The accidental pioneer A chorus of admirers view Teresa Paiva Weed, Rhode Island’s first female senate majority leader, as the real deal BY BRIAN C. JONES

Deborah DeBare was riding her bicycle along the New Jersey seacoast when her cell phone rang. DeBare, executive director of the Rhode Island Coalition Against Domestic Violence, was on vacation, but she answered anyway, steering her bike to the side of the road so she could give the conversation her full attention.

Similarly, Rhoda E. Perry phoned while driving to New Hampshire. When the state senator from Providence got to her vacation retreat that night, she called again, just in case the earlier message hadn’t gone through.

And Elizabeth H. Roberts, also a state senator, squirreled away in late August in the office where she’s organizing her run for lieutenant governor, carved out a block of time to talk.

All three women were eager, even determined, to speak with a reporter about M. Teresa Paiva Weed, the majority leader of the state Senate. She’s the first woman to hold that post, a job that makes her the top elected woman in Rhode Island — or as Perry puts it, "The most powerful woman in the state."

This is a personal achievement for Paiva Weed, but an indictment of Rhode Island politics, which are generally progressive but fall short when it comes to the chronic under-representation of women in public office. Rhode Island has never had a woman governor or US senator, and just a handful of women have served as secretary of state, treasurer, attorney general, or in the US House.

So when Paiva Weed was named the Senate’s Democratic majority leader in 2004 — No. 2 to Senate President Joseph A. Montalbano — there was a collective cheer from the state’s feminist community. But that was 20 months ago, more than enough time for the political minefields, especially treacherous in the legislature, to destroy yet another public career. This has not been the case for Paiva Weed. If anything, her image has grown, with some of her colleagues saying she has proven herself as a leader, mastering both the alchemy of bill-writing and the back-corridor conjuring required to get legislation passed.

This explains why DeBare and many others were so eager to give not just their assessments of Paiva Weed for this article, but effusive testimonials. Her fans say she is bright, works grueling hours, relishes the minutiae of public policy, keeps fellow legislators and advocates in the loop as bills are crafted, and forges compromises needed to keep them alive. "I just think she’s incredible," DeBare says from her interrupted bicycle ride. "Her commitment to issues goes beyond the politics of politics."

DeBare credits Paiva Weed with helping pass a bill, sponsored by Senator Maryellen Goowdwin (D-Providence), which will allow judges to remove guns from suspected domestic violence abusers. What’s more, DeBare says, women who have experienced domestic abuse got to watch Weed in action. "I saw awe in their eyes when they saw a woman championing this issue," she says.

Roberts, who will become Rhode Island’s first woman lieutenant governor if she wins in November 2006, says Paiva Weed has helped advance many legislative careers. Paiva Weed steered Roberts into chairing a Senate human services subcommittee eight years ago when she was just a freshman senator. Roberts has since become one of the General Assembly’s experts on health-care. "She is someone who has really been a role model for many of us," Roberts says. "She is very generous in bringing [along] other people, particularly women, and recognizing their talents and giving them opportunity in finding them a place where they can use their talents."

Perry, who has been a senator since 1991, is an unrestrained supporter: "She’s done a terrific job. I think it’s a combination of her personality and practicality, her legal training [Paiva Weed is a lawyer], and her understanding of how inside politics works, sort of all blended together."

"I just wish we could clone 99 percent of Teresa Paiva Weed, so we could get more women like her," says Perry. A second later, a protective Perry has second thoughts about that proposition. Cloning doesn’t sit well with Paiva Weed’s Roman Catholic Church. "I’m not going to get her in trouble, am I?" Perry frets.

RIGHT WOMAN, RIGHT TIME

Paiva Weed, 45, who represents a district that includes Newport and Jamestown, was installed as majority leader January 15, 2004, during an especially dark time for the Senate Yet another Rhode Island government scandal was unfolding, as Providence Journal stories reported how Senator John A. Celona and Senate President William V. Irons had received undisclosed payments from companies whose legislative issues they were overseeing.

(Celona pleaded guilty in US District Court last month to receiving more than $305,000 from Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island, the CVS pharmacy chain, and Roger Williams Medical Center. The one-time Senate committee chairman also agreed to cooperate with a continuing federal and state investigation. Meanwhile, two allegations against Irons, including a charge that he used his office to obtain financial gain, are pending before the state Ethics Commission.)

Back on New Year’s Eve 2003, a leadership vacuum developed when Irons abruptly announced he was quitting.

One long-time State House lobbyist recalls how the remaining Senate hierarchy — headed now by Montalbano, Irons’s majority leader — was searching for a way to signal that things would change, when he moved up to Senate president. "They were looking for something different, something that would make a statement that this will not be business as usual," this observer says, and naming a woman would clearly prove that things had changed.

Maureen Moakley, chairwoman of the political science department at the University of Rhode Island, notes, "Women generally are trusted more than men," and further, that Paiva Weed was "hard-working, effective, honest, and had leadership potential." Moakley also believes that for her part, Paiva Weed recognized that openings such as majority leader are rare, and that some women had previously waited too patiently for promotions that never came. "She took the opportunity and went for the leadership position," the professor says.

Montalbano says he "wasn’t looking for a woman per se. It was more that I was looking for a very qualified person with Teresa’s background."

The Senate president recalls that Paiva Weed was previously chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee — he notes that she was the first woman to head a major committee — and that she had worked on a host of difficult issues, from merit selection of judges and welfare reform, to restructuring the troubled state traffic court. "The outside world clearly has a feel for her as someone [involved] with reform and ethics issues, who has the respect of her colleagues inside and the Phil Wests of the world," Montalbano says, referring to H. Philip West Jr., head of the reform group Common Cause of Rhode Island.

Paiva Weed herself is vague on how she got the majority leader’s post, and what she did to win it. "It all happened so fast," she says. In fact, Paiva Weed says, although she’s always been interested, and even fascinated by politics, she never really mapped her path in public life: "I don’t know that I ever had a plan. I guess that’s it: I just never had a plan."