The Prince of Providence

by Mike Stanton

  The campaign was vintage Cianci, part tent revival and part political mugging. His two hapless opponents, Fred Lippitt and Andrew Annaldo, never saw what hit them.

  Over and over, a humble and self-deprecating Cianci sought voters’ forgiveness. “Yes, I have sinned,” he said. “But let he who is without sin cast the first stone. That’s what the Bible says.” Cianci preached that he was no Mother Teresa—but that he had “never stopped caring about Providence.” When a New York Times reporter pressed him about past corruption, Cianci told him to go to the Rhode Island Historical Society. That was “ancient history.”

  But the past kept cropping up. Reporters asked Cianci about the corruption on his first watch and his assault of DeLeo. On a televised newsmakers program, the first question dealt with Cianci’s alleged cocaine use—a rumor that had been strong at the time of his assault on DeLeo but that had never surfaced so publicly. During a televised debate, the Journal’s Charlie Bakst held up a Cianci campaign brochure promising to reduce crime and asked whether the voters could trust a criminal to accomplish that. Cianci remained calm in front of the camera and stayed on message—that he had paid a very public price for his mistake, and that he wanted to talk about the future.

  Running as an Independent, Cianci was matched against the Democrat Annaldo, a young city councilman from the Fourth Ward, and the venerable Lippitt, the seventy-three-year-old East Side patrician he had beaten in a three-way race in 1982.

  Neither man was very articulate, and the nimble Cianci made them appear even more wooden. Standing between his two bickering opponents in one debate, Cianci listened as they accused each other of dipping into special pension deals at taxpayer expense, then unleashed the campaign’s most memorable line: “I’m getting caught in the crossfire here between the Little Dipper and the Big Dipper.” In another debate, at Brown University, Cianci skewered Annaldo’s plan to force tax-exempt colleges and other institutions to pay more money to the city for police and fire protection. Taxing religious institutions, Cianci quipped, had been settled “when the people came in with high hats and turkeys.”

  Moments before one televised debate, as the candidates were standing in the television studio, sources said that Cianci leaned over and made a derogatory remark about the unmarried Lippitt’s reputed homosexuality, rattling him. Prior to another debate, during an angry verbal exchange in the parking lot with the bachelor Annaldo, Cianci ripped into Andy “and his boyfriends.”

  Behind the scenes, the campaign was marked by skulduggery and financial perils.

  One night, Lippitt said years later, he was leaving a fund-raiser at the Roger Williams Park Casino when some volunteers in another car noticed that he was being followed. They tailed that car and traced the license plate to an off-duty Providence policeman who was working for Cianci. Later that night they followed the car back to Cianci’s house. (After the election, Lippitt said that Frank Corrente admitted that they had had him followed, to see whom he met with.)

  In the campaign’s final weeks, covert smear campaigns emerged against two of the candidates—Lippitt and Annaldo. One weekend, flyers calling Lippitt’s Yankee ancestors “slave traders” mysteriously appeared in black neighborhoods in South Providence. Another day, someone delivered tape recordings to The Providence Journal of intercepted car-phone conversations between Annaldo and a Democratic fund-raiser, spiced with salty language but otherwise not incriminating. All three candidates denied any responsibility.

  Heading down the stretch, Cianci was running out of funds. Between campaign stops he was on his car phone, trying to borrow money. On October 19 Conley, Roussel, and another supporter cosigned a hundred-thousand-dollar note to get him across the finish line.

  Operating out of a cavernous abandoned supermarket on Branch Avenue, the Cianci campaign made up with manpower what it lacked in money. His New York political consultants were amazed at how quickly Cianci could turn out dozens of volunteers if he needed phone calls made or envelopes stuffed.

  One volunteer was Steven Antonson, a twenty-seven-year-old electrician from Elmhurst. Antonson had grown up in a Doorley family, down the street from Joe Doorley’s father. His parents had hated Buddy Cianci. But Steven, who had developed an interest in politics through his grandfather, the head of maintenance at the State House, admired Cianci as a brilliant politician. After Cianci declared his candidacy in 1990, Antonson went to an organizational meeting at his campaign headquarters, in an abandoned hardware store on Branch Avenue. Cianci gave a rousing speech, and Antonson was dazzled. This was the man to learn from—the man to teach him how to be a politician.

  Antonson signed on as an advance man and quickly became indoctrinated in the wily ways of Buddy. One of his first tasks was to get Cianci into the St. Bartholomew’s Feast parade in Silver Lake that summer. But even though Cianci had grown up in Silver Lake, the priest refused to invite him. Cianci would ruin the parade, he said. Antonson didn’t know what the priest meant—until Cianci showed up anyway. The parade began uneventfully, with Cianci marching and waving. Then, suddenly, Cianci stopped marching and stood in the middle of the street, shaking hands. The front section of the parade kept going. But the entire parade behind him came to a halt. Cianci waited patiently, until seventy-five yards had opened up between him and the front of the parade, then resumed marching. At the end of the parade, Cianci turned to his advance man and said, “Antonson, did you see what I did?” Antonson was puzzled, so Cianci explained. “Everyone saw me. The only view they had was of me coming up the street.” Antonson, realizing that he was right, laughed.

  Antonson was awed by Cianci’s ability to soak up information, to remember names and faces and dates, and to count votes with mathematical precision. When Antonson mentioned that he had graduated from Mount Pleasant High School in 1980, Cianci remembered that the school’s basketball team had won the championship that year, and he named the principal. One day, campaigning at a supermarket, Antonson was handing out silver Cianci key chains when Cianci grabbed him and pulled him over in front of the dairy case. As the two men stood side by side, staring up at the milk cartons, Cianci said: “Antonson, what’s wrong with you? Those key chains cost 75.9 cents apiece. You’re giving them to people who don’t vote.”

  As the campaign gathered momentum, Antonson found himself spending more time with Cianci. One of his jobs was to get the candidate out of bed in the morning. One Sunday, when Antonson made his wake-up call, Cianci asked if he’d gotten the newspaper. Antonson went outside, got the paper off his stoop, and came back to the phone. “Are there any articles about me?” Cianci asked. Antonson sat in his bed next to his wife, who was half asleep, and paged through the paper until he found an article about Cianci. “Read it to me,” Cianci commanded. By now, Antonson’s wife, Lori, was fuming. She sat up in bed and made such a commotion that Antonson had to hang up. “If he can’t read his own paper,” she snapped, “then he shouldn’t be mayor.”

  Antonson got to know Cianci’s insecurities and eccentricities, including his need to be loved. Elated after a successful visit to an electrical-workers banquet, Cianci wouldn’t leave, even after the hall emptied out. “They loved me,” he told Antonson. “Didn’t they love me?”

  He also never seemed to carry any money; Pat Conley joked that Cianci was like crime: “He never pays.” One hot day, in a church basement on Smith Street, Cianci asked Antonson if he wanted a drink. Antonson said he’d like a Coke, then waited expectantly. “What’s wrong?” asked Cianci. “The bar’s over there.” Another time Cianci had Antonson on his boat, anchored at Shooter’s, on India Point, and offered him a drink. Antonson said he’d have a Coke. Cianci asked insistently if he wanted something stronger, but Antonson kept declining. Finally, Cianci said: “You’re lucky you didn’t ask for a drink. If you had, I would’ve told you to leave. When you drink, you say stuff you shouldn’t say. Drinking makes you stupid.” Cianci, who often drank vodka during the campaign, also advised, “If you’re gonna drink, drink vodka. They can’t
smell it.”

  Cianci had one last lesson for Antonson: “The only thing I ask of you is that you’re loyal. I’ve gotta be able to trust you. Otherwise, I don’t need you around me.”

  Cianci’s entire campaign in 1990 targeted the “leaners.” During a brainstorming session, Cianci suggested inviting all of Providence’s undecided voters to his house for a cookout. His consultants vetoed the idea, not wanting to alienate his core supporters. Outspent on television advertising, Cianci countered with a cheaper, yet sophisticated, direct-mail campaign that focused on undecided voters, by issue and by neighborhood.

  Meanwhile, Tom Rossi, Cianci’s campaign manager, identified thousands of voters likely to vote against Cianci, and sent postcards to their addresses. Several thousand came back as undeliverable. Two weeks before the election, Rossi went to the Board of Canvassers and challenged the eligibility of thirty-five hundred voters. The board disqualified about seven hundred likely anti-Cianci voters. Cianci went on to win the election by 317 votes—a victory that would not be cemented until five days before Christmas, when the Rhode Island Supreme Court this time ruled in his favor on the question of whether a convicted felon could hold office.

  On election night, with the outcome still in doubt, Cianci turned to Wendy Materna and said, “I want no tears.” But it had never entered her mind that he might lose. Later that night, when the returns were more encouraging, a joyous Cianci got down on one knee in his yard and asked Materna to marry him. She would laugh later at the memory. It was his first serious marriage proposal but not the last. As Buddy Cianci prepared to become mayor again, their relationship had entered a new phase.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Zorba the Mayor

  Buddy II, as the second reign of Vincent A. Cianci, Jr., was known, began under two circus tents outside his carriage house on Power Street.

  At one minute past midnight on January 7, 1991, Cianci was sworn in as mayor in front of more than five hundred friends and well-wishers. Wendy Materna and his daughter, Nicole, stood by his side. Cianci felt as if he had gone to sleep for six years and just woken up, as if his time in exile had been nothing more than a bad dream.

  He regained office lacking a mandate, and knowing that he would have to consolidate his power. He humbly pledged to be “a different kind of mayor,” to recruit the best people for his administration this time, and to foster “unity and togetherness.” One Saturday night in early January he was at City Hall, cleaning his office with a small group of aides. He called them together and said: “I’ve been through hard times, so I know what it’s like. If you have a problem, I want you to come to me.”

  He hired Joseph Almagno, the respected former Providence school superintendent who had supported Annaldo in the election, as his chief of staff. Some of Almagno’s closest friends advised him not to take the job. They warned him that Cianci was using him to gain legitimacy. But Almagno wanted to believe that Cianci had changed; he wanted him to succeed, for the sake of Providence. Publicly, Almagno praised Cianci’s “superior intellectual ability” and his vision for the city. “I am thoroughly convinced that he will put people in critical positions that will reflect a government of integrity. He has no other way to go.” Privately, Almagno told Cianci that he would resign if he saw any sign of impropriety.

  “Joe Almagno is a classy guy,” said one city official. “He won’t stand for any shenanigans. If he goes, and it’s not health or something, then you got to start asking questions.”

  Joining Almagno in the mayor’s new inner circle were Frank Corrente, the campaign deputy treasurer, who became director of administration, and Tom Rossi, the campaign manager, who was named policy coordinator.

  Corrente and Rossi were more hard-core political operators than Almagno. Before jumping on Cianci’s winning bandwagon, both men had been political outcasts—Corrente from Paolino’s City Hall, Rossi from the North End political machine. After Cianci’s victory, Corrente and Rossi stood together at a fund-raiser at the Metacomet Country Club and laughed as they watched all of the political players who had been against them come streaming in the door. Cianci was the only show in town now, they gloated, and everyone had to “buy a ticket to the dance,” as Rossi put it.

  Publicly magnanimous in victory, Cianci showed a nastier side in private. One night at a function at the Biltmore he approached ex-councilman Malcolm Farmer III, a former ally who had supported Lippitt in the recent campaign. According to Farmer, Cianci warned, “You’d better not have a drink and back out of your driveway.”

  After Cianci took office, he summoned all of the department directors, holdovers from the previous administration, to the aldermens’ chambers at City Hall. There was a chill in the air as he marched in, like a general reviewing his troops.

  “I just want you to know that I’m the fucking mayor,” he said. “I’m going to be examining every fucking résumé and looking at all you fucking people.”

  Their survival depended on their loyalty to him, Cianci said. He was putting everyone on notice; he called it “putting the monkey” on their back. After an unannounced visit to the Public Works garages to dress down the man in charge of snowplowing, the mayor told a reporter, “He knows that I know that he knows that I know.”

  Despite his bluster, Cianci didn’t simply bully people. He co-opted his enemies. He hired Nick Easton, his former council critic and potential rival who had sought the Democratic nomination for mayor in 1990, as the city’s deputy building inspector. He put Fred Lippitt on a budget task force. He kept the head of the city’s Democratic party on the city payroll and hired the chairman of the city’s Republican party. Neither party would endorse a candidate for mayor in 1994.

  Cianci had a saying: “Marry your enemies and fuck your friends.”

  His first day back, he was in a playful mood. He made impromptu visits to the tax assessor’s office and the dog pound and toured City Hall, where he took note of the many Paolino pictures still hanging in offices. Then, relaxing in his old, familiar corner office, he kidded with Tom Rossi, who had just returned from a meeting with the state’s mayors to discuss fiscal problems.

  “Lots of tales of woe, Tommy?” asked Cianci.

  “Woe? We had to stop a lot of them from jumping out the windows,” replied Rossi.

  The mayor fielded dozens of phone calls. His secretary said that a man had called to complain that he was being hassled by his ex-wife and wanted the mayor’s help.

  “I guess I know what he’s talking about,” said Cianci. “Call him back.”

  Cianci’s cocker spaniel, Tucker, darted into the room, followed by Wendy Materna.

  “Hey, Tucker,” he called, his eyes shining. The dog raced up to Cianci, then ran into a back office, then ran into the mayor’s private bathroom.

  “Go get George,” said Cianci, throwing a plastic squeeze-toy replica of George Bush in a Santa Claus suit. “He loves that.”

  After the corruption that had disgraced his first reign, Cianci vowed to be more hands-on. He showed up for one meeting of the Board of Contract and Supply, in the City Council chambers, and grilled employees for three hours about city purchases, right down to a basketball backboard at Central High School.

  “A fifty-nine-hundred-dollar change order from an engineering company raises my eyebrows,” Cianci lectured one official. “And you see that reporter over there? Well, he is gonna write all kinds of stories about us if we can’t answer questions later on about why we approved these things.”

  “Where is someone from the Parks Department?” he demanded. Looking around the room as he smoked a cigarette, Cianci spotted a man sitting in the back, wearing a trench coat. He worked for the Parks Department. “Who are you? Come up here. Why don’t you take your coat off. You might get a cold and then you’d have to go on worker’s comp. Can you tell me what this trash-hauling contract is about? Who is this SDS Disposal?”

  The man didn’t know.

  “Well, what is this charge of fifty dollars a pull? What’s a pul
l, anyway? I want to know what a pull is.”

  In his first months back, Cianci was confronted with familiar challenges. Providence was in the doldrums, with downtown buildings boarded up and nighttime streets lifeless. The critically acclaimed Trinity Repertory Theater was on the verge of bankruptcy. The Civic Center was in decline. Despite Cianci’s efforts during his first administration to reclaim pockets of downtown, such as the Biltmore Hotel and the Providence Performing Arts Center, the 1980s economic boom had passed by the city’s aging core. Jobs and people had continued to flee.

  Cianci’s hopes of paying for new programs were hamstrung by a growing budget deficit and a recession compounded by a statewide banking crisis. The same week that he took office, the governor closed forty-five privately insured banks and credit unions, touching off the worst banking disaster in Rhode Island since the Great Depression.

  The system’s private insurer had failed after one banker, Cianci’s former business associate Joseph Mollicone, absconded with thirteen million dollars shortly after election day in 1990, prompting a run on the banks. He was last seen at Boston’s Logan Airport, but some speculated that he had been murdered by mobsters who had banked with him.

  Against that backdrop, Cianci went about trying to restore his city. To be successful, he said, a mayor had to address four things: housing, jobs, crime, and schools. Those four things—“and maybe a little excitement now and then.”

  The first four things proved rather intractable, given the city’s high poverty rate and the lack of money, though Cianci did boast of bringing the crime rate down. But the mayor was never at a loss for creating excitement.

  As part of his inaugural festivities, he brought in actor Hal Linden to headline a Broadway revue at the Providence Performing Arts Center, as a band outside played the theme from The Godfather. Over lunch at Toscano’s with a Los Angeles Times reporter, Cianci downed a vodka trimmed with six tiny cocktail onions and spoke of Providence as “simpatico, a responsibility, your mistress, your wife, whatever you want to call it. . . . This is like a second coming.” As for the challenges ahead, he said, “I have the testicular fortitude to do what has to be done.”