NORTH PROVIDENCE -- In an uncertain political situation in a complicated political year, Mayor A. Ralph Mollis seems untroubled.

"We feel very confident, very comfortable," he said, and predicted victory, albeit perhaps a close one, in his campaign for secretary of state against another municipal official, Susan Stenhouse, a Warwick City Council member.

Mollis counts two things as his strong suits: town and family. Mayor for 10 years in a town with continuing financial problems, Mollis said he's kept his part of the budget under control and has been successful at running an operation in many ways bigger than the agency he would control as secretary of state two things of which he's proud.

He said he's also helped instill a sense of community in a town that was low on morale when he took over the mayor's office in 1997.

In an interview, Mollis said he makes his family central to his plans. He promised that, if elected, he would run for a second four-year term as secretary of state, an office often considered a stepping stone toward higher office. And after that? Let's see, he said, eight years from now, his youngest will be 24. "Who knows?" he says. "I wouldn't even look that far ahead."

Looking ahead a week, things seem equally unclear. Mollis has been a local political success story since he won the mayor's office in a Democratic primary in 1996 by only 59 votes. But his chances against Republican Stenhouse in this campaign seem uncertain.

The one published poll on the race came from Brown University in late September, not long after the nasty Democratic primary fight Mollis won against Guillaume de Ramel. That poll put Mollis behind Stenhouse, 30 percent to 35 percent, with 35 percent undecided a relatively narrow margin, early in the race, with so many undecided voters that anything could happen.

A spokesman for Lt. Gov. Charles J. Fogarty, the Democratic candidate for governor, said this week that Fogarty's campaign included the secretary of state candidates in a poll early last month. He said the results were "a statistical tie," with perhaps "a slight edge to Mollis" but the difference still within the poll's margin of error. There was also a large undecided vote. Things could easily have changed since.

Mollis, 45, prides himself on setting goals and working away at them. That's how he has run North Providence, he said, and that's how he'd run the secretary of state's office. He listed his goals in an op-ed article in The Journal on Oct. 4, and he said he would work his way through them. They include:

Using real estate agents as voter-registration agents, getting voters on the rolls at their new addresses.

Requiring voter identification at the polls, with the secretary of state giving free voter-identification cards to persons who don't have approved forms of identification. (Stenhouse has proposed something similar.)

Instituting a program called "Through the Eyes of Our Veterans," matching high school seniors with military veterans so the young people could hear about the veterans' experiences, ensuring that they are remembered.

Giving the office's corporations division, which registers businesses, the job of helping support them by making incorporation easier, keeping track of legislation affecting them and offering a variety of services that would help small, new businesses succeed.

The controversial item on the list is the voter identification plan, a matter of national debate, with opponents arguing that it would disenfranchise some mostly poor voters and shouldn't be implemented when no significant voter fraud exists to justify it.

Mollis concedes that voters would still have to get the ID card, and that there's little indication of significant voter fraud. But he said that the fact that it would be free would mean that "it does not disenfranchise anyone."

With hotly contested races for U.S. Senate and governor attracting attention, Mollis' race hasn't gotten much notice, partly because it has been relatively civil, Mollis said.

Mollis a graduate of St. Anselm College who also attended the Southern New England School of Law started out with a bit of good sportsmanship by declining to sign on to a Democratic Party lawsuit aimed at denying Stenhouse public campaign financing because she filed late.

Trying to deny Stenhouse the money might have seemed churlish, considering that Mollis is depending on public financing, too. The party dropped the suit.

Mollis talks matter-of-factly about some awkward points. The state Ethics Commission is investigating his campaign's soliciting contributions from North Providence town employees, something Mollis admits and calls "a one-time error for which I admit full responsibility." He said some town employees ended up in his database of supporters because they had contributed voluntarily in the past, leading to their getting mailed solicitations. They have since been removed, he said.

He remains unapologetic about his friendship with the late Robert A. Barbato, a longtime mob associate who once ran a men's clothing shop in North Providence that the state police described as a "crime palace." Mollis took campaign contributions from Barbato, and considered him "an excellent friend over the years," someone he is proud to have had among his friends.

Does he have any other friends like that?

"I would not be able to say yes to that or no to that," he said. "As long as a friend never asked me to compromise who I am, then I would never run away from a friend."

Venturing into territory normally that of the state Economic Development Corporation, Mollis said he wants the secretary of state's office to help reduce the number of small business failures in the state. "It's almost a clich to say that small business is the backbone of the Rhode Island economy," Mollis said. "But it is more of a truism than a clich, and the secretary of state's office plays an important role in the successful development of small business start-up."

He said that business owners tell him the state offers help in starting a business, "but little to no help" in operating one successfully. He said he wants to change that, in part by offering workshops on business skills such as taxes, bookkeeping, marketing and employee recruitment.

Mollis said he also wants to eliminate confusion caused by the present practice of registering corporations with the secretary of state's office and sole proprietorships with municipal governments. The result, he said, is there can be two companies with identical or "deceptively similar" names, leading to court fights and other expenses.

Mollis said he would fix that problem by creating a central business database of both sorts of businesses.