Dennis W. Michaud, a former consultant for the embattled Beacon Mutual Insurance Co., will challenge Governor Carcieri in the Republican primary.

01:00 AM EDT on Friday, May 19, 2006

BY KATHERINE GREGG
Journal State House Bureau

PROVIDENCE -- An adjunct assistant professor of economics at Brown University who has publicly tussled with the Carcieri administration over the Beacon Mutual Insurance Co. officially notified the state Board of Elections yesterday of his plans to challenge Republican Governor Carcieri in a primary.

In a brief interview yesterday, Dennis W. Michaud, 55, of Providence, said he decided to challenge Carcieri because of the incumbent's "failed economic performance" and "failed performance to deliver on jobs."

"I just think there is no leadership up at the State House that I can see because I've worked with the Carcieri administration. I've done a lot of work in the administration," Michaud said, and "I just don't think the governor is an effective leader."

Michaud said he plans a formal announcement at 2 p.m. on Tuesday at either the State House or Prospect Park, and has scheduled four fundraisers: two in Providence and one each in New York City and Dearborn, Mich., where he has friends.

State GOP chairwoman Patricia Morgan said she doesn't know Michaud, doesn't know of any Republican with whom he has consulted and views his candidacy "a bad thing" because "we have a great candidate already in Governor Carcieri."

"I don't even know if he is a Republican," she said.

Voting records show that Michaud, a former Rhode Islander who moved back full time in 2001, voted in Warwick in 2002, but was allowed to vote only for president and vice president in Providence in November 2004 because he did not register there until Election Day.

Michaud yesterday declined to name his backers, but he said he has "support in the Brown community and local business community" and has also "talked with past chairmen of the Republican party, so these are some serious people."

Michaud, a paid consultant at times to both Beacon Mutual and Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island, sparked a public war-of-words with the Carcieri administration by coauthoring two opinion pieces published in The Providence Journal. One in July lauded Beacon's business practices and defended the company's right to expand regionally and shed the political appointees on its board. A more recent piece accused Carcieri of unfairly attacking the Beacon board "as part of a political strategy in an election year."

A year ago, then-state economic development director Michael McMahon wrote an opinion piece of his own in which he noted that Beacon had been created by the General Assembly and seeded with public funds to solve a workers' compensation crisis. He said the legislation Michaud was defending "would reduce state and public oversight," reduce state regulators' "ability to hold rate hearings," and "expose Beacon to out-of-state losses and claims against reserves and capital paid for by Rhode Islanders."

The governor's deputy chief of staff, Jeffrey M. Grybowski, sent a sharply worded letter of his own to Michaud and the coauthors of his newspaper piece. Grybowski laid into Beacon's defenders again in a piece that appeared in The Providence Journal on Sunday.

In it, he said: "The chief executive officer of Beacon, Joseph Solomon, who hired the professors, was fired for cause by the board of directors; the chairman of the board . . . has resigned and a grand jury has issued criminal subpoenas . . . .Sadly, despite all of this, Professors (George) Borts and Michaud do not regret their roles as for-hire Beacon apologists."

In a recent interview while he was still contemplating his run for governor, Michaud said he viewed the fact that Grybowski sent such a letter to his superiors at Brown as a subtle threat. "I'm afraid they're going to do to me what they did to Joe Solomon," he said.

Michaud taught one course this past spring -- The Economics, Governance and Management of the Large Corporation -- for three hours a week, according to Michael Chapman, the university's vice president for public affairs.

Chapman said Michaud informed the dean of the faculty, Rajiv Vohra, of his plan to run for office and the university's response was the same as it was when Prof. Jennifer Lawless launched her campaign for Congress. Chapman said he is "free to run for office if he wants," as long as he abides by the university's conflict-of-interest policy that bars him from accepting donations from students and their families.

Richard Reed, deputy director of the state Economic Development Corporation, confirmed that his agency was one of the sponsors of a one-day conference hosted by Brown's corporate-governance research program, and that Michaud was one of eight volunteers on a work group that helped guide the spinoff, from the EDC, of the Quonset Development Corporation.

Beyond that, Reed said Michaud's description of his work for the Carcieri administration was "more generous than I would characterize it."

Late yesterday, Carcieri campaign manager Tim Costa issued this statement: "There are now three candidates running for governor in the November election: the Republican candidate, the Democratic candidate and the Beacon Mutual/labor-insider candidate."

"Sadly, Mr. Michaud's purported candidacy proves that the insiders responsible for the mismanagement and possible criminal activity at Beacon Mutual will stop at nothing to protect themselves from public scrutiny," Costa said.

kgregg@projo.com / (401) 277-7078