All the major candidates running for governor will point to their professional record and say they have the experience to lead the state. But are they effective leaders?
As top public administrators or private executives, did they hire the right people and put them in the right jobs?
Do they have personal principles or a character that will inspire people to follow them?
Can they identify the most pressing issues facing Rhode Island and put resources toward a resolution?
Most of the nine candidates who are seeking the governor’s job have experience in government or business that can be weighed and assessed. But only one of them has a track record in the job they all want – and that’s incumbent Gov. Gina M. Raimondo.
Voters do care about leadership, although they may be looking at the results rather than the input, said Gary S. Sasse, the founding director of the Hassenfeld Institute for Public Leadership at Bryant University.
In his view, in state leadership, results translate to more jobs, better education and treatment of children, and proper stewardship of state government.
Jonathan Stone, executive director of Save The Bay, defines leadership as the combination of integrity and qualities that allow an individual to be well-suited for the responsibilities required of political office, “and their particular perspective on issues.”
From his perspective as an environmentalist, both the R.I. Department of Environmental Management and the R.I. Coastal Resources Management Council play an outsized role in protecting the environment.
Although not cut under the Raimondo administration, employment in the agencies, particularly the DEM, is down substantially from levels of a decade ago.
“It certainly makes sense that she’s invested in [R.I.] Commerce Corp., given her message and commitment to voters. On the other hand, tourism is the third-largest industry in the state and tourism depends on natural resources. She has proposed a couple of new positions at the DEM each year, over the years, and she’s been shot down by the Assembly. I would hope they would make more of a pronounced statement and a public statement about the importance of protecting and enhancing the values of the natural environment in the state,” Stone said.
In what Sasse views as the most critical elements of leadership, Raimondo has had a combination of notable failures and successes in the past four years.
She’s fared well in reducing the tax burden on employers for unemployment insurance. The reduction introduced by Raimondo and approved by the General Assembly saved businesses money, Sasse said.
Raimondo has also made the sorry condition of public schools a top priority. A bond question will go before voters in November seeking $250 million for state assistance to districts for renovation or construction of schools.
Her Real Jobs Rhode Island is another strength, emphasizing needed workforce- training programs, Sasse said.
‘The UHIP thing ties back to getting the right people [in the right jobs].’
GARY S. SASSE, Hassenfeld Institute for Public Leadership at Bryant University director
According to Sasse, failures include the rollout of the state’s Unified Health Infrastructure Project for public-assistance payments. Although UHIP began under a previous administration, Raimondo was in charge when it was rolled out too soon, then failed to work properly, leading to lengthy delays in benefit decisions, Sasse said.
“It was a $100 million program to modernize the state’s eligibility system,” Sasse said. “We now know it’s going to cost $500 million, and it continues to be beset by problems. The system has been unable to offer consistent and timely eligibility determination decisions, for things that needy people just have to have, [such as] food stamps, Medicaid.”
He views the debacle as a sign that Raimondo failed to hire and delegate appropriately.
“You’ve got to get the right people on the bus in the right seats. The UHIP thing ties back to getting the right people on the bus,” Sasse said.
In job creation, Rhode Island has a lower unemployment rate than when the governor took office, but the growth is not keeping pace with other states, according to Sasse.
On unemployment, he said: “In 2014, we were 49th [in the nation.] Now we’re 37th. While we are making progress, in terms of unemployment, we’re still in the bottom one-third of the states.”
Did the programs enacted by Raimondo make the difference, or is it the national economic cycle? Sasse said it is difficult to know.
“In a lot of cases, you don’t know the impact of a governor’s economic progress until long after he or she has left office,” he said.
Mike Stenhouse, CEO of the Rhode Island Center for Freedom & Prosperity, which advocates free-market policies, identifies three elements of state leadership: establishing a vision for where you want to lead the state; exhibiting principles that will guide that direction; and, can the candidate persuade people, including the voters, to follow them.
“That’s what a leader does. I don’t think any of these candidates have demonstrated that,” Stenhouse said.
Which of them has the clearest vision or mission? Although he disagrees with his positions, Stenhouse identified Matt Brown, former secretary of state.
Brown is a Democrat, but Stenhouse said he’s advocating socialist reforms. “I don’t think anyone would disagree that is his platform. Whether he’s using those words or not. Progressive is another way of saying it. I think he’s established a vision for where he wants to take Rhode Island.”
Patricia L. Morgan, a Republican candidate and GOP House minority leader representing Coventry and West Warwick, has outlined the most consistently conservative policy agenda, Stenhouse said, “but that’s not a vision either.” She’s in a position in the General Assembly of countering the Democratic positions.
“Anybody from Coventry has seen how she exhibited leadership, with the various firefighter-district issues that arose there. She’s been praised by local people,” he said.
“Her problem is she’s running against the party’s nominee [from the last election] and the infrastructure that supported him,” Stenhouse said, referring to Allan W. Fung, the mayor of Cranston and the 2014 GOP nominee for governor.
Fung can be evaluated on leadership as the head of one of the state’s largest cities. In that role, he reined in escalating pension and retired employee benefit expenses, and successfully defended the city through court challenges made by retired employees.
He also was sharply criticized in a Rhode Island State Police report, released in 2015, that found he failed to intervene appropriately in administrative and morale problems within the Cranston Police Department.
Maureen Moakley, a professor of political science at the University of Rhode Island, said voters often don’t focus on issues of leadership in the primary, instead identifying with candidates through personality or particular issues.
In the general election, issues of leadership will matter, she said, and two major candidates can claim they have experience as executives.
Raimondo can point to her time in venture capitalism, and her experience as governor, Moakley said. Her greatest vulnerability is the perception that she is elitist and an outsider, and in what Moakley identified as an undercurrent of sexism tied to her being the state’s first female governor.
Fung, meanwhile, can take credit for leading his city through a growth spurt, Moakley said.
He’s had missteps, including with the oversight of the police force, but seems to have gotten on top of that, Moakley said, and “can claim he has some executive leadership.”
