A blue tsunami just washed ashore in East Greenwich
The United States first went to war with Iraq, Nelson Mandela was released from prison, and parts of the Berlin Wall were still standing as the Soviet Union continued to collapse. Cheers was the most popular TV show in America, Home Alone had yet to be released on the big screen, and you were probably […]
Flanders, Whitehouse now agree on Kavanaugh accusation
The accusation that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh tried to rape a 15-year-old girl as a drunken high school student has captured the beltway’s and the nation’s attention. Here in Rhode Island, it’s also shed some light on the campaign between Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, the incumbent Democrat, and Bob Flanders, a Republican and himself a […]
Breakfast with Sheldon Whitehouse
You wouldn’t know it by watching him work the crowd waiting for a breakfast table in Newport, but Sheldon Whitehouse, Rhode Island’s junior senator who is facing re-election this year, says he’s uncomfortable in the public spotlight. “In the world of people in politics, way shyer than average,” is how he described himself over breakfast […]
Incumbent Democrats face two-front campaigns
Politics makes for strange bedfellows, observed Charles Dudley Warner in 1850, and it seems true enough this campaign season in Rhode Island as the highest-profile incumbent Democrats are each taking fire from not only Republicans, but also the progressive left. Sometimes even on the same issues. Governor Raimondo Governor Gina Raimondo faces the most-obvious two-front […]
Flanders spams public sector employees seeking campaign cash
When Republican U.S. Senate candidate Bob Flanders was the state-appointed receiver for cash-strapped Central Falls in 2012, the affluent East Greenwich resident infamously offered municipal employees a haircut or a beheading in balancing the city’s budget. As such, public sector workers probably won’t prove to be a major source of support for Flanders, a small […]
Bob Flanders doesn’t think community college is college
Republican Bob Flanders had some nice things to say about Bobby Nardolillo yesterday, his now-former opponent in the GOP primary for a U.S. Senate seat who dropped out of the race yesterday. “He is a dedicated public servant with a bright future,” Flanders said of Nardolillo in a tweeted statement. Before Nardolillo dropped out, Flanders […]
Linc Chafee might primary Sheldon Whitehouse
Lincoln Chafee doesn’t want to be governor again after all. Instead, he wants his old Senate seat back. To get it, the Republican-turned-independent-turned Democrat will have to best in a primary Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, the incumbent Democrat who knocked him out of the Senate seat back in 2006 when Chafee was still a Republican. “I […]
Corrigan’s EG tenure benefits Bob Flanders’ law firm
Whether or not Gayle Corrigan’s tenure as East Greenwich town manager is benefiting Bob Flanders’ community, it’s definitely benefiting his law firm. The town paid Whelan, Corrente, Flanders, Kinder & Siket $104,518 for services through November. Flanders, an East Greenwich Republican who is currently running for the US Senate seat held by Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse, […]
Cienki, Corrigan, Dykeman are big donors to Flanders’ Senate campaign
As Bob Flanders was considering running for the Senate, he was also talking up his friend and former colleague Gayle Corrigan to East Greenwich Town Council President Sue Cienki. “Gayle was someone we did talk about, yes,” Flanders told me in June. “We talked about her skill set and what she can bring to the […]
Flanders announces in Central Falls, Dems say he profited off the struggling city
Bob Flanders announced his campaign for a US Senate seat today in Central Falls, where he was once the court-appointed receiver as the city went through bankruptcy. The Rhode Island Democratic Party responded by pointing out how much money Flanders made in that role. “There’s no question that the million dollars Robert Flanders and his deputies collected […]
Coventry GOP chairman says CCFD also suffers from transparency, election issues
As the East Greenwich Town Council considers continuing its relationship with embattled Town Manager Gayle Corrigan, Coventry Republican Party Chairman James Pierson says Corrigan, who is also the executive director of the Central Coventry Fire District, ran a flawed election at the fire district’s annual meeting in September. “I don’t think she did her job […]
Gayle Corrigan didn’t think she would become EG’s town manager
Gayle Corrigan said she didn’t set out to become the town manager of East Greenwich. “That’s not what I was planning,” she told me in an extensive interview earlier this week. “That’s not how I was planning to spend my summer.” But three chaotic months after being hired for $5,000 to audit the school department’s […]
Who is Our Town One Town EG and why did Citizens Who Care decline their money?
East Greenwich has gone from utter chaos to truly bizarre. Amid the Town Council’s clumsy and raucous attempt to reduce the size of local government without consulting its citizenry, an anonymous activist group bearing similar branding to the Council’s efforts has emerged and offered to host a kind of community event. In North Kingstown. “We […]
Bob Flanders, Sue Cienki stage a coup d’etat in East Greenwich
As Republican Bob Flanders mulls running for US Senate, East Greenwich, where he lives, is getting an up close and personal look at how the former Central Falls receiver and state Supreme Court justice approaches municipal government. Earlier this week, in his first interview since announcing his congressional curiosity, Flanders told me he’s been talking […]
Bob Flanders voted for Trump, says ‘Muslim Ban’ will prevail at SCOTUS
Bob Flanders, the former state Supreme Court justice who is mulling running for Sheldon Whitehouse’s Senate seat, said he expects President Donald Trump’s so-called Muslim travel ban will prevail at the United States Supreme Court. “Whether you believe it is overly broad or too religiously focused, I would be surprised if they upheld the circuit […]
RI Progress Report: Tax Day, Central Falls, Callista Gingrich
Happy Tax Day, says Ted Nesi. Meanwhile, our own Tom Sgouros uses the occasion to report that the Tax Foundation says Rhode Islanders have the second lowest tax burden in the region. Speaking of Tax Day, this from Ocean State Action: “Years of misguided tax policy that benefit Rhode Island’s highest income earners have starved […]
Taveras Beheads Flanders; Chafee Should Give Him Haircut
Bob Flanders seemed to take a perverse pleasure in threatening other people’s livelihoods. But yesterday he was the one who got beheaded rather than getting a haircut when Providence Mayor Angel Taveras severed the city’s relationship with the Central Falls receiver-turned-municipal bankruptcy zealot. Taveras fired Flanders yesterday because the retired Supreme Court justice, who was […]
Sen. Crowley vs. Bob Flanders on Bankruptcy’s Benefits
Bob Flanders, the receiver for Central Falls, and Elizabeth Crowley, a state senator from Central Falls, are both offering Woonsocket advice on whether or not to pursue bankruptcy. Whose advice should Woonsocket put more stock in? Let’s compare… Crowley has to live with the effects of bankruptcy. Flanders doesn’t even show up for public meetings […]
ACLU: Flanders Flouts Law By Delegating His Duties
The Rhode Island ACLU filed a lawsuit today against Central Falls receiver Bob Flanders saying he is improperly delegating authority to his chief of staff Gayle Corrigan. Flanders, ACLU attorney Jennifer Azevedo said, “is stepping in for the mayor and city council. If he is going to do that he should have to do what […]
RI Progress Report: Reinvent RI, Receivers and OccupyURI
The Providence Journal kicked off a great new series on Sunday called Reinvent RI in which the paper does a great job analyzing and identifying the problems with our economy. The Projo says the state’s downturn is a result of a slumping housing economy coupled with a transition away from manufacturing – not high taxes […]
New Comments