Dem Gov Gina Raimondo’s Weak Leadership Hurts Rhode Island

Last night, failed governor Gina Raimondo desperately tried to spin the end of Rhode Island’s nearly month long budget impasse as a win, hailing the costly deadlock as a victory. Raimondo stood on the sidelines while House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello and Senate President Dominick Ruggerio met multiple times and hashed out an eventual agreement without her present as the sitting governor abdicated any leadership role in pursuing a compromise.

The agreement between Mattiello and Ruggerio also did nothing to change the status of Raimondo’s “free” college tuition plan, which was gutted to what members of the media referred to as a “face-saving slice” by a legislature dominated by her own party. In the end, Raimondo’s program has been scaled back to a third of its originally intended funding and will only be offered at one of the three state institutions she proposed. To make matters worse, Raimondo has even admitted her “free tuition” plan “isn’t really free.”

With an economy labelled as “anemic” with stagnant job growth and Raimondo’s signature proposal “gutted” by her own party, Raimondo’s Rhode Island cannot even get a budget passed without a costly month-long impasse. Her alarming lack of leadership and failure to achieve any concrete results for the people of Rhode Island shows how desperate the state is for new leadership in the governor’s office.