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4.8.2001 00:16
OUR RASCAL KING
BY SCOTT MacKAY
Journal Staff Writer
A scrum of reporters and television camera crews lined up Friday morning outside the federal building in downtown Providence that houses both the U.S. post office and the U.S. District Court.
The reporters were awaiting Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr.'s arraignment. When he arrived, Cianci cracked to the media throng, "What, are you all waiting to mail a letter?"
Providence and much of the rest of the cozy state of Rhode Island is once again riveted to the latest saga in the life of Cianci, known to all by that most intimate of nicknames, Buddy.
"Are they gonna get him this time?" has been the question on everyone's lips since Cianci's indictment last week on federal racketeering and corruption charges.
He has been elected mayor six times, but in Rhode Island, Cianci is much more than a mere political figure. In a culture that values celebrity above all else, Buddy is his little state's biggest star.
The gap-toothed smile; the basset-hound eyes; the fancy wig; the rapier wit. If you like him, you believe he has transformed the city, restored it to its former glory, made the people of a state known for its small size and big inferiority complex feel important. If you loathe him, you believe he is a vindictive, Machiavellian man who runs an administration that reeks of waste and corruption.
And if his one-liners seem tired these days, they keep coming. When prosecutors last year played the tape of a city official claiming that Cianci once coached him on taking bribes, the mayor bristled: "What the hell does he think? That I'm running a seminar? Stealing 101?"
Cianci has led the television news and dominated newspaper headlines for so long he is the background noise to life in Rhode Island. On any given day over the past 25 years, there he is
running from one event to another, encircled by the scent of cologne and a nimbus of cigarette smoke.
He is on the television show
Providence,
playing the role of his life: mayor of Providence.
He is hobnobbing with President Ford at the White House in 1975. He is greeting President Clinton at a 1996 campaign rally near the Rhode Island State House. He is riding a white steed at the Bristol Fourth of July parade. He is talking a 26-year-old man, barricaded with a gun in a Federal Hill apartment, out of killing himself. Late on a liquid evening at the Capital Grille, he is firing off a Hitler salute at a legislative leader with whom he is upset.
He is in the supermarket aisle, grinning from the label of a jar of marinara sauce.
He is the surprise guest at a graduation party for a refugee of Cambodia's killing fields. He is the mystery guest at the Providence Newspaper Guild Follies. He is at your grandfather's wake, praying beside the casket at Nardolillo's. He is at your cousin's wedding, sipping champagne and nervously checking his watch; he has two more weddings that day.
On a golden autumn afternoon, he is marching down Atwells Avenue, a lean blond woman on his arm; he is wearing a red sash as grand marshal of the Columbus Day parade. He is kissing a piglet at Providence Public Library to promote a literacy program. He is at Roger Williams Park Zoo, celebrating the birth of a polar bear cub. At the Civic Center, he is dropping the puck to open the Providence Bruins season.
Once a Republican, today he belongs to no political party. Rhode Island Democrats and Republicans, who routinely seek his endorsement, ruefully say the only party he has ever belonged to is his own -- the "Buddy Party."
The longest-serving mayor since his city was founded in 1636, his career has spanned seven presidential administrations and five governors. Five presidents of Brown University have come and gone since his first campaign.
By last week's indictment, he had defeated, outlived, outsmarted or co-opted, in one way or another, all of his political opponents.
Two weeks ago, Cianci kicked off his seventh and -- he says -- his last campaign for mayor. He stood on stage at the Providence Biltmore Hotel under a huge Cianci 2002 banner at a $150-per-person campaign fundraiser, mugged for the cameras and hugged two former opponents, Republican Fred Lippitt and Democrat Andrew Annaldo. Annaldo and Lippitt have little in common except they are both former opponents whom Cianci subjected to withering political and personal attacks.
"He's a very smart man, a very talented man," says Harry Johnson, a former Democratic city councilman. "There is only one guy who can beat Buddy Cianci. He keeps doing it himself."
WHEN VINCENT A.
Cianci Jr. started running for mayor in the humid summer of 1974, Richard Nixon was in his final days as president, U.S. troops were still in Vietnam, and Muhammad Ali was heavyweight champion. Philip Noel was Rhode Island's governor and Claiborne Pell and John Pastore were the state's U.S. senators.
Carl Yastrzemski was playing for the Boston Red Sox. There was no Internet; when someone talked about surfing they meant Misquamicut or Narragansett Town Beach.
Men were actually seen in public wearing leisure suits; a fancy one went for $43.99 at Apex. You could get the filet mignon special at Valle's Steak House, in Warwick, for $5.95, and see Steppenwolf at the Civic Center for $4.50.
The hot car was the Ford Mustang; you could drive one home from Crocker Ford for $2,977. A four-bedroom house on Elmgrove Avenue on the East Side cost $50,000.
In Providence, Republicans had last won the mayor's office in 1938, three years before Vincent Cianci, their candidate for mayor, was
born. A lawyer, Cianci had carved a reform reputation for battling organized crime as a state prosecutor. The son of a doctor, Cianci was raised in Silver Lake, an Italian-American redoubt, but attended the Moses Brown School on the East Side.
In Providence politics, ancestry was destiny. Yankee Republicans and Irish Democrats had run the city for years; no one with an Italian surname had ever been elected mayor.
"Providence has always been a very ethnic city. Providence does not melt very well," says Nicholas W. Easton, a former city council president who in three decades in city politics has both battled and been allied with Cianci. "Even today you talk to people of different ethnic heritages and ask them who their 10 best friends are and eight or nine of them will be of the same ethnicity."
The incumbent mayor was Democrat Joseph Doorley, and he looked like an easy winner. But Doorley was bloodied in a nasty primary against Francis Brown. After the primary, Doorley did not do the usual public kiss-and-make-up routine. The wounds festered.
"Hello, may I shake your hand, I'm Buddy Cianci and I'm running for mayor," Cianci said over and over again as he campaigned around the city.
Cianci called himself the "anti-corruption" candidate, a powerful message in that Watergate summer. He became one of the very first candidates to disclose his net worth ($360,000, largely from a trust passed on from his father) and to
release his income tax returns.
He was given scant chance, but the instincts, vision, and ambition that would later make him such a success were there from the beginning. He outlined plans to rid the city's long-neglected waterfront of blight and bring in houses, businesses, and green spaces.
In newspaper ads, Cianci accused Doorley of playing games with the issue of property tax revaluation. "He won't tell us what our taxes will be until after the election. Vote against the mayor's revaluation."
"The Providence River is like the Democratic machine that been running this city -- namely, it stinks," said Cianci. The city's schools were "filthy, badly scarred and graffiti-ridden."
Years later, Cianci said that he didn't know he had a chance until three days before the election, when he walked into the old East Side Diner and was greeted by the campaign nectar of spontaneous applause from 150 people.
Cianci defeated Doorley by 709 votes. Cianci carried the wealthiest wards on the East Side and the poorest wards of the South Side. He won his home base of Silver Lake, but failed to carry most of the city's other Italian neighborhoods.
ASPHALT COVERED
the river, and rotting railroad tracks smothered the landscape. The empty Victorian hulks that once housed some of New England's finest department stores and restaurants stood only as brooding reminders of what once was.
There were porn shops and strip-tease parlors and smelly, Formica-topped bars adorned with cigarette burns, full of a.m. boozers. They weren't stopping in for a few beers after the night shift at Brown & Sharpe: there were no more night shifts; there were hardly any more factories.
The city had hit bottom by the chilly January day Cianci took office in 1975. The grand Biltmore, the hotel built during the 1920s boom, where a young John F. Kennedy and his Navy buddies sought weekend dates while they trained for war, was shuttered. They were moving the furniture out of the place almost as Cianci was taking the oath of office.
Overnight, Cianci became an attraction for the Watergate-battered GOP. He was young, quotable, and that rare species, an Italian Roman Catholic Republican mayor from a Northeastern state. He was given a prominent speaking role at the 1976 Republican National Convention that nominated Gerald Ford for president.
Cianci had many early achievements, notably a new city charter that brought modern management principles and structure to city government for the first time. He pushed downtown redevelopment, attracted new business, and was an aggressive cheerleader for the city. He won a close reelection in 1978 over Democrat Francis Darigan.
While he was building his reputation, an ugly incident from his days as a law student at Wisconsin's Marquette University surfaced.
In 1977, a former classmate of Cianci told a reporter about a rape accusation that had been lodged against the mayor of Providence.
The story was published in New Times Magazine, a new journalism publication that has been defunct for many years. According to the magazine, the alleged victim was an answering service telephone operator who told the magazine that in 1966 Cianci took her to a home where he was staying outside Milwaukee.
After serving her a drink that made her groggy, the magazine said, Cianci tried to kiss her and pulled her into a bedroom. When she threatened to tell police, she said, Cianci "laughed and said he'd get away with it."
Then, she alleged, she started screaming and Cianci pulled a gun from a nightstand, put it to her head and "told me if I screamed one more time he'd blow my brains out."
Cianci denied that he had committed any criminal act. He was never charged and the woman dropped her complaint. Later, Cianci acknowledged he had paid the woman $3,000. He said the payment had been made on the advice of his lawyer, to keep her from filing a civil harassment suit after the criminal complaint had been dropped.
Cianci filed a $72-million lawsuit against New Times. The mayor collected an $8,500 settlement. New Times also sent him a letter of apology for the story.
IN 1980,
Cianci was one of Rhode Island's top Republican leaders, the GOP's best hope against Democratic Gov. J. Joseph Garrahy. But Cianci was reluctant to take the unpopular route of raising taxes to support city government. A yawning city deficit was discovered in the middle of his campaign for governor. The avuncular Garrahy thrashed Cianci, who failed to win a single ward in his home city.
By 1981 Providence was almost bankrupt; only a huge property tax increase kept the city from receivership.
By this time, Cianci's mismanagement of city government had eroded his support in the affluent East Side neighborhoods that had propelled him to his first victory.
IF YOU LIVED
in a jerkwater that outsiders bombed past on their way to Cape Cod, if you lived fifty miles south of a city that called itself The Hub, if you spent time telling people you choose to live in Providence because who needed the hassle of a big city, who n
e
eded to spend an hour looking for a parking place, who needed the pressure
-- well, if you lived in Providence it was difficult not to feel a shiver of pride when you were reminded (and you were reminded) that the whole New England mob got run out of a laundry on Atwells Avenue. That's Hartford, New Haven, Portland, and the . . . "Hub" too.
-- From the 1986 novel
Providence
by Geoffrey Wolff
So what if Wolff got the venue slightly wrong; Raymond Patriarca's headquarters was actually a vending machine business. The rest was on the mark, especially the perverse joy and up-yours pride some Rhode Islanders take in the sheer outrageousness and sleaze of Providence. What politics was to Massachusetts, crime was to Rhode Island.
It wasn't, of course, the whole story. But if Providence had a defining image in the 1970s and early 1980s, it was as an
organized crime oasis and a stage for political chicanery. The chief justice of the state Supreme Court, the very symbol of justice and honest dealing, was a former mob lawyer chased from office for hanging out with criminals.
The Providence Public Works Department was a hiring hall for low-level thugs, men with names like "Buckles," "Blackjack" and "Cha Cha." There were no-show and barely show jobs. The city's asphalt was used to pave driveways in Narragansett. Contractors who were paid to plow snow collected the money and let the winter sun melt it.
When a Journal reporter decided to tail some DPW employees, he found them running pizza shops while on the city's clock or collecting overtime while they ran personal errands. Manhole covers -- we are not making this one up -- were being stolen and melted for scrap metal.
The feds moved in. Thirty people were indicted on various municipal corruption charges. Twenty-two were convicted in state and federal courts; sixteen of those went to prison.
But no FBI agent or U.S. attorney got Buddy Cianci.
Buddy got himself.
"If there was a day in my life I could live over again, it would be March 20, 1983," Cianci told state Superior Court Judge John Bourcier at the sentencing.
That is the night he beat Raymond DeLeo, a Bristol contractor who was having an affair with Cianci's ex-wife, Sheila. DeLeo told police the mayor threatened to have him shot, threw liquor on him, burned him with a cigarette, smacked him with a fireplace log, threw an ashtray at him, and threatened to sue him unless he paid the mayor $500,000.
Said DeLeo to police, "I saw a crazed man. I saw a lunatic, you know, simply stated."
The attack occurred at Cianci's home on the city's East Side.
Cianci pleaded no contest to the charges and was sentenced to five years probation in April 1984. "I can assure you from the bottom of my heart that I am sorry, that I shouldn't have done what I did," Cianci said at the sentencing.
Earlier, when news of the indictment broke, Cianci tried to defuse the situation with a joke. "This is a great city," he said. "Last night there was a fight between Hagler and that other guy. There have been fights at my house that lasted longer than that."
As a convicted felon, Cianci was required to leave office. The night he resigned, one of his key supporters in South Providence's minority community, City Councilman Lloyd Griffin, said, "We all got a piece of the action while Buddy Cianci was mayor. We all ate real big."
The resignation, Cianci said later, didn't hit him until a day or so after he left City Hall, when the phone didn't ring and there were no hovering aides and the reporters no longer cared.
"My whole lifestyle changed. I didn't have a job. I'd spend a lot of my time alone. I'd read a lot and take walks. I lost the office. And I lost my family and a lot of my assets in the divorce," said Cianci, in an interview five years after he left office. "There was a lot of trauma and personal hurt."
He said he thought about leaving Providence. About six months later, WHJJ offered him a tryout for a talk show. Soon he had an audience for his opinions.
"The radio was a godsend. It has been my major source of therapy," said Cianci. "All wounds heal."
Cianci was a big hit, lighting up the airwaves with humor, invective, and insight. He made a wet-behind-the-ears Patrick Kennedy, making his first run for state representative, look especially foolish one day, getting Kennedy to acknowledge he didn't know the names of the streets around his campaign headquarters in Mount Pleasant.
On Dec. 23, 1988, Cianci was sitting in his parked car in Providence and noticed DeLeo walking by. "I rolled down the window and said 'Merry Christmas.' He said 'Merry Christmas' back."
BY THE SPRING
of 1990, Providence Mayor Joseph Paolino Jr., who had succeeded Cianci, decided to seek the Democratic nomination for governor. The mayor's job was once again open. Cianci pounced.
He was a convicted felon, a man accused of presiding over one of the most corrupt administrations in the city's history. Many of the city's most powerful institutions and leaders were tired of his act. He had the support of no political party; he ran as an independent.
His campaign slogan: "He Never Stopped Caring About Providence."
Lynn Muller, one of Cianci's consultants, said, "Everybody was saying it couldn't be done. With Buddy, who is as bright and quick as anyone I have ever worked with, we knew that it could be done."
In a three-way race, he won by 317 votes. He has never had a close election since.
Back in office in 1991, Cianci said he had learned from his past mistakes. But his style had not changed. He was ubiquitous, vocal, and a tireless advocate for the city.
His administrations became known as Buddy I and Buddy II. Cianci vowed that he had learned his lessons and that clean and honest government would be a hallmark of Buddy II.
Before the boom decade of the 1990s ended, downtown Providence would boast a gleaming new convention center and a mall featuring retailers such as Nordstrom, Lord & Taylor, and Brooks Brothers.
The city was on a roll, attracting tourists to fancy bistros, art galleries, and innovative events, such as WaterFire
on the city's downtown riverfront. The economy bloomed and Cianci got the credit.
Rumors of City Hall shenanigans flourished, too: business in the New Providence was done the old way -- with a cash bribe in an envelope at City Hall.
The FBI was back.
Two years ago, as the Plunder Dome investigation closed out its first full week, Cianci was on the airwaves defending himself as only he would. The venue was the
Imus in the Morning
radio program.
"We're talking with Buddy Cianci here today, the mayor of Providence, Rhode Island," said Imus. "So what's this big investigation I read about there, called. . ."
"Wonder Dome," the mayor said, cutting off Imus.
"Tell us about it," Imus said.
"Well, first of all, the city of Providence has about 6,000 or 7,000 workers and there has been some activity according to investigators, as to lowering of tax bills in exchange for consideration, for people who work in the city. Now, number one, I'm not involved in that. And number two, I . . ."
"Nobody said you were, did they?" Imus asked.
"No, but number one, I took the action I took, I suspended those individuals who were accused, and we'll move on and we'll cooperate with any investigation that they have," said Cianci.
"But you, I mean, you're awfully quick to defend yourself," said Imus. "Nobody made any accusations."
"No, no one made any accusations. But I know you, Imus, because the first damn thing you'll do is, you'll be blaming me for bombing a school bus in Kosovo in about a minute," said Cianci.
Cianci refused requests that day for interviews from The Providence Journal and other Rhode Island media outlets. A press aide said the schedule was too tight and reminded reporters that Cianci was a regular on Imus; it was his 10th appearance.
"Tenth time, tenth time," Cianci told Imus. "I should get a pension for this."
Later that day, Cianci was inducted into the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame.
CIANCI HAS
maintained a calm exterior as the investigation widened and the government won six convictions, five of them from people who pleaded guilty.
He sold his beloved carriage house on Power Street last year for more than $1 million and moved into the Providence Biltmore hotel, now restored to its Roaring Twenties elegance.
Last Monday, Cianci was supposed to host a reception at the Westin Hotel for the New England Patriots to celebrate the team's new stadium. It was the kind of event Cianci loves. It featured Patriots owner Bob Kraft, coach Bill Belichick, defensive back Lawyer Milloy, and the $100-million quarterback, Drew Bledsoe.
Drinks flowed from an open bar. The tenderloin was thick and rare. Patriots players and assorted jocks mingled with Providence business leaders, people Cianci had known for years: James Hagan, president of the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce; Steve Daniels, an East Side Realtor who sits on the city's Capital Center commission; auto dealer Al Cerrone; lawyer Brian Cunha; and Richard Lupo, owner of Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel, the rock 'n' roll emporium. ("Don't put my name in the paper," pleaded Lupo. "I don't like people to think I come to things like this.")
The news of Cianci's indictment hit the television screens 30 minutes before he was to arrive at the party. The news sent a ripple through the room.
Though the indictment had been expected for months, it was still difficult for many to believe that the mayor would care about grabbing a few C-notes from a guy who wanted to get on the city's police force.
"There is a lot of sadness tonight, for him and the city," said Daniels, standing a few feet from the bar. "Over the years in politics, I've been his friend and I haven't been his friend and tonight I'm his friend. He needs friends right now. I hope he is innocent."
Then Daniels reached into the pocket of his tweed blazer and pulled out a fancy Cuban cigar, a Montecristo. "I was saving it for the mayor."
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