DAVID N. CICILLINE dealt a knockout punch to the conventional wisdom of local politics on September 10, decisively beating his closest competitor, former Mayor Joseph R. Paolino Jr., in the Democratic mayoral primary. Cicilline's 52 percent plurality was all the more impressive considering his initial underdog prospects in making an early challenge to Vincent A. "Buddy" Cianci Jr. But Cianci took himself out of the running following his Plunder Dome conviction for racketeering conspiracy, and the reformer credentials of Cicilline, a 41-year-old state representative from the East Side, clearly struck a responsive chord with voters.

Cicilline is the favorite to win the November 5 election against three lesser-known opponents. But as the Democrat well knows, victory celebrations will do little to dim the complexity of the daunting problems facing Providence.

Phoenix: How has your life changed since you won the Democratic primary on September 10?
A: It's been an interesting time in the campaign. You know, obviously, I have an election on November 5, and I've been working very hard to remind people that I need their support not only for myself but for the other Democratic candidates. But it's interesting, because people perceive that this is such a Democratic city and because the other candidates in the race are not well known. So it's been this odd time in which many people are acting as if I'd already won the election, and I'm reminding them that I'm still campaigning and working on getting out our vote on November 5. But, obviously, it's also a time when I've sort of had to think about the kind of administration I would put together if I'm elected mayor of this city.

I've spent some of the days really talking to people about substantive areas of government, but also individuals who have ideas about what we should be doing about housing, in our neighborhoods, in the police department. But it has only gotten busier, and more exciting, I think, in some ways. It's different in terms of not doing just campaigning, but [there are] lots more people willing to share information about something they know about or a subject matter that they have some interest in.

The most immediate change, I think, is, just the vibe of everything increased. You know, 100 e-mails a day, instead of 20, 300 phone calls, and lots more mail, and many more people are sending information to me. Trying to manage all that with what is still a campaign staff and mostly volunteers has been more difficult than I anticipated.

Q: If you're elected in November, what three things would you most like to accomplish during your first year in office?
A: The first is really to redesign city government, both in its operation and in terms of the way it's managed and the departments are organized. And really give a new face to city government, both in the personnel of the government and the leadership of the departments, but also the way that the city government operates.

Second is to make a real mark on the development of community schools in the city and to begin the process of developing the community schools as part of our public schools. And third, to restore the public's confidence in the operation of the police department, and really restore community policing and bring a sense of safety to our city's neighborhoods and downtown.

Q: What was going through your mind when you first made the decision to challenge to Buddy Cianci?
A: What was going through my mind is, I was certain then, as I am now, that we needed to change the way that our city government operated and that we needed to have new leadership that understood the responsibility, not only to the neighborhoods of the city, but to a certain way of city government operating and a certain standard of excellence. And not only in the work that city government does, but the kind of people that the city government attracts and employs. And also a city government that values and rewards excellent performance and places a real premium on honorable service.

I think like many people I became increasingly critical of the way that our city government was operating and the leadership in the mayor's office. There comes a time when you say, look, you know, if you don't think someone's doing a job well and you have ideas, and passion, and a vision about what you believe you can do, and that you can do it better, you either stop complaining about it or you run for public office and offer an alternative to the voters of the city. So, for me, once I decided that I was going to enter the race, I made my decision back in February, because I thought, you know, we need an alternative, this isn't the way the city should be run. It's a great city, with great people, but something's not working right.

We have schools which are in serious disrepair. We have neighborhoods that have been neglected, we have a rising crime rate, we have city finances that are really in disarray, we have a shrinking business community, and yet there are these great people, and great neighborhoods, and great energy. There's got to be something that we can do better. Once I decided to do it, it seemed to be obvious that the sooner I began the process, the better, because it would take some time to organize, some time to raise money. I knew I was going to be challenging someone who had a well-oiled and well-financed political machine, and that I better get going early if I was going to meet that challenge.

Q: What do you view as the greatest challenges that you'll face as mayor, if elected?
A: The greatest challenge, I think, is financial. I think all of the things we need to do in our schools, and in our neighborhoods, and in reviving our economy require investment. And I think that the budget practices and personnel practices and general management of the city's finances have created a very serious financial challenge to the city; a half a billion dollars in unfunded pension liability, a $30 million deficit in our city government. I think that and the constraints that so many existing contractual obligations will place on the city, so there won't be a lot of places to make changes.

The other big challenge is that people who are so frustrated -- and rightly so -- with the way that the city government is operated; the way things have been done in this whole political system for so long. I think one of the other difficulties [is that] people are going to expect that to change really fast, and I think it will take some time for some of those things to change. They'll change and we'll work very hard if I'm mayor to make them change, but some of those things will take some time. It's always going to be a challenge to meet expectations that they really want it to happen immediately. And I think that will be a struggle, if people are insisting to wake up one morning that every thing will be completely different. The institution doesn't work that quickly.

Q: Were you surprised by the margin of your primary victory [52 percent to 34 percent for Paolino]?
A: We were polling throughout the campaign, and our polling data was pretty consistent with what happened at the end. Toward the very end of the campaign, the last few weeks, there had been a real surge in negative campaigning by my opponent, both in the mail, on television, on the radio, some really, what I thought, were the worst kinds of negative campaigning I'd ever seen in my life. So as a candidate you never really know what kind of impact that's having. And you couple that with an endorsement by the Journal of my opponent and even some really fine newspapers like yours. And you start to say how will all these things play out? So you never really know.

But it turned out in the end people really did continue to make judgments about who they believed was a candidate who was really willing to change the way the city government operated, had a commitment to bringing integrity to the operation of our city, and to bring new ideas and a new approach to solve problems. In the end, all that [negative] stuff sort of didn't work, but as a candidate you never know that, and in the waning weeks you start to wonder, oh my God, is all this terrible stuff that people are making up and saying going to have an impact on the voters? You just don't ever know.

Q: What have you been doing to prepare for the possibility of taking control of city government?
A: I have been doing an enormous amount of work, different substantive areas, meeting with people who have real expertise in education, and housing, and management of public works, finances. Putting together a small group of people to start kind of identifying the kinds of people we would want as part of the administration, if we're successful on November 5. Starting to work on a project of government redesign that, if it's completed and I'm not elected mayor of the city, it would be a great product to give to the incoming mayor, so it's not wasted.

I'm meeting also with people in the state legislature to talk about some issues that are of joint concern to the General Assembly and to the city; sort of spending as much time as I can with lots of different people who have information, and expertise, and ideas about how we can move our city forward in each of those areas. So I sort of spend half of my day campaigning and the other half of the day meeting with people and with conferences, doing a lot of reading, things like that.

Q: If elected, how do you plan to spend your first day in office?
A: At work [laughs]. I think we'll probably begin the first day with a cabinet meeting of the new department directors and the mayor's cabinet, which perhaps would be a public meeting, so the general public can actually see the first cabinet meeting.

Then, if I'm elected mayor, I'm going to begin a process where I'm going to spend a day in each of the city's departments, actually working in those departments, just to get a sense of who is there, both the personnel and some of the practices. I'll probably also spend part of the first day meeting with the superintendent and members of the school board to have some serious conversations about how we can work together to improve our schools. And I'm sure the day will be full of other events.

Issue Date: October 25 - 31, 2002