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.”
