Suffering the merciless slings and arrows of the Providence Newspaper Guild’s Follies, an annual send-up of the most egregious behavior that Rhode Islanders can offer, has become a time-honored rite of passage for the state’s politicians since the festive event was first held in 1974. So when Governor Donald L. Carcieri last week became the first governor since the disgraced Edward DiPrete to take a deliberate pass on the gathering, it attracted more than a little attention.
The official explanation from the Carcieri camp, as reported Monday in the Providence Journal’s Political Scene column, is that the governor and his wife, Sue, “decided to head to the winter meeting of the National Governor’s Association, in Washington, DC, earlier than planned . . . The couple decided to participate in a 5K walk for wellness at 8 am Saturday in Washington.”
According to Guild administrator Tim Schick, however, “What we had heard early on through his staff was that the governor was not going to be present if he thought Guy Dufault was going to be present, and in the middle of last week rumors started flying around that Guy Dufault was going to show up at the Follies. When the rumors started, we got word from the governor’s office that [Carcieri] was going to leave early for the governors’ conference and, in essence, take a hike.”
Dufault, of course, is the political consultant and former chairman of the Rhode Island Democratic Party, who incurred Carcieri’s wrath last November when he unintentionally aired unsubstantiated allegations on his weekly UPN advertorial The Real Deal of extra-marital liaisons involving the governor. Carcieri was quick to go on the attack, using a State House news conference to call on Dufault to retract the comments and to condemn the operative as part of “the dirty underbelly of current politics in the state.” Dufault subsequently lost his high-profile Rhode Island consulting jobs.
As it turned out, the currently low-profile Dufault, whose caricature graced the cover of the Follies program and who spurned a request to be the mystery guest for the event, did not attend the February 24 gathering at the Venus de Milo in Swansea, Massachusetts.
Carcieri spokesman Jeff Neal says the possibility that Dufault might be at the Follies — or that the controversy involving the colorful phrase comatta, Italian slang for mistress, would be comedic fodder at the event — was “absolutely not” a factor in the Carcieris’ decision not to be there. “Unfortunately, the governor had not been able to attend two of the last three national governor’s conferences,” Neal says, because of the Station fire disaster in February 2003, and a health issue involving Sue Carcieri last year. “The governor very much wanted to fully participate in this year conference and it’s unfortunate that this conference happens to fall every year in one of the busiest parts of Rhode Island’s political year.” Neal also noted that Connecticut Governor M. Jodi Rell was rapped for missing the governors’ gathering.
Guild members will remember this differently. Although Lincoln Almond sometimes skipped the Follies “because he didn’t like to stay up late,” and Carcieri didn’t attend the event when he was preoccupied with the Station aftermath, Schick calls Carcieri the first governor since DiPrete “who made a decision not to show up for the Follies.”
