the south to Johnston border on the north.

In 2016, Donald Trump won every polling station in the district. That same year, Republican Frias came within 85 votes of beating Democrat Mattiello.

The outcome this year rests in the hands of the 3,231 registered Democrats, 2,304 registered Republicans and 5,170-plus unaffiliated voters in House District 15. But the implications clearly extend well beyond Cranston, to control of the Rhode Island House of Representatives, the state budget and, by extension, the ultimate fate of every bill that sweeps through the House -- from taxes and spending to abortion rights, guns and even pet grooming.

Mattiello has ruled the roost -- which currently includes 11 Republicans and 64 Democrats -- since March 2014, when his predecessor, Gordon Fox, resigned before landing in prison.

Mattiello, 55, is running for reelection, in part, on his tax-cutting record: the lowering of the state's corporate tax rate from 9 percent to 7 percent; the exemption of some retirement income, including Social Security benefits, from income taxes; the elimination of sales taxes on business utility bills; and, of course, the six-year phaseout of the car tax now in its second year.

"The choice is clear," says a Mattiello "compare the candidates" mailer: "As a freshman Representative from the minority party, Steve Frias will have no influence at the General Assembly and no ability to ensure the car tax is phased out ... only Nick Mattiello can fully end the car tax."

Another of his mailers touts the legislative grant money he got to dole out as speaker over the last year -- which, at $205,048, was more than that available to any other legislator. He also seeks credit for the reinstatement of Ethics Commission's jurisdiction over legislators.

But a handful of his fellow Democrats have already vowed to vote against his reelection as speaker if he wins reelection in Cranston.

"Important bills need to be debated -- gun safety in our schools, sexual harassment ... the statute of limitations on sexual-abuse cases, a woman's right to make her own health-care and reproductive choices, and [a] line-item veto," said one defector, Rep. Deborah Ruggiero of Jamestown, a current member of Mattiello's leadership team.

Mattiello says he does not need any of the defectors to arrive at the 38 votes he would need -- and insists he still has -- to win reelection as speaker.

He also says the rules concentrating power in the speaker were adopted to prevent the "wrong things" from reaching the House floor for votes, such as a vote to slash the state's 7-percent sales tax.

"At some point someone is going to come up with that," he said. "You are going to force every member to start taking votes to not do something that is terribly irresponsible ... [that] will just become fodder for political season."

There are other crosswinds this year. Construction-trade workers angry about Mattiello's role in losing the PawSox to Worcester threatened to picket an event honoring the speaker. (The event was canceled.)

A group called "Citizens for a Corruption-Free RI" papered Mattiello's district with a mailer slamming him for "making government work for his friends" while ignoring "the issues that affect us -- like equal pay for women and justice for child sex abuse victims." (The group is made up of the Rhode Island Coalition Against Gun Violence and the state chapter of the National Organization for Women.)

The overarching question: Who would succeed Mattiello as speaker -- and what difference would it make -- if Frias knocks him out in Cranston?

"A tremendous difference," says Mattiello. "You would end up with a new speaker. The outcome of that race is, at best, unpredictable.... [But] since I've been one of the most pro-business speakers in a very long time," he said, the threat is that "the state becomes less business-friendly. Taxes would start to creep up again.... All of the progress that we've been making with job increases, lower unemployment rates, could potentially be threatened."

"This is not a time for a change," he argues. "It's just a bad time."

Frias labels as nonsense the assumption that a free-spending progressive would be elected as the House speaker in Mattiello's place.

He says House Majority Leader K. Joseph Shekarchi, "who has been referred to as pro-economic development," is the heir apparent, and the progressives simply do not have the votes to elect one of their own.

"If we defeat the speaker, we will not get a progressive speaker. What we would get is a more ethical speaker, a speaker who doesn't run campaigns that engage in illegal activities, a speaker who may support government reforms, like line-item veto," Frias said recently, referencing alleged Mattiello campaign irregularities that led to nearly two years of Board of Elections hearings, a consent order and the referral of an alleged violation by a Mattiello campaign operative to the attorney general.

Frias, 46, is a lawyer who specializes in public-utility and energy law for the Boston-based Keegan Werlin LLP.

A New Bedford native and Brown University graduate, he is also a published author ("Cranston and its Mayors") and historian who can instantly lay his hands on copies, in his basement, of news clippings about significant events, such as the last time Rhode Island voters defeated a sitting speaker (Arthur Dennis, 1906).

He is also a dedicated soldier in the Rhode Island Republican Party who represents the state on the Republican National Committee and shares many of Mattiello's conservative views on cultural issues.

He describes himself as "pro-life," for example, and says he cannot envision voting for any version of a bill to enshrine abortion rights in state law. He opposes an assault-weapons ban. "If we are trying to protect our society from criminals and crazy people, we need more security," he said. "I believe in providing more security at our schools."

But his main selling point as he goes door to door in Cranston is government reform: a line-item veto, inspector general, term limits, changing the House rules.

"What do all of these things have in common?" Frias asks rhetorically. "They are all about reducing the concentration of power in [Mattiello's] hands."

Mattiello opted against letting a Journal reporter tag along with him on one of his campaign swings through his district. He said that would make the conversations less open, and his constituents uncomfortable.

Frias' campaign walk took him to the door of Carol Lindberg, who mispronounced his name as "free-us," or -- as she put it -- "free-us from corruption." (The correct pronunciation is "FRY-us.") She too wants to give the governor veto power over individual lines in the state budget.

She said that when Mattiello visited, he said it "would give [Governor] Raimondo too much power. So I said: 'You want all the power?'"

But Frias also ran up against the gun-rights buzz-saw.

Asked if he would support an assault-weapons ban, Frias, who has a "B+" from the NRA, said: "Nope." Banning high-capacity magazines? "Nope." Banning firearms on school grounds? "Nope." (Mattiello's NRA ranking is "A-")

But one of the potential voters he met along Scituate Avenue knew that Frias had received a $1,000 contribution from Alan Hassenfeld, the former chairman and CEO of Hasbro, who funneled $40,000 to the Coalition Against Gun Violence through the Hassenfeld Family Foundation earlier this year.

Frias explained: "Alan Hassenfeld ... supports me because I believe in government reforms like line-item veto and stuff like that." (Hassenfeld confirmed that is one reason, but he also said, "I really, really believe we need a change of leadership at the House.")

"You're a little nervous," Frias told one potential voter who asked not to be identified. "Me and Mattiello are about the same on gun issues.... I've never supported taking guns away from law-abiding citizens."

The only difference, Frias told him: "I'm not in favor of the corruption that goes on up there and the insider dealing.... I'm trying to bring change. He's about the status quo."

Read more race previews at providencejournal.com/topics/election2018

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