Tony Pires - Photograph by Richard McCaffrey

When he was first elected to the legislature in 1986, state Representative Antonio Pires (D-Pawtucket) believed strongly in the death penalty. In 1994, as his proposal for a voter referendum to reinstate capital punishment passed the House of Representatives before dying in the state Senate, the idea came closer to becoming law than any similar proposal in the last decade.

Now a candidate for governor, Pires says he would veto any death penalty legislation passed by the General Assembly if he wins the election. Does this represent typical two-faced political pandering to liberal Democratic primary voters? No, it's more like vintage Tony Pires.

People who know the veteran legislator, whether they sat next to him when he chaired the powerful House Finance Committee or picketed his Pawtucket insurance agency in outrage over one of his positions on the state budget, use the same words to describe him: honest, hard-working, and intelligent.

"I don't think he would be capable of [changing his position on the death penalty] for political reasons," summarizes former state Representative David Panciera (D-Westerly), who served on the Finance Committee with Pires from 1993 to 1998 and supports his gubernatorial bid. "He was the best thing I saw about state government," Panciera adds.

State Representative Charles Levesque (D-Portsmouth), a supporter of Myrth York's rival gubernatorial campaign, says Pires is "easily one of the most honorable, decent people I worked with at the State House."

"He was accessible and honest," adds anti-poverty activist and sometime Pires picketer Henry Shelton, "and that isn't always the case with politicians."

Amplifying these qualities in his uphill race against two-time Democratic gubernatorial nominee York and Attorney General Sheldon Whitehouse, Pires has the advantage of a traditional Democratic Party heritage. His parents were Portuguese immigrants who worked in a textile mill and on construction sites after settling in Rhode Island. Running against the daughter of a New Jersey factory owner and the son of a diplomat and CIA agent, Pires can emphasize his rise from humble origins.

Whitehouse and York have better name recognition and the ability to raise greater sums of money -- vital factors in any campaign. But in an early indication of pluck, Pires's campaign scored a coup by organizing a barebones hot dog fundraiser in Pawtucket on the same night that Whitehouse was roasted during a decidedly more lavish event at Lombardi's 1025 Club in Johnston. While the AG's function was better attended and more lucrative, the two events received equal play in the next day's Providence Journal and Pires fortified his regular guy image.

If Pires is identified with one issue, it's cutting the automobile excise tax. The multi-year phase-out initiated by the lawmaker has eliminated local property taxes on the first $3500 of a vehicle's value. Faced with state budget deficits, Governor Lincoln Almond wants to freeze the program at the current level, rather than letting the amount that can't be taxed rise to $5000 this year and higher in subsequent years. Continuation of the car tax phase-out has strong support in the legislature, however, because it provides relief from the regressive property tax.

Ideologically, Pires is a middle of the road Democrat. He supported the abolition of General Public Assistance, a welfare program for single adults, but was instrumental in expanding state-financed health-care for working class families. He voted for gay rights, modest gun control, a needle exchange program to prevent AIDS among intravenous drug users, and codifying the landmark abortion rights case Roe v. Wade in state law. But he also opposed the repeal of the state's sodomy law, backed a ban on partial-birth abortion, and supported increasing criminal penalties for participation in medically assisted suicide.

Myrth York

In addition, two of Pires's votes -- for expanding charter schools and against requiring Providence Place Mall contractors to pay prevailing union scale wages -- may hurt him with labor households attracted by his blue-collar origins.

"He was open to traditional Democratic concerns for funding," says Panciera, summarizing the legislator's views, "but those concerns were very much moderated by the funds at hand or that could be brought to hand."

Pires has become more liberal as time has passed, adds Levesque, but not liberal enough to merit his backing.

PIRES'S REPUTATION as a smart, thoughtful, and honest person may prove to be his greatest asset as a gubernatorial candidate.

While other politicians might try to forget their changes on major issues like the death penalty, he cites his conversion as one of his proudest legislative accomplishments because it indicates, "the type of person I am."

Pires says he extensively researched the issue before making the change. He looked at extenuating circumstances and aggravating conditions. He read Victor Hugo's The Last Day of a Condemned Man. He listened to advocates on both sides. And he tried to craft legislation that guaranteed Rhode Island would never make the mistake of putting an innocent man to death, as was the case with its last execution in 1845.

But no matter how he wrote the bill, he says, it always had one great flaw -- "unequal application to minorities and people of low economic means" -- that couldn't be corrected without a change in human nature. Such discrimination against blacks, Hispanics, and the poor, Pires concluded, was "ultimately contrary to my fundamental belief that everyone should be treated equally." So today, he calls his earlier death penalty advocacy "misplaced."

Shelton, who is neutral in the gubernatorial race, cites another issue where Pires changed his mind -- the school breakfast program. For years, Shelton campaigned for the legislature to require local communities to provide students with a federally funded school breakfast. Pires's own Pawtucket School Committee, however, opposed the program as an unnecessary transfer of a basic parental responsibility to the schools. And Pires initially agreed that the decision should be made locally, not on Smith Hill.

But after several years of Shelton's lobbying, Pires had breakfast at Pawtucket's M. Virginia Cunningham Elementary School, talked with the children and teachers there, and concluded, "It didn't look like a socialist or communist conspiracy to me." Changing his mind, he backed legislation that mandated local school boards to provide breakfast at schools with a large percentage of low-income children. The scope of the legislation was subsequently expanded to include all schools.

Sheldon Whitehouse

"Adaptability is a sign of intelligence," notes state Representative Paul Sherlock (D-Warwick), a Pires backer who served as vice chair of the Finance Committee. Pires, he adds, "was never afraid to work and exhaust all possible data before [making] a

decision." Because he listens, Shelton believes, Pires is the most likely to bring issues of the poor and working people into the governor's race. In fact, when his political career is over, Pires promises to join Shelton in advocating for the needs of the poor.

The Pawtucket lawmaker became a major power at the State House in 1993, when he backed John Harwood for speaker. Rhode Island was recovering from two insider-created fiascos, the credit union crisis and the state pension scandal. In that atmosphere, Pires says, a clear break with the past was needed, so he backed Harwood instead of liberal state Representative Russell Bramley of Warwick, the candidate associated with outgoing Speaker Joseph DeAngelis.

Because he had not been part of Harwood's inner circle, Pires was surprised when the speaker asked him to chair the House Finance Committee, the legislature's most powerful committee. He agreed, he says, with the condition that he would work independently. The decision cost him personally, Pires says, as he spent less time with his family and renegotiated his insurance business's partnership agreement to take "an enormous reduction in income." He explains, "I honestly believed I was making a difference in people's lives."

Pires soon developed a reputation for running fair and democratic hearings. Panciera and Rodney Driver, another former Finance Committee member, who has since converted to the Republican Party, recall that Pires voted last to avoid pressuring other committee members to support his position. Only once did he try to influence other committee members' votes, Pires recalls: when he lobbied against Almond's proposal to end cost of living adjustments for teachers' pensions.

Once the budget cleared the Finance Committee and reached the House floor, Pires continued to behave democratically, says Levesque, a staunch advocate for the poor, who has probably offered more budget amendments than any other House member in recent years. "He always treated any discussion as appropriate," Levesque says. "He always had the numbers. He always discussed the down side of every proposal."

Many House members were disappointed when Harwood removed Pires, after nine years as Finance Committee chairman, last September. Harwood said he was concerned that Pires wouldn't have the time to chair the committee and run for governor, but most people at the State House find more credibility in Pires's explanation that control of the state budget was the issue.

The independence that Harwood promised to Pires became a problem last year when the Pawtucket legislator sided with liberals against the speaker on major environmental and poverty issues. First, Pires opposed funding a multi-million dollar environmental impact statement needed to begin development of a major container port at Quonset Point in North Kingstown. He angered Harwood by supporting an audit of the legislature's own budget. His independence agreement with Harwood covered 99 percent of the budget, Pires relates, but specifically excluded the legislature's budget. When revelations about unaudited legislative spending and dubious expenses sparked controversy, however, Pires says he felt compelled to support an aggressive audit of State House spending.

He also clashed with the speaker at the end of the session when Harwood tried to transfer $1 million from a $5 million affordable housing fund to pay for improvements in state court buildings. In addition, Pires differed with the speaker over the separation of powers issue, agreeing with Common Cause that the best system of government provides legislative oversight, not day-to-day involvement in operations by sitting on the boards of quasi-public agencies.

A minor source of conflict, Pires adds, was state financing for the University of Rhode Island convocation center. While he supported the gym construction, he differed with hockey player Harwood over the addition of an ice skating rink to the project.

THE BEGINNING of Pires's chairmanship was also controversial since he sided with conservative Democratic governor Bruce Sundlun and Harwood to eliminate General Public Assistance, a state-funded welfare program for single adults, some of whom were substance abusers. GPA was eliminated over several years, including one year in which the cuts financed a reduction of corporate income taxes. "The worst mistake they ever made," says Shelton, who blames GPA's demise on Sundlun, not Pires, although he picketed Pires's office at the time.

Nancy Gewirtz, executive director of Rhode Island College's Poverty Institute, isn't so forgiving. Careful to note that she is neither for nor against any candidate, Gewirtz says Pires's Finance Committee had a mixed record on poverty issues.

On the positive side, in addition to repeal of the car tax, big gains were made in providing health insurance through the RIte Care program to working parents and their children, including children in the country illegally. In 1999, the Finance Committee expanded eligibility for the program, adding 43,000 participants to RIte Care, says Christopher Koller, CEO of the Neighborhood Health Plan of Rhode Island. Rhode Island now has the lowest percentage of people without health insurance among the 50 states, he says. "There are a number of people who can take credit for it," notes Koller, who is neutral in the governor's race, "but Tony is one of the major ones."

Gewirtz also credits Pires with expanding state child care subsidies to low-income families and establishing the state weatherization program that provides low-income families with $100 every year to help pay heating bills. "Where Tony saw a human need," summarizes Sherlock, "he was willing to stick his neck out."

But not all went well for low-income people during the years of Pires's leadership of the House Finance Committee. "There was some good stuff done," Gewirtz says, "but, boy, we slid back in some other areas." In addition to the elimination of GPA, she says, family welfare benefits have been frozen without a cost of living increase for 13 years and the state hasn't hired enough caseworkers to make the new welfare system work well.

Pires defends his stance on GPA, saying that preserving successful programs, like RIte Care and the low-income elderly drug program, in a time of huge budget deficits was "more critical than a program [GPA] with a high level of apparent abuses." Preserving those programs made the recent expansion of RIte Care possible, he argues, as well as the addition of more drugs to the elderly prescription program.

Overall, Gewirtz praises Pires as "a decent, caring human being" who always listened to advocates, and, unlike some of his fellow legislators, always respected low-income people when they testified before his committee. The problem, she says, is too many tax cuts, most of them benefiting the wealthy.

Under Pires's chairmanship, the Finance Committee also endorsed a nine percent reduction in the state income tax over five years, elimination of the inventory tax on business, and a phase-out of the capital gains tax on assets held more than five years, starting in 2007. Special tax cuts for American Power Conversion in North Kingstown and the banking and software industries were also approved when Pires was in charge of writing the state budget.

Pires generally defends tax cuts for business as necessary to attract jobs to Rhode Island, so that low-income people can work themselves out of poverty. The most recent capital gains tax cut "certainly wasn't my highest priority," he says, but given political pressure -- led by Almond and Senate Majority Leader William Irons (D-East Providence) -- to reduce taxes on the wealthy, it was a better solution than cutting the income tax. Postponing implementation for five years, he adds, allows discussion of the issue to continue.

Such arguments don't sway Gewirtz, who says there's no evidence that state tax cuts produce business investment. Better to spend the money to help the people most in need, she says, concluding, "The heavy focus on tax cuts [under Pires] has been unfortunate and not good economic development policy."

While it's impossible to credit or blame one legislator for any act of the 150-member Rhode Island General Assembly, Pires's record on the Finance Committee includes a pragmatic mixture of tax cuts and improvements in social programs. Perhaps his greatest accomplishment, through hard work, intelligence, and fairness, is that the once-secretive budget writing process is now credible.

This, however, is not enough to win an election for governor. Many of those who praise Pires's abilities and pronounce him a superior candidate to York or Whitehouse temper their remarks by saying, "but he can't win." To become governor requires money -- something that York and Whitehouse, but not Pires, were born with.

Former representative Panciera, however, says this is part of the trade-off with a candidate like Pires. "A person with his qualities does not start out with a war chest," Panciera says.

Pires concedes that the system puts great emphasis on the ability to raise money, but he doesn't criticize Rhode Island's political process. As a kid who grew up in "a very, very modest neighborhood," in a house with a gravel backyard, he worked to graduate from Pawtucket West Senior High (now Shea High School) and earn a degree in business administration from the University of Rhode Island. "I have been successful in facing challenges and overcoming obstacles," Pires says. The governor's race is perhaps his most high profile challenge, he notes, but he plans to attack it with the same combination of hard work, intelligence, and honesty that has worked for him in the past.

He hopes his campaign will inspire children who live in neighborhoods like the one where he grew up. Maybe kids from working-class Rhode Island families will look at him, Pires says, and think, " `If I obey the law and I go to school and I do things that are expected of me, I can take advantage of the great opportunities this country offers to me.' "

Issue Date: March 29 - April 4, 2002