Rhode Island, a State Sized Just Right to Contain Its Pride

By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE

   Rhode Island was the state least appreciated by its public in a recent Gallup poll. Culinary quirks like Olneyville New York System’s hot wieners in Providence, however, draw praise. Credit Gretchen Ertl for The New York Times 

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — A lot of people here say that Rhode Island suffers from being the smallest state in the country. Jimmy Saccoccio, manager of the Olneyville New York System, a popular diner, agrees.

“They say in Rhode Island, if you’re going to cheat on your husband or your wife, go out of state because Rhode Island is too small,” he said with a laugh.

Poor Little Rhody. Not only is it the smallest state, it is often a punch line. And in many state rankings, it comes out on top for the wrong things, like having the nation’s highest rate of unemployment.

Now comes yet another blow to the state’s fragile self-esteem. A Gallup poll found that of all 50 states, Rhode Island was the least appreciated by its own residents. Only 18 percent of Rhode Islanders said their state was the best place or one of the best places to live. Illinois did not fare much better — only 19 percent were proud of their state. But even Mississippi, a habitual laggard in standard-of-living metrics, earned higher marks in the Galluppoll, with 26 percent of its residents calling it the best state or one of the best.

These levels of dissatisfaction stood in sharp contrast to the satisfaction of residents in several states out West. Tied at the top were Montana and Alaska, where 77 percent of residents thought highly of their state.

Most of the top 10 states feature wide-open spaces and small populations; Rhode Island, by contrast, is one of the most densely packed. But that is cold comfort to Rhode Island, since two other small New England states — New Hampshire and Vermont — made the top 10.

So what ails Rhode Island?

Many people interviewed here on a recent soggy day pinned the blame on the state’s struggling economy. Manufacturing declined after the textile industry moved South, and the jewelry industry has been outstripped by foreign competitors. And the state has been slow to rebound from the recession.

“They can’t get jobs,” said Mario Forte, 85, who is long retired from the jewelry business. He was standing out of the rain in a storefront on Atwells Avenue in Federal Hill, Providence’s Italian neighborhood, which bustles with restaurants. “You give a man a job, he’s happy,” Mr. Forte said.

And just as often, people pointed to Rhode Island’s reputation for corruption.

 “The government is corrupt, and the poverty rate is high,” said Gary Balletto, 38, a former professional boxer who was eating lunch at Venda Ravioli.

They spoke not far from the site of an old pinball business that was the base of operations for a notorious New England crime family. The Mafia is much diminished now, and studies suggest that, at least as measured by convictions of public officials, Rhode Island is far less corrupt than many other states.

Nonetheless, the perception persists that Rhode Island, measuring just 48 miles from north to south and 37 from east to west, is overstuffed with miscreants and reprobates.

“Even in good times, Rhode Island has had a little bit of an inferiority complex, caused in part by being the smallest state and by having a history of political corruption,” said John Marion, executive director of Common Cause Rhode Island.

“People like to go back to George Washington calling it Rogue’s Island and Lincoln Steffens calling it a state for sale on the cheap,” he said. Steffens, the muckraker, wrote a devastating article in 1905 in which he detailed the graft and bribery here, starting with party bosses buying citizens’ votes and calling those payments “compensation for time lost in visiting the polls.”

More recently, the speaker of the House abruptly resigned in March under a still-unexplained cloud after federal and state agents raided his office. Other highlights include the time the sitting governor crawled into a Dumpster outside Walt’s Roast Beef in Cranston to retrieve an envelope containing a $10,000 bribe; his waitress had inadvertently tossed it out.

The name Vincent A. Cianci Jr., who is known as Buddy, often pops up in conversations about Rhode Island. A former mayor of Providence, he was forced to resign after a felony conviction for assault (he threatened a man with a burning log); he was later re-elected mayor and forced to resign a second time after another felony conviction.

In an interview, Mr. Cianci, 73, now a popular radio host and a potential candidate for mayor again this year, blew off the notion that Rhode Islanders were discouraged by the pervasive aura of corruption. “Corruption is everywhere,” he said. “We haven’t cornered the market.”

He attributed their dissatisfaction instead to high taxes, leaders who are “bean counters” instead of “risk-takers” and the state’s size, which makes everyone’s activities more noticeable.

“Here, everybody knows what’s going on, and every little nitty-gritty thing they do is under a microscope,” he said. “You could drop an atomic bomb on parts of Texas and no one would know.”

Rhode Island is heavily Democratic, heavily Roman Catholic and heavily unionized. Some say the state is beholden to its unions, as evinced by its generous pension system. But the high cost of government, said Robert D. Atkinson, the former executive director of the defunct Rhode Island Economic Policy Council, is not matched by a high quality of services.

For some politicians, the Gallup results are a call to arms; the governor’s race this year is shaping up in part as a contest over who can best pull the state out of its funk.

“Lifting the self-esteem of the state is absolutely something I need to address as governor,” said Mayor Angel Taveras of Providence, a Democrat running for governor.

Claiborne Pell IV, grandson of Senator Claiborne Pell and another Democrat candidate, said restoring faith in state government was “at the heart” of his campaign because without it, nothing else could get done.

Gina M. Raimondo, the state treasurer and also a Democrat running for governor, takes a white board to campaign events and asks voters to list why they believe in Rhode Island. It is her way of getting them to think about the state’s positive attributes.

“The malaise is driven by the economy and the lack of jobs,” she said. “Rhode Island needs a leader who has optimism for the future and who knows and believes we can be better.”

Despite the complaints, many of those interviewed said they liked living here and would never move. They love the easy access to the ocean. They are proud of Newport, an old-world moneyed coastal community where Jacqueline Bouvier and John F. Kennedy were married in 1953.

And they are especially proud of their restaurants and their culinary quirks. The official state drink is coffee milk, a mixture of milk and coffee syrup. Rhode Islanders boast of their snail salads. They are devoted to their version of the hot dog, called, oddly enough, New York System hot wieners. They are served at Olneyville New York System, which was just named a 2014 James Beard Foundation American Classic.

Mr. Cianci, the former mayor, suggested that the 82 percent of residents who told Gallup that Rhode Island was not among the best states should spend a weekend in Newport, eat in a Providence restaurant or visit the Rhode Island School of Design.

“Then,” he said, “they should go to Pocatello, Idaho, and see what they can do there on a Saturday night.”