Rhode Island Gov. Raimondo used her State of the State address last week to roll out some ambitious plans, many of them following Massachusetts lead. She wants her state’s education system to resemble her high-performing neighboring state. She called for putting into effect a high-level elementary and secondary school curricula, saying she wants it to be “similar to Massachusetts.”
Rhode Island’s governor wants to legalize marijuana. Why? Because Massachusetts has done it. Raimondo wants tougher gun regulations, including a ban on assault weapons. Massachusetts has already has done that. She wants to a law protecting abortion rights in case the U.S. Supreme Court overturns the Roe vs. Wade standard, much like Massachusetts. And she wants to raise the minimum wage. Yes, Massachusetts has done that too.
Roger Williams may be spinning in his grave at the thought of his colony of conscience being subservient to the whims of bureaucrats in Boston. Providence residents may need even more therapy to cope with the inferiority complex of living in Boston’s long shadow. At a time when every Democratic senator not in rehab is running for president, Massachusetts has Elizabeth Warren eating pork bellies in Iowa. Rhode Island has never had a president or even a major party nominee, a record that won’t be broken in 2020.
If you’re stuck in the Cedar Rapids airport, don’t be surprised at the reaction when you tell a local you’re from Rhode Island. “You mean Long Island, right?”
Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, the quintessential anti-Trump moderate Republican, is respectful in public of Democrat Raimondo. He once even gave her a campaign contribution. Yet Baker had no qualms about stripping Rhode Island of its minor-league baseball team as he sweetened the taxpayer subsidy that led the Pawtucket Red Sox to Worcester.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. A century ago, Providence was the nation’s most prosperous city and the Atlantic U.S. Navy fleet was headquartered in Newport, where that era’s one-percent summered.
There is a Rhode Island only because of an accident of history. Williams, a Baptist preacher, was booted out of 17th Century Massachusetts because he believed in separation of church and state. “Forced religion stinks in the nostrils of God,” was his mantra. While Massachusetts persecuted witches, Rhode Island evolved into the first liberal democracy in the modern world.
Slavery never gained traction in either state, but once slaves became commodities, Rhode Island’s marine traders saw their opportunities. Providence, Bristol and Newport became huge cogs in the international slave trade. It’s a Rhode Island axiom that only the state’s most pedigreed families can trace their lineage all the way back to a slave-trader or rum-runner. Massachusetts old Yankees are more likely to have abolitionist ministers as ancestors.
Both states prospered after the Civil War when manufacturing provided jobs for thousands of immigrants from Europe and French Canada. But Providence was harder hit than Boston when the textile and jewelry factories decamped for cheaper labor to the American south and the third world.
For much of the 20th Century, Massachusetts endured the national jokes. It was called Taxachusetts, The People’s Republic and the home of loopy, overeducated liberals. Now in an economy that values brains over brawn, Boston has evolved into an innovation hothouse, Palo Alto with snow and bad drivers.
It wasn’t always that Rhode Island pols wanted to copy Massachusetts. Rhode Islanders of a certain age recall the 1980s, when then-Providence mayor Joe Paolino tried to lure businesses from Boston. He put up billboards on traffic-clogged Boston roads that said, “If you were in Providence, you’d be home now.”
Massachusetts businesses never moved. So maybe it’s inevitable that Rhode Island apes Massachusetts. But please spare Rhode Island your traffic and fingernails-on- chalkboard accents.
Scott MacKay’s commentary can be heard every Monday morning at 6:45 and 8:45 and at 5:44 in the afternoon. You can also follow his political reporting at our web site at ThePublicsRadio.org.