You may not fully appreciate this unless you are from my former home State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.
As mentioned here before, twice-convicted former Providence Mayor Vincent "Buddy" Cianci not only is
running for Mayor a third time (as an Independent), he is
leading in the polls. Buddy's first conviction during his first term as Mayor was for beating his wife's alleged paramour with a fireplace log and assaulting him with a lit cigarette. His second conviction was for running a criminal enterprise (under the RICO statute), namely, Providence City Hall.
Mike Stanton, author of the definitive chronicle of Buddy's years in office (The Prince of Providence
book and later
movie), has a column in The New York Times this weekend,
Good Buddy, Bad Buddy:
Stories of the Good Buddy and the Bad Buddy are legion, and legend. He moved rivers. He took bribes. He built a mall. He was accused of raping a woman at gunpoint in law school. He championed WaterFire, the festive floating bonfires on downtown rivers. He assaulted a guy and tried to jab a lit cigarette in his eye while a police bodyguard stood by. He raised a city’s self-esteem. He turned City Hall into a cesspool. The judge who sentenced him to five years in prison, for running City Hall as a criminal enterprise, called him Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. (The ever witty Buddy cracked, “He didn’t give me two [expletive] paychecks.”)
He belongs to that great American pantheon of rogues whose corruption was tolerated because of their populist appeal to voters and the perception that they “got things done” — Boss Tweed, Huey Long, James Michael Curley, Edwin Edwards.... A city is like a woman you make love to, he once said. But he was an unfaithful lover.
Yet Buddy remains a beloved figure because he was larger than life, a superb retail politician, and the man who transformed Providence from a dying industrial city into the jewel of New England.
