At the same time, a small but significant group of Cicilline supporters are encouraging the mayor to pursue a third term — a race in which he would remain a prohibitive favorite — because of concerns that his approach would come undone if he were to leave City Hall.
It would be a mistake to dismiss Cicilline, considering how he and General Treasurer Frank Caprio have steadily led the campaign-fundraising quest for 2010.
And a $25,000 poll undertaken on the mayor’s behalf by the Washington-based Feldman Group indicates stronger support for Cicilline than some may surmise, says a source. The poll, completed in February, reportedly shows generally strong statewide backing for the mayor’s 51 percent favorable rating. It also rated Cicilline as tied with Attorney Gen-eral Patrick C. Lynch (after Jack Reed, Lincoln Chafee, and Sheldon Whitehouse) for the fourth-highest favorability rating in the state.
Then again, the last time a Providence mayor made the jump to the governor’s office was more than 60 years ago — in 1950, a wholly different political era — when Dennis J. Roberts accomplished the feat. And if Cicilline does go for it, his opponents will have quite a bit more ammunition to use than in the past.
A more challenging road
The tougher climate marks quite a change from 2002, when Cicilline — who launched an early and well-planned mayoral campaign as Cianci was facing the federal corruption trial that landed him in prison for almost five years — emerged as the new sensation of Rhode Island politics, offering a message of reform and ushering in what he tabs as a $3 billion economic development wave in Providence.
Cicilline enjoyed a lengthy honeymoon, winning plaudits for installing a cleaner approach to municipal government, delivering long-overdue reforms in the police depart-ment, and racking up impressive marks in Brown University polls (a 64 percent approval rating, for example, in September 2007). In 2006, he won a second term without breaking a sweat.
Curiously enough, Cicilline’s tough times began with the most ordinary of seasonal occurrences — the falling of snow on the streets of Providence around lunch time on a Thursday in mid-December.
As it happened, the storm dumped just enough of the white stuff, about six inches, to paralyze the capital city as commuters and students began an early mass migration home. It was hard not to suspect that the departure of such operation-savvy staffers as Carol Grant and former chief of staff Michael Mello, gone for a job with GTECH, had also taken a toll.
And though Cicilline was hardly alone among statewide elected officials in mustering a less-than-impressive response, the snow debacle offered a tangible and damaging contrast to the mayor’s self-description as a skilled operator of the nuts and bolts of city government.
By contrast, Carcieri fared better, because: 1) he was traveling in Iraq; 2) term limits preclude him for running for reelection; and 3) the story of children stranded on school buses into that evening, and the sense of disconnect exhibited by outgoing school superintendent Donnie Evans — which more or less spelled his own demise — fell on Cicilline’s lap.
