TALKING POLITICS Young Dem’s challenge roils Prov’s Ward One BY IAN DONNIS

Rapped four years ago as being too young, too inexperienced, and not sufficiently rooted to represent Ward One on the Providence City Council, David Segal has since emerged as a champion of progressive politics. As the 2006 election season approaches, the same criticism that was applied to Segal in 2002 could be directed just as liberally at challenger Ethan Ris, a 22-year-old from Washington, DC, who graduated from Brown University in May. The wild card in all this, though, is just how much reflexive support Ris, a Democrat, gains by running as a representative of the state’s dominant party.

Segal, who will turn 26 in November, and is the only member of the Green Party ever elected in Rhode Island, dismisses this concern. "I ran against a Democrat last time and beat him pretty handily," he says, adding that he plans to remain a Green. "Real progressives vote based on the issues, and not based on arbitrary party distinctions."

Still, it’s not inconceivable that establishment Democrats could coalesce behind Ris’s campaign. Elizabeth Roberts and Guillaume de Ramel, respective Democratic candidates for lieutenant governor and secretary of state, as well as Ward 7 Councilor John Igliozzi, stopped by his campaign announcement behind his Hope Street apartment last Friday, October 21. And although Mayor David N. Cicilline remains publicly uncommitted, Segal and Ward Nine Councilor Miguel Luna — as the most outspoken liberals on the council — have sometimes been thorns in the mayor’s side.

This could explain why Segal says he’s planning to run, but is holding off on making a definitive decision for a month or so. State Representative Paul E. Moura (D-Providence), who maintains a home in District 2, says he recently moved his family to a different House district in East Providence to better accommodate his disabled daughter’s special needs, and that he is also considering running for lieutenant governor. While he plans to serve out his current legislative term, Moura says, "I haven’t made any decisions as to what I’m doing in the next term." Asked whether he is considering running for another office, Segal declined to comment.

An enthusiastic throng of about 40 people, heavy on Brown students, turned out for the campaign announcement by Ris, the son of a psychotherapist and a lobbyist for American Airlines. The rookie candidate, a teacher at the Met School, declared his love for Providence, claimed partial credit for invigorating the College Democrats at Brown, and asserted that, as a Democrat, he can be a more effective councilor. The Greens, he says, "have some noble ideas, but they do not have a good track record of getting things done."

Segal, though, who has made a full-time commitment to his council post, points to his hand in a multitude of efforts, including the implementation and strengthening of a local hiring ordinance; establishing a housing trust fund; supporting renewable energy and hybrid cars; requiring the city to translate meeting notices and related documents into Spanish; and backing civilian review of the police and an ordinance for displaced workers.

"I think that if Councilman Segal were a Democrat, none of this would be happening," says liberal political activist Matthew Jerzyk, who ran Luna’s 2002 campaign. "But I think certain political opportunists see a wedge that they can draw by saying, ‘We need a Democrat,’ not understanding that more democratic values get accomplished with Councilman Segal."