by Mike Stanton
“You ain’t walking in with me,” said Xavier.
“Why not?” asked Cianci.
“Because I don’t want these fucking people to think I’m with you.”
Another time, during a heated budget debate, Cianci sent Xavier a note on the council floor that said, “If you vote for the tax increase, I’ll get your girlfriend a job.” Xavier crumpled the note and threw it on the floor, only to have one of his enemies pick it up and give it to a reporter for The Providence Journal, who wrote about it on the front page. The story, Xavier said ruefully, years later, “didn’t help me with my wife. She still brings it up today.” (Xavier said the “girlfriend” was “just someone who hung around—she liked politicians, and she could get free drinks.”)
For sheer entertainment, there was no better show in town than City Council meetings. One Providence Journal story took a blasé approach to a typical night of bickering and infighting: “The city council got right down to brass knuckles as it began its regular session last night.” At that meeting Xavier shouted down a pro-Cianci councilman during a parliamentary debate, yelling, “We don’t need F. Lee Bailey to interpret our rules.” And Councilman Merola from Federal Hill, who had yet to be convicted of insurance fraud, demanded that the chief of police in Warwick publicly apologize for saying that the recent murder of a South Providence bookmaker may have had Federal Hill connections. All his life, Merola complained, “I have always heard that killers come from Federal Hill. That is not a true fact.” Merola’s remarks were endorsed by another councilman, who said that he considered the murdered man a close personal friend, and criticized the newspaper for reporting that he had been a bookie.
In the spring of 1978, while the council dragged its feet on removing Haxton and Merola because of their criminal convictions, it also refused to endorse an ordinance to prohibit discrimination in employment and housing against minorities, women, the elderly, and the handicapped, because the measure also included homosexuals. At a stormy public hearing, the council allowed opponents of the ordinance to speak at length until past 10 P.M., then limited supporters to three minutes each. The opponents included a Bible-thumping minister who equated homosexuals with murderers and a fireman who said that he wouldn’t go into a burning building to save a homosexual.
It was no wonder that Cianci called the City Council “the Gong Show” and “one of the most incredible concentrations of stupidity in American politics.”
In May, after Haxton and Merola were finally removed, and with Turchetta effectively gone because of his incarceration (though his wife still picked up his council paychecks), the council’s anti-Cianci majority had shrunk from fifteen to twelve, with eleven Cianci supporters.
Cianci, conferring with Tony Bucci and Ronnie Glantz, began plotting to take the council.
On Sunday, July 9, the story about the Marquette rape accusation finally broke. New Times, with a national circulation of 350,000, announced that it was publishing the story on the cover of its upcoming July 24 issue.
Cianci had known that the story was in the works, and he had dispatched Herb DeSimone and Ron Glantz to New York in an effort to stop it. New Times’s editor, Jon Larsen, was accustomed to taking on powerful leaders and corporate giants, but he said that he had never seen anything quite like the extraordinary performance of DeSimone and Glantz. They accused the reporter, Craig Waters, of offering money to Cianci’s alleged victim and of coercing information from sources. They made what he considered lawyerly arguments about the authenticity of the police reports, and threatened to sue if the magazine published the story.
“They didn’t address the truth of the matter, they just questioned the validity of the copies of the police reports and tried to blackmail us by accusing Craig of unethical behavior,” recalled Larsen. “The irony is that we weren’t planning to put it on the cover. But when we walked out of there, I had what [Bob] Woodward would call a ‘holy shit’ moment.”
The Providence Sunday Journal led the paper with a recap of the story, covering the allegations that its own reporters had looked into in January and the New Times account of how the Journal’s reporter had erred and the newspaper had decided not to print the story. The Journal also ran Cianci’s entire statement of denial on top of the front page.
“I have never in my life been arrested, charged, indicted or placed before any court anywhere in the world for the commission of any criminal act,” declared Cianci.
The day before the Journal published the story, its reporters and editors were once again locked in a battle with the mayor’s office to obtain Cianci’s comment. The mayor railed at the newspaper’s Yankee owners. At one point, Glantz recalled, he shouted into the phone at a Journal editor about how “you work for those people.”
That Saturday, after a meeting in which the Journal’s publisher, top editors, and lawyers decided to go with the story, one editor, Joel Rawson, recalled the publisher, John Watkins, saying that it was a shame because Cianci was a talented young man and this would end his career.
On Sunday, the day the Journal story appeared, Cianci received a hero’s welcome at a Republican-party clambake in Scituate. Accompanied by his wife and their four-year-old daughter, Cianci was all smiles as he strolled about the outdoor picnic area, working the crowd, shaking hands, and predicting victory in November. Cianci painted himself as the victim of the media and “a political ploy” by his opponents.
“The media will stop at nothing to make a profit,” he told five hundred cheering supporters. “If they can do this to the mayor of Providence, they can do it to anybody.”
Glantz said later that he believed that Cianci succeeded in dampening the potentially devastating consequences of the story by keeping it from being reported earlier in 1978. By threatening lawsuits, capitalizing on the Journal’s misstep, and characterizing the story as a political ploy (there was never any evidence his opponents were behind it), Cianci put the media and his political foes on the defensive. When the story finally came out, he was able to paint himself as the victim. He didn’t have to answer detailed questions about the accusation or explain the circumstances surrounding its withdrawal or the three-thousand-dollar settlement. It did not become a major issue in the campaign. The Echo, a local newspaper catering to the Italian-American community, dismissed the allegation as “another ethnic slur.”
Cianci subsequently filed a seventy-two-million-dollar libel suit against New Times. A federal judge in New York threw it out, ruling that the article was accurate and protected under the First Amendment. Furthermore, the judge said, Cianci had failed to demonstrate that New Times had been guilty of malice, a necessary element of libel against a public figure such as Cianci. Cianci appealed, complaining, “I have been denied my day in court.” The Second Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated the suit and sent it back to the lower court for trial to resolve the factual disputes. The appellate court, while holding that Cianci still faced a “heavy burden” in proving libel, said that the New Times story did not include Cianci’s explanation of the civil settlement and implied that the three-thousand-dollar payment was made prior to and was the primary reason for the decision not to prosecute. The appellate court said that the judge could still dismiss the case after further discovery, but that the lower court “was not justified in lowering the boom on Mayor Cianci when it did.”
As the suit progressed through discovery, Cianci gave his account of that night with Bandlow in sealed depositions, some of which later became public. For the first time, he acknowledged that he had paid Bandlow three thousand dollars, that he had introduced himself to her as she walked on the sidewalk near Marquette, that he later drove her to his house and spent the evening with her, and that there had been a gun in the house. But he adamantly denied raping her. Cianci also said that he had taken a lie-detector test, but said in a deposition that he could not remember whether he was advised of the results. After taking the test, he testified, he recalled that the person who administered it said that “I had nothing to
be concerned about. I did just fine.” Cianci refused to answer questions concerning his efforts in the winter of 1977–78 to stop The Providence Journal and New Times from publishing the story.
Early in 1981, the owners of the now-defunct New Times settled the lawsuit for eighty-five hundred dollars and a letter of apology. The magazine’s publisher, George A. Hirsch, recalled the settlement as “minimal” and the letter of apology as “soft.” New Times, which had always had trouble attracting advertisers because its muckraking alienated corporate advertisers, had folded early in 1979, for reasons unrelated to the Cianci story, and its lawyers wanted to get rid of the lawsuit to avoid the expense of a trial, said Hirsch. The money from the settlement went to Cianci’s New York lawyers, who later sought another two hundred and twelve thousand dollars in unpaid legal bills from him. (Cianci called this a “misunderstanding” that was subsequently resolved.) The letter of apology went up on the wall in the mayor’s office.
In the summer of 1978, when the New Times story was published, it was the talk of the town in Providence, drawing reporters from outside, including The New York Times. After overheated speculation, Rhode Island’s largest magazine distributor decided not to carry the telltale issue of New Times, for fear of a lawsuit. “Don’t forget,” the distributor explained to New Times’s publisher, “he’s still the mayor of this town.”
That left it to Skip Chernov, the broken-down rock promoter, to bring the magazine to Providence. In the four years since Cianci’s election as the anticorruption candidate, the fortunes of the man who had helped Cianci expose corruption at the Civic Center had declined as precipitously as Cianci’s had improved.
Chernov had been blacklisted as a concert promoter and suffered a heart attack, divorce, and bankruptcy. He had started an ill-fated minor-league basketball team, the Providence Shooting Stars, which he lost one night when he got drunk in a bar and signed it away. His drinking and drug use had landed him in the hospital. After he got out, in spring 1978, Chernov launched a quixotic campaign for mayor, challenging Cianci in the Republican primary. He sold his beloved ’50 Hudson Hornet and other personal belongings and raised four thousand dollars, which he spent on modest advertising and buying people drinks in bars. One of the candidate’s first acts was to be arrested outside City Hall for handing out leaflets critical of Ronnie Glantz.
Chernov blamed Cianci for the loss of his last business, a popular Mexican restaurant near Brown University named Tortilla Flats. After Cianci took office, Chernov said that the mayor blocked his permit to expand the restaurant, which he needed to stay in business. Glantz confirmed this, years later. Chernov recalled storming down to City Hall and confronting Cianci, who icily told him that it would be better if he left town. The New Times’s George Hirsch, who heard from newsdealers that Cianci was pressuring them not to carry the issue, hired a pilot in Connecticut to fly the magazines in. The pilot was a no-nonsense air force veteran who had flown combat missions, Hirsch recalled. When apprised of the tense situation in Rhode Island, he told Hirsch, “Don’t worry. Those magazines will get in there.”
THE PROVIDENCE CITY COUNCIL met in an ornate, wood-paneled room on the third floor of City Hall that was part theater and part courtroom.
The council chambers had wooden benches, like a courtroom, and a wooden railing with a swinging gate that divided the participants from the spectators. In front of the rail, twenty-six antique wooden desks were arranged in two rows, in a semicircle facing the president’s desk, which was on a raised podium, like the judge’s seat. Upstairs was a theaterlike balcony with additional seating for crowded meetings. The wood paneling ran halfway up the walls to the ceiling. The remainder of the walls had once been adorned with elaborately painted designs, like movie palaces of old, but were now covered with ugly asbestos tiles.
On Wednesday night, July 12, three days after the New Times story broke, council members filtered in as they always did. In the weeks since Haxton’s and Merola’s ouster, Eddie Xavier and Vinny Cirelli would walk upstairs and peek out from the balcony to make sure they had enough guys. If they did, the two men might not go in, and go out for a beer instead.
On this night, however, they just went in. The mayor, who seldom attended council meetings, sat downstairs in his second-floor office with Ron Glantz, listening through a stereo speaker that picked up what was being said from a microphone in the chamber.
As the roll was called, Glantz and Cianci realized that the Democrats didn’t have their usual majority. Haxton’s and Merola’s vacancies had yet to be filled. Turchetta was in prison. And three other anti-Cianci Democrats were in the hospital, one with a back injury suffered on the golf course.
They did a quick head count and realized what the Democrats upstairs hadn’t yet. There were eleven pro-Cianci councilmen and only nine opponents. As Larry McGarry used to say, “When you got the votes, you got the votes.”
Glantz sent a low-level aide upstairs with a stack of ordinances, representing some thirty appointments to various city posts and boards that the council had been sitting on. If these appointments were approved, Cianci would instantly gain control of several powerful instruments of government—from the Board of Licenses, which regulated bars and restaurants, to the Board of Contract and Supply, which approved major city purchases, to the Board of Park Commissioners, which had denied Cianci credit for improvements to the city’s parks and zoo.
The meeting was already under way when Xavier and Cirelli realized their mistake. The Democrats tried to adjourn. But Cianci’s forces, drilled by Glantz, were ready. Armed with the city charter and Robert’s Rules of Order, they pressed forward with Cianci’s nominations. Stunned and in disarray, the anti-Cianci Democrats bolted for the exits, hoping to deny the mayor a quorum. There were shouts of “Get off the floor!” and “Get behind the rail!” When one councilman lingered on the threshold, another councilman shoved him out into the hallway before he could be counted.
A crowd of 150 people quickly caught on to the coup d’état in the making and started whooping and hollering, adding to the chaos. The city clerk picked up her note-taking equipment and walked out, too, reasoning that there couldn’t be a roll-call vote for her to record without a quorum.
The anti-Cianci Democrats fled down the street to a popular downtown watering hole, Murphy’s, which was known in Providence as a Jewish deli with an Irish name run by a Greek. But they had miscalculated, and Glantz knew it. He maintained that a quorum existed when the meeting began, and remained in effect because nobody ever officially challenged it.
As the rump Cianci council—eight Democrats, two Republicans, and one Independent—started approving each of the mayor’s thirty appointees by individual roll-call votes, the Democrats who had adjourned to Murphy’s learned what was happening and rushed back to City Hall. One of them, John Garan, who was running for mayor, repeatedly whipped up the jeering, frenzied crowd by accusing Cianci of trying to illegally railroad his appointments through.
Cianci sat downstairs in his office with Glantz and a handful of advisers, like a spider at the center of his web. He gloated and laughed hysterically as messengers brought him news of his unfolding coup.
“Watch,” he joked, “one of them is going to pick up the phone and get Turchetta to vote from fucking prison.”
Meanwhile, frantic phone calls were being made from the mayor’s office, telling his new appointees to hurry down to City Hall. Cianci wanted to swear them in as quickly as possible.
A list of the new appointees telegraphed the new world order at City Hall.
Cianci had won over two black councilmen, who normally voted against him, by appointing eight minorities. (Cianci was no Abraham Lincoln, said one of the two councilmen, who explained that he backed Cianci “to ensure that our people got in.”) Cianci had secured other Democratic votes by giving Tony Bucci the appointments that he wanted; they included Bucci’s uncle Carmine to the Parks Commission and his Fourth Ward crony Slim DiBello to the Board of Licenses. And Cianci h
ad punished Larry McGarry by knocking McGarry’s ally Snack McManus off the tax board. Altogether, Cianci picked off five chairmen and changed the face of fifteen boards and commissions that night. The coup quickly became known as the Wednesday Night Massacre.
“Some call it a massacre,” said Cianci. “Some call it a coup. I just prefer to call it a victory for the people.”
The Wednesday Night Massacre awakened memories of the Bloodless Revolution of 1935, a legendary turning point in Rhode Island politics, when the state’s urban Democrats used shrewd parliamentary tactics to seize power at the State House.
Until 1935, the old Yankee Republicans had ruled through a malapportioned state Senate that gave small communities like West Greenwich, with 485 people, the same representation as Providence, with 275,000. Consequently, the rural communities dominated the Senate. And thanks to a law engineered by Republican leader Charles “Boss” Brayton back in 1901, which weakened the power of the governor, all state patronage was controlled by the Senate, which even had the power to appoint department heads in the City of Providence. The Democrats, fueled by the tide of immigrants and fired by the Great Depression and Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, were agitating for reform. But the Republicans were ruthless. A few years earlier, a Republican operative had broken up a Democratic filibuster by throwing a stink bomb into the Senate chamber.
It appeared that the Republicans, with a 22–20 Senate majority, would continue to reign when the General Assembly convened on a chilly New Year’s Day in 1935. But a group of mostly Irish-American Democratic leaders from the cities had met with the Democratic governor, Theodore Francis Green, and hatched a plan.
When the Senate met, the presiding officer, Democratic lieutenant governor Robert Quinn, refused to swear in two Republicans from rural towns where the election results had been contested. With the Senate thus deadlocked, 20–20, Quinn swiftly appointed a recount committee. Governor Green, assisted by two dozen burly state troopers, ordered the state vault opened, had the ballots recounted, and determined that the Democratic candidates had won both seats. They were immediately sworn in, giving the Democrats a majority in both houses. That night Governor Green pushed through a sweeping reorganization of state government, replaced the entire Supreme Court, and wrested control of the State House from the rural Republicans once and for all.