Republican Brendan Doherty is feeling the heat this week for keeping $1,000 from state Sen. Frank Ciccone in the wake of allegations the lawmaker tried to intimidate police officers.

But Doherty is far from the only leading Rhode Island politician who took donations from Ciccone – though he may be the only Republican.

Ciccone has donated at least $25,610 to a host of politicians and political organizations since 2002, including $2,800 to Secretary of State A. Ralph Mollis, $2,000 to former Providence City Council President John Lombardi and $1,650 to Congressman David Cicilline during his mayoral days, an analysis of R.I. Board of Elections filings by WPRI.com shows.

The Rhode Island Laborers District Council, an arm of the Laborers International Union, paid Ciccone $120,625 in 2011, according to its most recent federal disclosure filing. The Senate paid him $13,962.

Ciccone, D-Providence, also gave money to many of the state’s current leaders, including Gov. Lincoln Chafee ($500), Lt. Gov. Elizabeth Roberts ($200), Senate President M. Teresa Paiva Weed ($750), Senate Majority Leader Dominick Ruggerio ($350), Providence Mayor Angel Taveras ($300) and U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse ($1,000) during his failed 2002 gubernatorial bid.

Beneficiaries who are out of office included former Treasurer Frank Caprio ($1,600), former Lt. Gov. Charlie Fogarty ($1,350), former Senate Majority Leader Dan Connors ($900), former Attorney General Patrick Lynch ($850), former Providence Mayor Buddy Cianci ($125) and former state Rep. David Segal ($50).

Among the notables who did not get any money from Ciccone were House Speaker Gordon Fox, Treasurer Gina Raimondo and Attorney General Peter Kilmartin. The senator did not return a phone call Monday.

• Related: Senate President Paiva Weed silent on Ciccone’s police report (April 2)

(photo: Rhode Island Senate)

Here’s a Rhode Island political mystery: Who ordered the poll quietly being conducted right now in the 1st Congressional District?

A reader with a 401 area code got a call Tuesday night for a survey about a hypothetical Democratic primary between Congressman David Cicilline, Anthony Gemma and David Segal. Along with the head-to-head matchup, the survey tested their favorability ratings and asked the respondent whether he identifies as “progressive, moderate or conservative.”

The polling firm identified itself as Connection Strategies, a low-profile, left-leaning firm based in Somerville, Mass., the reader said. Segal spent $24,097 with Connection Strategies during his 2010 bid for the Democratic nomination in the 1st – the only one of the three mentioned in the poll who used the firm.

Cicilline’s longtime pollster is The Feldman Group in Washington, which his campaign tapped as recently as last July, so the poll almost certainly didn’t come from him. It’s unclear who, if anybody, is polling for Gemma. Segal – who, like Gemma, has kept the door open to a rematch with Cicilline – didn’t immediately respond to an email Tuesday asking whether he ordered the survey.

“It was a very low-budget poll,” the reader reports. “Four questions. Guy was from out of state and struggled to say ‘Cicilline.’”

Campaign finance records show at least three other Rhode Island Democrats have hired Connection Strategies in recent years: Providence Mayor Angel Taveras, State Rep. Frank Ferri and liberal wonk Tom Sgouros, who was briefly a candidate for treasurer in 2010.

• Related: Patrick Lynch unlikely to challenge Cicilline; Gemma set to run (Jan. 3)

(photo: Segal campaign)

By Ted Nesi

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – Patrick Lynch is out of office for now, but he may not be out of politics for good.

Rhode Island’s former attorney general has recently been discussing whether to challenge Congressman David Cicilline in this year’s Democratic primary but is unlikely to run at this point, WPRI.com has learned.

Lynch sat down with one consultant to discuss the race last week, and local Democratic Party insiders have been buzzing about his potential candidacy, four people familiar with the matter said Tuesday.

But Lynch is unlikely to pull the trigger and step away from his lucrative new private consulting firm and law practice to mount a campaign against the incumbent, said two of the people, who have direct knowledge of the discussions.

(more…)

By David Segal

The Geeks are ascendant in the halls of Capitol Hill. After a decade or two of know-nothing dominance of political dialogue, people who, you know, know things, are finally having their piece. During a hearing last week on the far-reaching, technically complex Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), Congressman Jason Chaffetz admonished his colleagues to “bring the nerds in and get this right.”

The grassroots activist group Demand Progress – which I helped start about a year ago and has since grown to nearly a million members – has helped lead the fight against SOPA, moving hundreds of thousands of constituent contacts to Congress, organizing activists and techies to fight the bill, and meeting with legislators and folks in the White House to express our members’ concerns.

SOPA would give the government new powers to shut down websites that are accused of facilitating copyright infringement. All of the Web’s best sites – especially the social networks that rely on user-generated content and make the Web fun and politically relevant – could fall victim to such claims.

(more…)

After Tim White and I reported last week on RIDOT’s proposal to put tollbooths on I-95, former state Rep. David Segal wrote in to point out that this isn’t the first time Rhode Island and the federal government have been at odds over the state’s desire to toll a road – and last time, it almost stopped us from ratifying the U.S. Constitution.

Here’s Wikipedia’s version of the story (emphasis mine):

Before the Constitution was drafted, the 13 colonies operated under the Articles of Confederation, created by the Second Continental Congress. The national government that operated under the Articles of Confederation was too weak to adequately regulate the various conflicts that arose between the states. These divides included a dispute between Maryland and Virginia over the Potomac River and Rhode Island’s imposing taxes on all traffic passing through it on the post road that linked all the states. As the Articles of Confederation could only be amended by unanimous vote of the states, any state had effective veto power over any proposed change. In addition, the Articles gave the weak federal government no taxing power: it was wholly dependent on the states for its money, and had no power to force delinquent states to pay.

On January 21, 1786, the Virginia Legislature, following James Madison’s recommendation, invited all the states to send delegates to Annapolis, Maryland to discuss ways to reduce these interstate conflicts. At what came to be known as the Annapolis Convention, the few state delegates in attendance endorsed a motion that called for all states to meet in Philadelphia on May 14, 1787 to discuss ways to improve the Articles of Confederation in a “Grand Convention.” Rhode Island, fearing that the Convention would work to its disadvantage, boycotted the Convention entirely in hopes of preventing any change to the Articles. When the Constitution was presented to the United States of America, Rhode Island refused to ratify it.

That’s not the only reason 92% of Rhode Islanders originally voted against ratification – the General Assembly defied the Founding Fathers’ instructions and held a referendum on the document, which angry Federalists boycotted; the state eventually approved it by the narrowest margin the country. But it shows the question of how to tax Rhode Island’s roadways has always been a vexing one around here.

One thing the Boston Post Road of the 1780s didn’t have was E-ZPass. But the electronic toll system brings its own problems, since some cars breeze through without paying. And the man who’d be in charge of RIDOT’s proposed I-95 tolls says that’s why RITBA pulled up the gates on the Pell Bridge, The New York Times reports:

In Rhode Island, David Darlington, the chairman of the board of directors for the state’s Turnpike and Bridge Authority, said he still remembered when former Gov. Donald L. Carcieri raised and lowered a baseball bat in front of him to protest a gated E-ZPass system being introduced at the Claiborne Pell Bridge in 2009.

But Mr. Darlington said the governor was more accepting when he learned how much money was being lost to toll cheats: of every 100 cars, about three to four were not paying their tolls before the authority introduced the gated system. Mr. Darlington said the agency was still considering having open-road tolling by the summer of 2012 because it was so much more convenient for drivers. Given the agency’s past experience, it is understandably cautious.

“We as an agency have to pay our bills,” Mr. Darlington said. “One of the big factors in all of that is how do we make up for the evaders so that we don’t lose revenue.”

Aaron Swartz

Since his unsuccessful congressional bid last year, former state Rep. David Segal has been keeping busy running Demand Progress, a new federal political action committee and 527 group he cofounded last year that advocates for civil liberties, net neutrality and related issues.

But now Demand Progress is making news rather than responding to it.

Segal’s Demand Progress cofounder, Harvard student Aaron Swartz, has been indicted for allegedly hacking into the academic database JSTOR and downloading more than 4 million articles. The indictment was unsealed in Boston on Tuesday.

The New York Times has details:

Mr. Swartz, 24, made his name as a member of the Internet elite as a teenager when he helped create RSS, a bit of computer code that allows people to receive automatic feeds of online notices and news. Since then, he has emerged as a civil liberties activist who crusades for open access to data. …

He faces up to 35 years in prison and $1 million in fines for charges related to wire fraud, computer fraud and unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer. He surrendered to the authorities on Tuesday morning, was arraigned in Federal District Court and pleaded not guilty to all counts. He was released on $100,000 unsecured bond.

Segal – who told me in May he is considering a rematch against Congressman David Cicilline – issued a statement saying the case “makes no sense.” He also told The Times Swartz is “a person who cares deeply about matters of ethics and government” but added, “I don’t know about the matter of what has been alleged.”

(photo: Wikipedia)

the gang's all here

Ready for “CD1: The Reunion Tour”?

Former state Rep. David Segal, who came in third in last year’s four-way Democratic primary to succeed Patrick Kennedy representing Rhode Island’s 1st Congressional District, told WPRI.com on Thursday he’s “weighing the possibility” of challenging Congressman David Cicilline in next year’s primary.

Segal’s comments came the same week former Democratic Party chairman Bill Lynch, who placed fourth in last year’s primary, told WPRI.com he too is considering another bid for the U.S. House seat next year.

With second-place finisher Anthony Gemma also making clear he’s likely to run – and Cicilline obviously planning to run for re-election – it’s now possible the entire four-man field of Democrats who ran in 2010 could be reassembled in 2012.

Like Lynch, Segal said right now he is focused on his current work – in his case, Demand Progress, a new federal political action committee and 527 group he founded last year that advocates on issues like civil liberties and net neutrality.

“I’m trying to figure out how to be most effective,” Segal said in an e-mail.

Cicilline would start the race with a big financial edge on top of the advantage of incumbency. He had $77,931 in his campaign war chest as of March 31, while Segal had $53 and Gemma had nothing. Lynch had $2,023 as of his last filing on Dec. 31, according to Federal Election Commission records.

(photo: Steven Senne/AP)

David Segal is a favorite among Rhode Island progressives. The 31-year-old state rep from Providence – once described as “the hippest guy in state government” – was unsuccessful in his bid for the Democratic nomination in the 1st Congressional District earlier this year, but he did manage to edge out Bill Lynch for third place, snagging 20% of the vote.

With his second term in the General Assembly nearly over and Congress out of reach for now, what’s Segal up to? I e-mailed him to find out.

Segal’s new project is Demand Progress, a federal political action committee and 527 he co-founded along with Aaron Swartz. They got to know each other during the congressional campaign – Swartz used to be with the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which helped nudge Segal into the CD1 race.

Segal is Demand Progress’ campaign director and Swartz is its executive director. “So far it’s been a lot of work on banking reform, free speech, and Internet freedom,” Segal said.

I asked Segal, who grew up in Washington and went to college in New York, whether he’s going to stay in Rhode Island, where he’s lived since 2001. “I’m sticking around,” he replied.

And how about future bids for elected office? “I haven’t ruled out running again,” he said, “but I’ve been in elected office for eight years, and am happy to exist as a private citizen for a bit.”

(Photo: Segal for Congress campaign)

Anthony Gemma, the well-funded political newcomer who surprised Bill Lynch by making it a four-man contest to succeed Patrick Kennedy, had an enormous impact in the end.

Gemma came in second with 23% of the vote, behind winner David Cicilline, who got 37%. Segal and Lynch all but tied with 20% each; in the end, Segal eked out 208 votes more than Lynch.

There are roughly 342,000 registered voters in the 1st Congressional District. Cicilline got 20,000 votes today, while his three opponents received a combined 34,000. And the Republican whom Cicilline will face in November, John Loughlin, got a bit more than 6,000 votes in a primary with much lower turnout.

The question is, how many of the 1st District’s 342,000 voters will show up in November? And how many of them will be open to casting a ballot for Loughlin?

The district has a strong Democratic lean, so Cicilline will be strongly favored – but his less-than-commanding victory tonight could convince Washington Republicans he’s vulnerable – and their money will be vital for Loughlin if he wants to mount a credible challenge, as Congressional Quarterly reported earlier this week:

Despite calls for civility from the state Democratic Party chairman, political newcomer and local businessman Anthony Gemma has attacked primary opponent Providence Mayor David Cicilline with such ferocity in recent days that Republicans are beginning to see an opportunity.

“The only hope here is a completely bloody primary,” a GOP campaign aide said. “And Gemma has stepped up to the plate to make that happen. This is a scenario that has to play out for this district to be competitive.”

It could be interesting – or it could be completely predictable, with Cicilline rolling to an easy victory in a strongly Democratic district. That’s still the most likely outcome, especially if Democrats quickly coalesce behind Cicilline. But how many blog posts would you read about that?