Anti-Cianci group folds
An anti-Vincent “Buddy” Cianci group founded by former mayoral candidate Lorne Adrain folded before making any moves to attack the Cianci campaign, WPRI reported. Adrain told WPRI that he will instead gear his efforts toward endorsing Democratic mayoral candidate Jorge Elorza. The third party group had aimed to raise and invest between $500,000 and $1 million in an effort to fight Cianci’s mayoral bid.
“Despite Buddy Cianci’s fiscal irresponsibility when he was mayor and the ripple effects his decisions still have on our city, after careful consideration, I believe the best use of my resources and time is to support Jorge Elorza,” Adrain said in a statement.
Mayoral candidates debate crime prevention
Cianci announced his plans to improve public safety in Providence during a press conference Friday, WPRI reported. The mayoral candidate said that if elected, he will allocate funds toward police force expansion after eliminating excess spending from the city’s budget, WPRI reported.
“As mayor, the first thing I’m going to do is order an audit of the city budget to identify waste, fraud and abuse,” Cianci said.
But the Elorza campaign attacked Cianci’s history of crime prevention in Providence in a press release sent out the same day. “The Cianci record is characterized by rising crime, failure to implement community policing, constant political interference in the Providence Police Department and widespread corruption,” wrote David Ortiz, spokesman for the Elorza campaign, in the press release. Ortiz added that Cianci’s last six years as mayor were marked by an increase in violent crime in Providence, even though crime rates fell in Rhode Island and across the country.
Between 1997 and 2002, Cianci’s last years in office, violent crime rates in Providence rose from 674.8 per 100,000 people in 1997 to 734.9 per 100,000 people in 2002. But Providence violent crime rates also showed a net decrease if analyzed over Cianci’s entire term from 1991 to 2002, Politifact reported.
In the mayoral debate on Sept. 30, Elorza said he plans to apply for federal public safety grants and use the funds to increase the Providence police force to 490 officers.
During his press conference, Cianci criticized Elorza’s plans to use federal grants, calling it impractical given current federal budget constraints, Rhode Island Public Radio reported.
Raimondo portrait removed
After Democratic candidate for governor Gina Raimondo accepted an endorsement from Planned Parenthood and spoke in support of abortion rights and access to women’s reproductive care, Raimondo’s alma mater, Catholic preparatory school La Salle Academy in Providence, removed her photograph from a wall of notable alums, the Providence Journal reported.
Following days of controversy and press coverage over the decision, La Salle Academy took down all 25 photographs of alums from its “Wall of Notables,” because it had become a “distraction” to learning, La Salle Academy President Thomas Gerrow told the ProJo. Moving forward, the school hopes to establish criteria for determining whose pictures should go on the wall.
Though U.S. Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., a fellow La Salle alum, has also espoused pro-choice views on abortion, his photograph remained on the wall after Raimondo’s was taken down, RIPR reported. His photo was only removed from the wall along when the entire display was dismantled, the ProJo reported.
Bishop Thomas Tobin of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence publically announced that Gina Raimondo deserved to lose her spot of recognition on the wall for her pro-abortion views.
When Raimondo “distanced herself from the church, when she chose Planned Parenthood over the church, she took her own picture off the wall,” Tobin told WPRO.
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