POLITICAL SCENE: September 30
Politics Is A Party When The President Visits
President Clinton and Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry
were in great spirits at the packed benefit concert for Kerry's campaign Saturday evening
at Boston's Fleet Center. Kerry joked to the largely Boomer crowd that they would have
been surprised if 30 years ago someone predicted they would all be at a "political
rally and everybody kept their clothes on."
When Mr. Clinton spoke at the end of the concert, he
mentioned that Kerry had told the joke. And then the President said: "We had all
these people from the '60s play, and we kept our clothes on. Next thing John Kerry will be
doing the Macarena with Al Gore."
The concert featured Carly Simon, Peter, Paul, and Mary
and aging rockers Joe Walsh, Don Henley, and Crosby Stills & Nash. As a concert it wasn't all that great, except for Peter, Paul and Mary, who did a nice
job with trademark '60s numbers "If I Had a Hammer" and Bob
Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind." And the trio played "Puff the Magic
Dragon" as Mr. Clinton, the president who didn't inhale, was sitting in the first
row, right next to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.
Carly Simon made the evening's biggest gaffe, referring
to Mr. Clinton as "President Kennedy."
Crosby, Stills and Nash dedicated their
song "Helplessly Hoping" to Bob Dole's campaign. That was the highlight of a
mediocre set.
Besides Boomers, the crowd was well sprinkled with the
Alanis Morissette generation. Hundreds of college students, among them 55 members of Brown
University's College Democrats, were at the Fleet Center. After the concert, Sarah Havens,
a Brown sophomore who is president of the College Democrats, was both tactful and
incisive.
"The music was aimed at an older crowd, but that is
natural because they are the ones who give the most money," said Havens.
Kerry supporters paid as much as $1,000 per ticket for
the event.
During his Saturday swing through Rhode Island and
Massachusetts, Mr. Clinton said little that was new or of substance, studiously avoided
the press -- except for a limousine interview with a Boston Globe reporter -- and raised
lots of campaign cash for Democrats.
At this point, Mr. Clinton's campaign
seems mostly gloss and showy spectacle, resembling nothing so much as Ronald Reagan's 1984
reelection campaign, which featured the famous "Morning in America" television
ads.
In the Saturday events, there was nary a
word from the President on what he plans to do in what is beginning to look like an
inevitable second term.
Masterful public relations
Not for nothing did Laborers' Union
president Arthur A. Coia put public relations high on the list of strengths that he
trumpeted last week at his convention in Las Vegas.
The four-day show in the shadow of the
famous neon Strip was a monument to campaigns pioneered by another great union man: Ronald
Reagan, once the president of the Screen Actors Guild.
Like Reagan (and another successful imitator, Bill
Clinton), Coia has entrusted his reelection message to skilled professionals. Coia's
longtime Washington consultant Vic Kamber uses PR techniques like those of Reagan's
backstage genius, Michael Deaver.
Behind the pyrotechnics -- glossy videos, a laser show, a
rock music score -- the formula is basic: Keep the message simple and repeat, repeat,
repeat.
The message from Vegas put Coia in the bosom of a united,
God-fearing family whose cause is the American worker.
The cause links every Laborer -- from
Coia to the rank-and-file worker at Providence City Hall. It also enfolds Democrats from
President Clinton to the most obscure candidate for Republican-held seats in Congress.
The enemies -- Republicans, business
leaders and some in the media -- traffic in what Coia called "vicious lies."
A sense of family tradition was part of
the recurring theme first sounded when Coia rolled a scroll on the big screen behind him
that memorialized the Laborers departed since the last convention, in 1991. His father,
Arthur E. Coia, and his predecessor and sometime rival, Angelo Fosco, were at the top of
the list.
Like Reagan's State of the Union addresses, Coia's State
of the Union address included a cavalcade of ordinary heroes who stood for applause. Coia
credited one Laborers organizer with the greatest labor victory in decades, the
unionization of a 1,700-member bloc in New York. (The Teamsters and nurses who organized
1,800 workers at Rhode Island Hospital in 1993 were not on hand to dispute that.)
Giving the invocation one day was the Rt. Rev. Galliano
Cavallaro, who in Coia's words, "buried my father" and presided at his
daughter's wedding. The Federal Hill priest also vouched for the late New England boss of
organized crime, Raymond L.S. Patriarca, at a parole hearing. Cavallaro
also solicited contributions for the legal defense of the two Coias when they were
indicted for racketeering in 1981, along with Fosco and Patriarca. Cavallaro denounced the
case against the Coias, which was eventually thrown out, as part of a federal campaign
"to repress individual rights."
Coia was nominated for reelection by his cousin, Ronald
M. Coia, of Local 271 in Providence. Seconding was James Merloni Jr. of Framingham, Mass., who compared Coia's "dream" to that of Martin Luther King
Jr. Merloni and Local 1033 president Joseph Virgilio of Providence were called on several
times during the week to defend proposals by the Coia forces.
Another repeat performer was Armand E. Sabatoni, the son
of a Rhode Island Laborers leader who is a rising star in the union and active in state
politics. He was elected as a regional officer to the union's executive board.
During his speech accepting nomination to the fall ballot
for general president, Coia was surrounded by family: his wife, Joanne;
his son Arthur E. Coia II, a Georgetown Law School graduate who recently passed the bar;
his daughter Chrissie and son-in-law Darren Corrente -- who is the son
of longtime Coia business partner Frank Corrente. The elder Corrente is also
administration director for Providence Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr. Corrente negotiates
municipal workers' contracts across the table from Virgilio.
Rolling the boulder uphill
Republican Giovanni Cicione may not have much money or
any chance of defeating Congressman Patrick Kennedy, but most voters would probably agree
that Cicione deserves at least one televised debate on a major market Rhode Island station
to make his case. Channel 10 has invited both Cicione and Kennedy to
debate. Cicione quickly agreed, but there has been no word yet from
Kennedy.
"We're going to do a TV debate, we just don't know
which TV debate," said Larry Berman, Kennedy spokesman. Berman said the debate may
not be on one of the area network stations that draw a large number of viewers. Kennedy
may decide to accept only a local cable access debate or one on Channel 36, which would
keep down the number of people watching.
By the way, Berman has no compunction answering campaign
questions while remaining on Kennedy's taxpayer-financed congressional payroll.
When asked last week about the Channel 10 invitation,
Berman said: "Why should we do it? We would just be giving him expousure. Nobody
knows him."
This is in sharp contrast to Jack Reed, whose press
secretary, Todd Andrews, moved off the public payroll and onto the campaign staff in
August when the political season got rolling.
Berman says press spokesmen are given "wide latitude
to discuss" a congressman's record during a
campaign.
Cicione, who faces a Sisyphean challenge if there ever
was one, says he sometimes feels as though "I'm running against Larry Berman, not
Patrick Kennedy."
Kennedy has not bothered to hire a campaign press
secretary this year, a role Berman filled in 1996.
Perhaps the biggest suprise in this month's General Assembly primaries was the upset of Sen. Helen Mathieu, one of the Senate's leading opponents of abortion. It was the Portsmouth Democrat who last year bucked Senate Majority Leader Paul Kelly to spring from committee a bill that would require a
24-hour wait for an abortion. The measure passed the
Senate but died in the House.
The veteran lawmaker blames her defeat by a political
novice on low voter turnout and efforts to unseat her by organized labor and advocates of
abortion and gay rights.
"Primaries are dangerous to an incumbent," says
Mathieu, who had not faced a primary contest since her first Senate race a decade ago.
Mathieu held her own in her hometown, but lost to Karen Nygaard of Bristol in the parts of
Bristol and Warren included in her district.
Mathieu says that unlike Pawtucket Sen. John McBurney,
who mounted a successful drive to defeat an opponent backed by Kelly, she did not realize
she was in trouble until too late.
But the lawmaker vows not to disappear
once she leaves office in January. "I'm not going away," she
says.
Meanwhile, back at the bar . . .
Clinton Kickin' Donkey Lager is running way ahead of
Dole's Pachyderm Ale in the Trinity Brew House brewpub poll. Through yesterday, 952 pints
of the President's lager have been sold. Only 568 pints of Dole's Ale has been downed by
Trinity customers.
Political Scene can be contacted by e-mail at this
address: rgarland@projo.com.
Copyright © 1997 The Providence Journal Company.
Produced by www.projo.com