In these perilous times, all state legislatures will be needing alert, energetic leadership. Unfortunately, it looks like our Senate president, Dominick Ruggerio, is no longer up to the job. He was effectively out of commission for most of last year — he is being treated for some type of cancer, but won’t share details with the public — and this year is not off a great start. Apparently he can barely bang the gavel, a metaphor almost too on the nose. According to the ProJo:
Midway through Gov. Dan McKee’s State of the State address, Senate President Dominick Ruggerio appeared to fall asleep in his seat at the rostrum – eyes closed, head in hand, not moving.
While we wish him well, he is clearly unfit for running the show. He doesn’t even show up most of the time. (The 76-year-old Ruggerio told the ProJo, “My cancer has subsided.” Did a medical professional use that term?) These problems are not new this year:
Whispers about Ruggerio’s health became deafeningly loud when he was absent for weeks at a time last year, missing a third of Senate sessions. He told The Journal he was battling cancer for the third time but has not disclosed what kind.
After the session ended, Ruggerio largely stayed out of the public eye, even while running for reelection. Health woes kept him away from the campaign trail, including his own fundraiser at the Warwick Country Club.
He relied on Senate colleagues to knock doors on his behalf, spent primary day waving to voters while being ferried around in his son’s car, and did not attend his own victory party.
He didn’t go to his own victory party?! In November, when Senate Democrats met to select their new leader, there was a challenge from Sen. Ryan Pearson who argued “that Ruggerio’s repeated absences were hampering the Senate’s ability to do its job.” On the opening day of the new session, when Senate Democrats went through the formality of confirming him as president, Ruggerio accidentally failed to vote for himself saying “he couldn’t hear the question clearly.”
Predictably, the senators who opposed Ruggerio have paid the price: Senators Dawn Euer and Alana DiMario have been stripped of their leadership roles on the Committee on Environment and Agriculture, and Pearson has a new, shabbier office with a more distant parking space.
Good reporting by Antonia Noori Farzan. Try to read this entire piece.
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We have never been a fan of this man’s policies. In 2019 we alerted readers to Ruggerio’s attempted power grab with his undemocratic rules changes. And again, four months later, when he tried to ram through legislation to promote the Fane Tower project.
So who is Dominick Ruggerio?
For those new to the state, a quick primer on Ruggerio’s illustrious career: 1) A forty-year-old Ruggerio was first arrested in 1990 for shoplifting condoms. He shoved them in his sock . . . he was with his mother at the time. CVS declined to press charges. 2) That same year Ruggerio was arrested for drunk driving in Barrington, with his pal Senator Frank Ciccone following in on the arrest and threatening the police officer’s pension, an event described by John Oliver as “Peak Rhode Island” (at the 11:45 mark). Both men ran unopposed in the 2014 mid-terms.