Crowded field

Taveras and McAllister could draw votes from Coyne-McCoy

by Ian Donnis

As a progressive Democratic state representative from Providence's East Side, David N. Cicilline could reasonably be expected to support Kate Coyne-McCoy's candidacy in the Second Congressional District. But although he admires Coyne-McCoy, Cicilline will be backing his longtime friend Angel Taveras. The situation shows how the presence of Taveras and another Democrat, Kevin J. McAllister, could siphon votes from Coyne-McCoy's bid to outpace James R. Langevin.

"Any time you have a potential for a split in the vote, there's always a concern," concedes Taveras, who announced his campaign Monday morning during a news conference at his alma mater, Classical High School in Providence. "I'm going to let the people decide."

Although Langevin and Coyne-McCoy have been most visible in recent months among the four Democrats seeking to succeed US Representative Robert Weygand in Congress, McAllister and Taveras are intensifying their campaigns and come across as likeable candidates.

A 47-year-old Providence native who is president of the Cranston City Council, McAllister describes himself as a problem-solver who is best qualified among the four Democrats to go to Congress. Taveras, 29, a first-time candidate who grew up in South Providence, is an associate at Brown, Rudnick, Freed & Gesmers in Providence. During his campaign announcement, Taveras acknowledged that he will face legitimate questions about his youth and experience, but he also cast himself as the embodiment of the American dream.

For her part, Coyne-McCoy expresses little concern about the competition and thinks she might benefit as the only woman in the field. "I'm worried about me," she says. The presence of other candidates, "isn't going to change the fact that I'm raising money and talking to voters every day."

One significant distinction between McAllister and Taveras is the amount of money they plan to raise to run their respective campaigns. Taveras has set a primary goal of raising $500,000. McAllister, though, says he will deliberately run a low-cost campaign -- and will be satisfied if he can raise $200,000 -- to "find out if a person like me can be elected. I will not sell my soul to special interest groups. I will not spend eight hours a day on the phone, asking for money."

Despite the appeal of such a sentiment, it could undermine the effectiveness of a candidate, according to Darrell West, the political science professor at Brown University. "You need enough money to get your message out to the public," West says. "You can be the most qualified person in the world, but if the voters don't know about you, they're not going to vote for you."

McAllister, a partner in the Providence law firm of Brennan, Recupero, Cascione, Scungio & McAllister, says he got into politics virtually by accident in 1993, when he was the compromise choice of two factions to fill the open seat of a Cranston councilor who had moved. He discovered that he enjoyed the work, and emerged last year, in his third run for re-election, as the council's top vote-getter.

The Cranston council president's family has roots in South County, where relatives ran Cavanaugh's Cafe in Matunuck for close to 50 years and his maternal grandfather had the first liquor license in South Kingstown after Prohibition. As a schoolboy football player at La Salle Academy, McAllister knew Jack Reed, an older player who would go on to the US Senate.

McAllister claims credit for improving the municipal wastewater system in Cranston, and forming a citizens group that sparked the reduction, to a level below the federal standard, of harmful emissions from the now-closed Davol Manufacturing site. His background includes experience, when he was a young college graduate, as a security clearance specialist for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Washington.

Taveras was born in New York to immigrants from the Dominican Republican, and was raised by his working mother in South Providence after his parents divorced when he was 7. He credits his accomplishments -- graduating cum laude from Harvard, a career as a lawyer, and an extensive background in public service work -- to the encouragement he received in school as a child, particularly from a teacher at the Mary E. Fogarty Elementary School. "I am living proof that education makes all the difference between poverty and opportunity, between a government for the privileged, and a government of the people," Taveras said.

Although he has not run for office before, the Silver Lake resident said he is qualified because of his real-life experience in punching a time clock, living paycheck to paycheck, and encountering anti-union sentiment during a summer job at a Florida supermarket. During an unabashedly sentimental campaign announcement, he paid homage to his grandparents, the ideals of Robert Kennedy and the veterans of conflicts from World War II to the Persian Gulf War.

Taveras said his priorities include supporting early childhood education and afterschool programs, lowering student-to-teacher ratios, establishing universal health-care, defending Social Security and Medicare, and ensuring that the elderly don't go hungry. ith a passionate commitment to making changes that help ordinary people."

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