Langevin’s big decision (continued)

ALTHOUGH HE REFUSED to be defined by it, the defining event in James R. Langevin’s life remains how he was accidentally shot by a Warwick police officer in 1980, leaving the 16-year-old paralyzed below the chest. The incident occurred when a gun accidentally discharged, striking Langevin, when was serving as a cadet in a Boy Scout Explorer program.

The shooting dashed Langevin’s hopes of being an FBI agent, but it did little to dim his ambition. Winning office as a state representative from Warwick at age 24, he compiled a moderate-to-conservative voting record during three terms in the House. Backed by the ability to contribute large sums to his campaigns — believed to stem from a lawsuit filed on his behalf after the shooting — Langevin won the secretary of state’s office in 1994, in part by considerably outspending his opponents. After dropping $300,000 of his own money during his reelection campaign in 1998, Langevin emerged as the clear favorite in a crowded field two years later when Robert Weygand vacated his US House seat to run, unsuccessfully as it turned out, for the Senate.

Since winning election to the House, Langevin has worked to broaden his core of support. Although the Rhode Island AFL-CIO did not endorse Langevin for statewide office prior to 2000, for example, and it stayed out of the Democratic primary that year between him and Kate Coyne-McCoy, "He has had a 100 percent labor voting record in his time in Congress, and is very well-liked and very well respected," says George Nee, the group’s secretary-treasurer. "At the same time, Senator Chafee has been there on a number of tough votes." (Nee adds that the RI AFL-CIO will not consider endorsements for either party until the field of candidates becomes clear.)

Similarly, although Langevin, 40, remains opposed to abortion rights, he has gained considerable attention through his support for stem cell research. The congressman’s stance on the issue has changed since he gained election to the House. He backs therapeutic cloning and stem cell research while opposing reproductive cloning — a position that leads former state representative Rod Driver to charge that Langevin is getting credit for both sides of the issue (see "Langevin details changing view of stem cells," News, This just in, December 24, 2004).

In contrast to an array of the state’s high-profile Catholic politicians — including Governor Donald L. Carcieri, Lieutenant Governor Charles Fogarty, Attorney General Patrick Lynch, Jack Reed, and US Representative Patrick J. Kennedy, among others — Langevin was outspoken when a leading Vatican official last year said that priests should not offer Communion to politicians who back abortion rights. He joined 47 House colleagues who wrote to Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington, expressing concern that attempts by Church leaders to influence votes will revive anti-Catholic prejudice (see "In a mellow state," News, June 4, 2004).

As far as Langevin’s pending decision about whether to run for the Senate, "I think the most important thing is whether or not you can win," says URI’s Maureen Moakley, although there has also been talk about the particular strain placed on him by having to campaign for the House every two years.

Langevin spokesman Michael Guilfoyle says the congressman is not yet publicly discussing a possible Senate campaign, although, "at the appropriate time, he will. Right now, he’s not leaning either way."

Guilfoyle dismisses talk of Langevin’s disability influencing his decision, saying, "On the contrary, a senator has just as demanding a schedule as a congressman, and certainly his disability has never gotten in the way of his doing his job." Langevin is mulling the decision, Guilfoyle says, by talking with his supporters and family members, the same sort of people who rallied behind him after the accidental shooting in 1980.

Meanwhile, such supporters as former Providence Mayor Joseph R. Paolino Jr. — who, like Democratic fundraiser Mark Weiner, is helping to develop a formidable money network for Langevin — can barely contain their enthusiasm. "I think he’s exactly what Rhode Island needs right now," Paolino says, "and I like his positions on a lot of the issues. He’s really what a new Democrat is, although I may have a slight difference with his position on choice."

BY JUMPING into the 2006 Senate race with his somewhat unconventional point of entry on February 3, Secretary of State Matthew A. Brown, 35, seemed to be trying to grab some early momentum on the Democratic side.

A relative newcomer to politics, Brown’s interest in running for the Senate has long been something of an open secret, not least since he gave $25,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in 2003, while still paying off debt from his 2002 campaign. A native of Providence’s East Side who graduated from Columbia University and Yale Law School, Brown previously led the youth-service city program City Year in Providence, and then the Democracy Compact, a get-out-the-vote effort in 2000. In 2002, he toppled incumbent Secretary of State Ed Inman, who enjoyed the backing of the Democratic establishment, with an outsider message and a well-funded campaign.

Asked why he announced his campaign almost 20 months before the September 2006 primary, Brown says, "This is going to be a big grassroots effort. We’re going to have people from communities all across the state who get involved with this and support it, and we begin today with over 500 Rhode Islanders of all different backgrounds . . . We’re going to keep growing it and have a terrific grassroots organization."

Signaling his intention to run as a Washington outsider, Brown says, "I spent 10 years working in communities all across this state. I know the problems that people are facing in their day-to-day lives. I also know that the politicians in Washington are not getting the job done for them. And I was raised by parents who taught us that when you know something is wrong, you do what you can to fix it, period. And I know that we need new leadership to solve the problems people are facing in their day-to-day lives, and I’m going to bring that leadership to solve those problems."

Brown brings some real assets to his campaign, including energy, intelligence, and youthful good looks, but Langevin remains the clear favorite of Rhode Island’s Democratic establishment. The reasons for this run the gamut, from how the junior congressman has steadily worked his way up the political ladder, to how Brown was the only one among the state’s general officers to not sign a Democratic letter of support for House Speaker William P. Murphy during his recent leadership fight. Going against Linc Chafee is also quite different from taking on Ed Inman, who was associated with the unpopular House Speaker John Harwood, during a political season hostile to incumbents.

Brown remains undeterred by such talk. "What makes things work are people in communities across Rhode Island, and that’s how we’re going to run this campaign," he says. "This is going to be about the people who live in the neighborhoods, who are facing tough challenges every day. . . It’s people who decide elections and people who will decide who our next senator is."

One Democrat observer notes that Brown was prematurely dismissed in 2002 when he was working from a small Pawtucket campaign office with Melba Depeña, now executive director of the Rhode Island Democratic Party. This time around, though, the observer suspects that Brown is running mainly because he’s been laying the groundwork for so long that he can’t get out.

If Langevin runs for the Senate, it will set off a new round of musical chairs of candidates seeking to fill his House seat, possibly including Kate Coyne-McCoy, his progressive rival from the 2000 campaign. Suffice to say that 2006 promises to be a dynamic political year in Rhode Island, as Carcieri renews his bid to increase Republican representation in the General Assembly, and Democrats strive to double their Senate representation in this blue state. With the ultimate fight being for long-term control in the US Senate, the personal stakes couldn’t be higher for Linc Chafee and Jim Langevin.

Ian Donnis can be reached at idonnis[a]phx.com