Chief of Staff Artin H. Coloian stands by as his boss, then- Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr., meets with a reporter in 2002.

THE PROVIDENCE JOURNAL / MARY MURPHY

Nick Narducci was raised to believe that your vote counted. But he didn’t realize how much until after he won the Democratic primary for Providence City Council in the city’s fractious Fourth Ward.

A longtime Little League and youth-football coach, Narducci grew up in the city’s North End, where his immigrant grandparents had settled after coming to America through Ellis Island.

In September, the political newcomer upset veteran Councilwoman Carol Romano by about two dozen votes. With no opponent in November, Narducci was assured victory in a downtrodden but politically savvy neighborhood where Buddy Cianci once said Niccolo Machiavelli would have lived had he been born in Providence. That’s when Narducci learned just how much his vote really counts. His phone began ringing, and all sorts of people started coming to see him, seeking his vote in the race for president of the City Council.

The eight-year reign of John J. Lombardi, the veteran council president from Federal Hill, is being challenged by a faction led by Councilman Peter Mancini, who has the support of the mayor, David N. Cicilline.

And every vote counts. Each side claims seven votes, with another council member, Josephine DiRuzzo, undecided.

Narducci, who supports Mancini, found himself in the middle of a turf war between Lombardi and Cicilline, who don’t get along. The outcome, which will be resolved between now and January, will help shape the tenor of public discourse between the mayor and the City Council for the next four years.

One day a few weeks ago, Narducci says, an old friend from the ward, Billy Ricci, asked him to take a ride to see a “friend.”

Ricci had been released from federal prison in June after serving more than two years for engaging in fraudulent financial transactions designed to mislead potential lenders. His prior record includes a no-contest plea in the 1980s to charges of racketeering, auto theft and insurance fraud.

Narducci and Ricci went downtown, and walked down a short flight of steps into Sidebar, a tony bar and restaurant near the courthouse on Dorrance Street.

Ricci introduced Narducci to the proprietor, Artin H. Coloian, former chief of staff to imprisoned ex-Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr. and now a busy criminal defense lawyer. Coloian, who keeps in touch with Cianci in prison, represents mobster Bobby DeLuca, who works at Sidebar while serving out the home-confinement portion of a gambling sentence.

Narducci says that Coloian asked him to support Lombardi for council president.

“They said what everyone else has said — that if I supported their candidate, they could be very supportive of me in the future,” Narducci said.

But Narducci wasn’t interested, and cut the meeting short to get to football practice with his youth team, the North Providence Jets.

“Being a newcomer, everybody’s jockeying for position,” Narducci said. “I could keep you on the phone all night with stories. . . . Before the primary, nobody was there. Now everybody wants to be supportive of me in the future.”

THERE IS AN ANCIENT Arab proverb: “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

How better to explain how Coloian, Cianci’s longtime confidant, finds himself on the same side as Lombardi, who often battled the Cianci administration?

Coloian was indicted with Cianci on federal corruption charges in 2001 in the City Hall probe Operation Plunder Dome. But unlike Cianci, who was convicted of racketeering conspiracy and is serving the final year of a five-year prison term at Fort Dix., N.J., Coloian was acquitted by a jury.

When Cianci was sentenced in September 2002, Lombardi was sworn in as the interim mayor. He immediately began firing members of what he had called Cianci’s bloated staff. Cianci, meanwhile, sat with Coloian and other supporters at the bar of the Providence Biltmore hotel across the street, mocking his successor.

Over the next few months, before Cianci reported to prison, the ex-mayor used his platform as a radio talk-show host to snipe at Lombardi. Meanwhile, Lombardi described being subjected to police surveillance during the Cianci years and had the mayor’s office swept for bugs.

That all seemed forgotten a few weeks ago when Lombardi appointed Coloian to serve on the Providence External Review Authority, a civilian board with oversight of police-misconduct complaints.

Lombardi and Coloian say the appointment does not mean they have become political allies.

Given that the board’s authority has been challenged in court by the police union, Lombardi said that it would be helpful to have a lawyer serve.

“Artie does a lot of criminal-defense work,” Lombardi said. “And he has institutional knowledge of police and police unions. The council thought it would be a good choice.”

Coloian and Lombardi, who both work out at the gym at The Westin Providence, say they ran into each other recently and the matter of the oversight-board appointment came up.

“I’ve known Artie since he was a little boy,” Lombardi said. Even during Lombardi’s battles with Cianci, “Artie has never been disrespectful to me.”

Says Coloian: “I’ve been in public service for a long time. It’s an honor to serve the city in any capacity, and a board where I thought I could be helpful.”

Still, the appointment has attracted attention.

“Wow!” Councilwoman DiRuzzo recalls thinking when she heard Coloian’s name. “He’s back at City Hall.”

Cliff Wood, the newly elected councilman from the Second Ward and a supporter of Mancini in the president’s race, criticizes the appointment.

“It doesn’t seem appropriate if you consider Operation Plunder Dome and Mr. Coloian’s relationship to the old mayor,” said Wood, a former Cicilline aide. “In a city of 176,000 people, I think that we could have found someone more appropriate.”

In an interview Friday, Cicilline said that the Coloian appointment was Lombardi’s prerogative, but that the mayor was concerned about “an appearance of conflict” because Coloian “owns a liquor establishment that has been cited on numerous occasions by the police.”

Sidebar has been cited for serving underage drinkers. One case was dismissed after the police could not produce evidence backing up the charges. Another alleged violation is pending with the city’s Board of Licenses.

Coloian supporters suggest that the police attention may be politically motivated — a charge that Cicilline denies.

Coloian is no fan of the mayor. When Cicilline took office in 2003, he criticized years of corruption and neglect under Cianci as contributing to the city’s financial difficulties.

Two summers ago, tempers flared between the two men at a wedding reception in Boston for Providence developer David Corsetti. The altercation came after a Journal story detailing the arrest of Richard Delgiudice, of Johnston, on federal narcotics charges in New York. Delgiudice, who is represented by Coloian, had boasted during a prior arrest in Providence to being Cicilline’s friend and driver, which Cicilline denied.

Cicilline said Friday that he harbors no grudge toward Coloian, and barely knows him. He declined to discuss the wedding encounter, saying only, “Mr. Coloian had several more drinks than he perhaps should have.”

Coloian also declined to discuss the incident, but fired back: “He was in no condition to judge how much anyone had had to drink — alcohol alone wouldn’t justify the volatility of his behavior.”

Coloian said that his indictment in Plunder Dome should have no bearing on his appointment to the police-oversight board — “I was exonerated.” He called his critics hypocrites for questioning his fitness to serve while supporting Question 2 on the recent ballot, giving convicted felons the right to vote.

There is also no appearance of conflict, said Coloian, between his running Sidebar and serving on an oversight board that hears specific acts of alleged misconduct by the police — but he vowed to recuse himself if a conflict did arise.

“I understand that [Cicilline] has big shoes to fill, but he could benefit from the experience of people from past administrations,” Coloian said.

Lombardi noted that Coloian was not only acquitted, but that as a lawyer he functions as “an officer of the court.”

When the appointment came before the council a few weeks ago, Lombardi said, nobody spoke against it. Councilmen Ronald W. Allen and Luis Aponte spoke in favor of Coloian.

“He was found innocent,” said Aponte, a Lombardi supporter, in an interview last week. “As a society, we believe in redemption. This is Art’s opportunity to come back to the village.”

COLOIAN DECLINED to comment on his courtship of Nick Narducci to support Lombardi.

Narducci says it was just one of many examples of the race behind the race — the battle for the council presidency that played out during various council races.

The council that is sworn in with Cicilline in January will have a different makeup, with 5 new faces among the 15 members, and possibly a new president.

Mancini says that he has won the support of four of the five newcomers: Narducci, Wood, Michael A. Solomon of the Fifth Ward and Leon F. Tejada in the Eighth Ward. The other, Seth Yurdin of the First Ward, is backing Lombardi; Cicilline backed Yurdin’s primary opponent.

Lombardi’s partisans have accused the mayor of recruiting and supporting candidates with the aim of “taking him out,” in the words of Aponte, who adds: “The mayor’s approach has been ABL — Anybody But Lombardi.”

“It’s no secret that the mayor and the council president aren’t exchanging Christmas or Hanukkah cards,” Aponte said.

Lombardi stresses the importance of having a council that’s not a rubber stamp for the mayor. Mancini backers say that they won’t roll over for Cicilline, but will work with him more effectively.

Cicilline says that it’s not his decision, but adds that he hopes to have a closer working relationship with the council in his second term. Mancini, he added, “would be a terrific council president.”

Meanwhile, Cianci will return to Providence from prison next year. And though he won’t be able to run for office again because of his conviction, the recent passage of Question 2, which allows felons to vote, means that Cianci’s vote will count, too.

In Narducci’s Fourth Ward, the struggle continues.

“I’m still getting calls,” said Narducci on Friday. “Yesterday the Teamsters called, asking me to support John Lombardi.”

Narducci recalled “a certain party” asking what it would take to win his support for a particular candidate for president.

“You name it — it could be yours,” he recalls the person saying.

“I told him I wanted a grass infield for my senior league,” he said. “They laughed at me. But I’m not doing this for self-gain — I’m tired of seeing the neighborhood go down the tubes.”

Will Narducci get his grass infield?

“We’ll see.”