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 Vincent "Buddy" Cianci stunned the city's political wags early
this summer when he told his radio talk show audience that he would
run for a third stint as mayor of Providence, hours before the
deadline to declare his candidacy.
Both of Cianci's turns as mayor ended in court. In 1984 he pleaded
guilty to assaulting an acquaintance and in 2002 he was convicted of
racketeering conspiracy after a sting operation on corruption in
city government, which the Federal Bureau of Investigation had
nicknamed "Operation Plunderdome."
Cianci, who is running as an independent, has a reasonable shot at
coming out on top of what is expected to be a three-way race,
joining a long line of U.S. politicians to win back voters' support
after scandal, according to political analysts.
One factor that could ease the way is Cianci's long history in a
small city, which is home to just 178,000 people, many of whom
Cianci met personally during his frenetic years as mayor from 1975
to 1984 and 1991 to 2002.
"It's easier to make a comeback at the local level," said Larry
Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics
and a veteran political analyst. "A local election is much more of a
friends and neighbors vote than it is anything else. What do we do
with our wayward friends when they repent? We're quick to forgive."
 NOT GOING TO HIDE
Cianci, now 73, was convicted in 2002 of racketeering for overseeing
a city government in which officials solicited bribes and engaged in
extortion and mail fraud.
In a recent interview, Cianci proclaimed his innocence and
questioned the logic of a jury that found him not guilty of 11
counts of engaging in corruption and guilty of one count of
conspiring to take part in it. In any event, he said, he had done
his time.
"I'm not going to bury my head in the sand and say I was convicted
by this one judge and so I'm going to have to hide out, hang my head
in shame. I'm not doing that," Cianci said. "I have a great respect
for the people of this city and if I get elected mayor again, I'll
be the best mayor they ever had. I'll hit the ground running."
Cianci, who has never lost a mayoral campaign, could join a long
list of local U.S. politicians who won voters' support after
scandal.
After being caught on an FBI surveillance video smoking crack in
1990, Washington, D.C., Mayor Marion Barry finished out his term
before serving a prison sentence and won a fourth term after his
release.
More recently, Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, who took a two-month leave of
absence to enter a rehabilitation clinic after admitting to smoking
crack in a "drunken stupor," is holding near the front in his race
for re-election.
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Former New York Congressman Anthony Weiner resigned in 2011 after
accidentally sending a lewd picture of himself to his public Twitter
account while exchanging sexual messages with a woman he had met
online. He subsequently was an early leader in last year's New York
City mayoral race before the news broke that he was once again
sexting. He abandoned his candidacy.
COPS AND JOBS
At the sprawling, low-slung office building adorned with photos and
newspaper covers from his years in City Hall, Cianci said he is
preparing a campaign that will start up in earnest after the Sept. 9
Democratic primary. His first priorities, he said, will be lowering
the crime rate and attracting more jobs to Providence.
The city has struggled to recover from the 2007-2009 U.S. recession,
with an unemployment rate that stood at 9.5 percent at the end of
July, well above the 6.3 percent national average. It is also
struggling with a high crime rate, with reported murders up 10
percent so far this year, though other violent crime is down.
"There is no Democratic way or Republican way to do this. There’s
the right way," Cianci said. "Let's take responsibility for the
future. That’s what we have to concentrate on."
The challenge will be whether he can apply that take-charge attitude
to government without re-establishing the City Hall culture that led
to criminal activity, said Wendy Schiller, an associate professor of
political science at Brown University in Providence.
"It used to be that he ran the city with an iron fist, people did
what he said or they suffered the consequences," Schiller said. "How
will he square the new Buddy Cianci, who plays by the rules, with
the old one who wrote the rules?"
(Reporting by Scott Malone; Editing by Dan Grebler)
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