NAPOLITANO

CRANSTON –– Mayor Michael T. Napolitano said yesterday he will not run for reelection this fall.

The mayor, who is in the middle of his first term, said the job has become too much of a burden on his family.

“My wife is getting her husband back,” said Napolitano, 51, “my children are getting their father back.”

Napolitano’s decision throws a nascent mayoral race into disarray.

The city was gearing up for a rematch between Napolitano, a Democrat, and Republican Allan W. Fung, a former City Council member who narrowly lost the mayoral contest two years ago.

Now, the focus shifts to who will replace Napolitano at the top of Cranston’s Democratic ticket.

City Council Vice President Paula B. McFarland, who suggested in recent weeks that she was contemplating a run for mayor in 2010, said yesterday that she is seriously considering a race this fall.

State Rep. Peter G. Palumbo, D-Cranston, said he would decide by Friday whether to campaign for the city’s top job.

And state Rep. Charlene Lima, D-Cranston, said she would take a couple of weeks to make a decision.

Council President Aram G. Garabedian, another Democrat whose name was bandied about yesterday, ruled out a run for mayor.

Michael J. Sepe, chairman of the Democratic City Committee, said he was “very disappointed” by Napolitano’s decision.

But he said he was convinced that the eventual Democratic nominee would win in the fall.

Fung, for his part, said he was prepared to take on any challenger who emerges in the coming months.

“I am going to continue to move forward in my campaign, whoever is my opponent,” he said.

Napolitano, who took office in January 2007, has served during a particularly trying time in City Hall.

A state budget crisis, a declining economy and surging health care and fuel costs have created what many observers call the worst fiscal crisis for Rhode Island’s cities and towns in memory.

And Napolitano came under fire for plans to dip into the city’s reserves to the tune of $2.7 million for the fiscal year that begins July 1.

But the City Council nixed those plans two weeks ago when it passed the 2008-09 budget –– robbing the critique of some of its power.

And Napolitano insisted yesterday that political considerations had nothing to do with his decision to drop out of the race.

To the contrary, the mayor said, he was well-positioned to win reelection.

“I had name recognition, I had the finances, I had the exposure and I had the good record,” he said. “I was confident I would win.”

Napolitano had built a sizable fundraising advantage over Fung, a lobbyist for MetLife Home & Auto Insurance.

Campaign finance records show the mayor hauled in $68,000 in the final quarter of 2007 and the first quarter of 2008.

And Napolitano said he raised an additional $52,000 at an April 16 fundraiser, bringing his seven-month total to about $120,000.

Fung collected about $18,000 in the same period –– though he said yesterday he has pulled in about $5,000 more since and has commitments for an additional $20,000, with a fundraiser scheduled for June 16 at the Cranston Country Club.

But fundraising, Napolitano said, would not have been his only advantage in another race against Fung.

The mayor said his no-new-taxes budget would have been another asset on the campaign trail.

He also pointed to a record that includes a jump in the city’s bond rating, the $1.9-million buyout of a controversial, half-built concrete batching plant off Pontiac Avenue and the death of an unpopular big-box development proposed for the Mulligan’s Island golf complex.

“This is totally –– and I can’t say this enough –– totally, unequivocally, a decision based on family considerations,” said Napolitano, sitting in a Warwick restaurant yesterday with his wife, Anne Ruggieri, at his side.

Napolitano has three children –– Katherine, 13, Michael, 9 and Joseph, 7.

He said his two boys have had a particularly difficult time adjusting to what he called his “consuming” work schedule.

Napolitano recalled an insistent question from Michael: “He’d say to me, ‘Daddy, why do you come to my games if you can’t stay?’”

Joseph has been missing out, too, the mayor said.

“I used to put him to bed,” Napolitano said, “I used to watch him draw.”

Ruggieri, a doctor who is chief of radiology at St. Luke’s Hospital, in New Bedford, and Tobey Hospital, in Wareham, Mass., has a busy schedule of her own –– working 60 to 70 hours per week, by her estimate.

But she emphasized, yesterday, that she did not pressure her husband to drop out of the race, maintaining that the mayor’s own concerns about his family life drove the decision.

Whatever the reasons for Napolitano’s decision, Ruggieri suggested the mayor –– who is weighing a return to his work as a lawyer –– might benefit from the change in pace.

“He’s a very intense person,” she said. “When he does something, he does it with all his heart and soul. And when you do that, you burn out.”

dscharfe@projo.com