What One State Can Teach Us About American Politics in 2021

SARAH BALDWIN: From the Watson Institute at Brown University, this is Trending Globally. I'm Sarah Baldwin. Whether we're talking about the elections, the pandemic, racial justice, or climate change, it feels like one idea kept coming up this year. The line of cause and effect between national and local politics runs both ways. What the federal government does affects individuals and communities. And what individuals and communities do can change the national conversation.

ilt of our State House in the: 2020

I asked, for folks outside the ocean state who don't know her, what should they expect from their new commerce secretary? Here's Dan.

DAN MCGOWAN: I mean, look, I think Gina Raimondo is for folks who maybe aren't that familiar with her, she's very much cut from that moderate pro-business Democrat class. She's much more Michael Bloomberg than she is AOC. And in fact, she endorsed Michael Bloomberg for president for the short run that he had. And so she makes a lot of sense, I think, on the Commerce side. Traditionally, if you look at many of the folks who have had this job, certainly in recent times, look back to the Obama administration Penny Pritzker, those two are very good friends. Moderates who are going to fit in well with, I think, some of the Wall Street crowd that might have some concerns about the Biden administration kind of moving to the left. But somebody who's also knows how to get things done as an executive.

Remember, the Commerce Office is massive. We're talking 40,000 employees, 13 some odd billion budget. It's larger than the state of Rhode Island, the budget. And she's somebody who has proven, I think, as governor that she can navigate politics relatively well. Rhode Island's a very blue state. And she was able to win as a moderate Democrat here. And then kind of curve to the left in general elections to kind of meet that base. And so she knows what she's doing when it comes to that stuff, but then she's also somebody who kind of suits the needs of Joe Biden's wealthier donors and certainly the Wall Street crowd.

SARAH BALDWIN: Right. And she's a former venture capitalist. So she's quite friendly to business.

DAN MCGOWAN: Yeah. That's absolutely right. She comes from that world. And I think you saw it. I think it actually scored her some points with some of the Republicans, even some of the Democrats on the Senate Committee. Let's just put it clearly, she's not a political hack. She doesn't come from a world where she's been just climbing the ranks of Rhode Island government forever or Congress or whatever. She got into this for a very specific reason. She ran for treasurer to reform the state's pension system. It's not sexy, but it was really important. She was able to pull that off. And it got her on this fast track to be the governor.

But she she certainly has always had a very pro-business sense. If you look in Rhode Island, she helped to recruit a lot of companies to this day. She kind of always approaches everything with this economy first mindstate.

SARAH BALDWIN: Well, let's talk about how she's dealt with COVID-19 pandemic. I wonder if there are any lessons that we learned in Rhode Island that other states might take away. Specifically, there's a big New York Times story recently on her handling of school openings including when that idea was very unpopular and before she had CDC data that bore out her decisions. So based on her ability to convince people, 70% of Providence parents sent their kids to school in October when a lot of schools would have preferred to stay close. So I wonder if it's a case study for kind of how public schools and state leadership might work together?

DAN MCGOWAN: Yeah. It's a really good question, Sarah. The thing that's interesting is it's a great segue from the conversation about the Commerce Office and her kind of commitment to restoring the economy. Because make no mistake about it, her decisions on Rhode Island schools were directly related to the economy. She made some decisions about reopening schools across Rhode Island, not just Providence, across the state, before she had pretty solid data. Now, there was some good international data. But before she had solid data in the United States, in large part because in her eyes you have a lot of parents who needed to get back to work.

And then the only way to be able to kind of reopen the economy, the one key factor was getting kids back to school. So you didn't have a parent stuck at home, things like that. The key, my colleague, [? Bianca Torres ?] and I did a story a while ago, where school was reopening to compare the Massachusetts and Rhode Island reopenings. Because it was very different. Massachusetts took this approach to kind of leave it in the hands of different school districts. The union, certainly, as they do here had a ton of influence.

And what we decided as we reported it out was one of the big differences-- and this is what you see in The New York Times article, too-- is Governor Raimondo took a very top-down approach. They were able to convince every district to go with a statewide school calendar. They were able to be very vocal about we expect you to reopen the schools. This was on TV every day. It was the Governor constantly having press conferences, reiterating that she felt that students needed to be back in school.

And it almost got, I think, the public and I think a lot of school superintendents initially really sort of onboard. They felt comfortable and it wasn't even-- even if they didn't feel comfortable, it was, OK, we're going to do this. We're going to make this happen. There was absolute resistance, particularly from, I think, the teachers. But the Governor, I think, to some degree took a bat here, she rolled the dice a little bit to say, we think this will be OK. And it paid off very clearly because now as you're seeing across the country, there's a major push from local governments to put students back in classrooms and get teachers back in classrooms. But she was able to really kind of grab everything and say, we're doing it my way. And yeah, I think it paid off to some degree.

SARAH BALDWIN: One of her other stated reasons for opening schools was the importance of education. So I wonder there's a new task force to study learning loss among Rhode Island students that the state just convened. And of course, it's too soon to know what the findings are. But do we have any sense of whether that decision means that the results are less dismal than they would have been? And is this something that other states are doing?

DAN MCGOWAN: I think you're going to find actually, unfortunately, that the results are going to be more dismal than maybe we might have already anticipated. Rhode Island-- Governor Raimondo was one of the first governors in the country to shut the schools down.

SARAH BALDWIN: Right. Back in March?

DAN MCGOWAN: Back in March, that's right. When the governor said, I need you guys to come up with this plan for potentially the rest of the year. She didn't announce it initially that it would be the rest of the year. But she said, we need to have plans. Every district-- and the teachers' unions to their credit came on board very quickly. Every district came up with a plan. And sure enough the kids never returned to school for the rest of that school year. And so the governor was very quick to pull the trigger on that. And then everybody, of course, followed suit, which was probably the right idea at the time.

But then, I think, there was this rush. I was guilty of this at times, too. Because it felt so smooth, you had, generally speaking, people praising the state's ability to dramatically overhaul education in a week basically. And then she started to actually hear from parents. They didn't do statewide standardized testing last year because it would have come sort of in May, or April or May. And they were already out of school. But you started to hear those kind of anecdotal stories. Hey, my kid logs in to class, but they're also playing Xbox on the side all day long, things like that. And she started to get a little bit worried about it.

Meanwhile, I think a lot of national experts were starting to say, this is going to be a major problem. You can't have an entire-- essentially a half a school year with kids out of school and not expect this to set them back. I mean, it's not just academically. If you were six years old you're learning to socialize with other kids, things like that. And so I think she started to realize, OK, this is going to be more of a problem. I think there wasn't a ton of data. There wasn't any evidence yet that anyone had lost learning.

But then you go an entire summer. Then you kind of push things into late September instead of early September. And you're suddenly very nervous. I think in her case, I think, she was very nervous about what happens if this is another lost school year. The jury's still out on this. Look, they're back in school, but as we all know, school is not what it was before the pandemic. So I think folks are learning on the fly in many ways. And that's educators, that's administrators, and certainly that students.

And now what the state is trying to do is understand, OK, what did it actually mean? How much did we set kids back? Because we know there's all kinds of evidence over the years that's been done, particularly for poor kids, particularly, I think, in urban communities that summer learning loss is a dramatic challenge. If kids were losing even more-- potentially, we have a scenario where a kid who-- think about those pivotal ages, I don't know, fifth grade, kind of didn't have much of a fifth grade. You got into middle school. And it was very strange. Suddenly, you're going to be, everything the fall, you're going to be in the seventh grade. And you're going to have had basically two years of school interrupted. That could be a real real challenge.

And so what this task force that the state has convened with some real players on it, the former Secretary of Education, John King, the former Massachusetts Secretary Paul Reville who is notorious for really leading the Massachusetts rebound of education, they're all on this task force. And they're going to help, I think, probably dissect some data, and try to come up with what do they need to invest in next.

SARAH BALDWIN: Is Rhode Island sort of an outlier because of its small size? Is it more nimble? Our governor is able to do more here than elsewhere?

DAN MCGOWAN: I would say, the size of Rhode Island makes it much easier. I will say, we have a lot of parochial leaders who do not want the state putting the thumb on the scale of local school systems and things like that. And there was some brisling. There's no question of the governor, she called out publicly during live televised press conferences and really went after them and accused them of letting down kids of throwing in the towel. And I think she intelligently and accurately managed the trust in her during this pandemic and was able to force kind of parents to push their local leaders to kind of come to the table and figure this all out. And for the most part, that worked.

But there's no doubt. I mean, I don't think that even a state the size of Massachusetts, let's say, which isn't massive, but it's much larger, it would have been very difficult for Governor Baker-- especially a Republican, even if he's a more moderate Republican-- to be able to come in and say, hey you're going to do it my way or the highway. And teachers unions, you're going to have to deal with it. It was much easier for the governor to kind of manage. Really, there are only two-- there are two statewide teachers unions. She could handle the leadership there. Cut some deals. Work on some things. It's much more streamlined because it's a smaller state.

SARAH BALDWIN: Thinking about how the federal government has responded to this pandemic and the economic crisis and how states can respond what they're able to do, you've written that Dan McKee, the incoming governor, is facing a more than $500 million budget shortfall for the fiscal year beginning July 1st. So how are policymakers in the state viewing their ability to help people right now, like what can they do?

DAN MCGOWAN: This isn't going to be a very satisfying answer. But the answer is they're praying that the Biden administration comes through. Here, we have pretty good leadership in Washington with a small delegation. But Jack Reed, our Senior Senator, is a real player and on the Appropriations Committee. And now, he's the Head of Defense. They were able to get, I think, $1.2 billion in that first round of stimulus.

And so that certainly helped. But if you're a policy thinker here, you're listening to that, and you're saying, wait a minute. But what are they doing otherwise? And this is going to be a real challenge. This time around, you nailed it, $500 million projected shortfall. We should put that into some context. Without the stimulus money last year, Rhode Island generally had about a $10 billion budget. Ends up being more because of some of the federal money that came flowing. But generally speaking, we're talking $10 billion. And so in $500 million on $10 billion is pretty significant.

And so this is something that the legislature still-- we're only in February right now. They've only kind of recently gotten back into session. So I think they're trying to explore it. I would say, I wouldn't expect dramatic changes. Knowing this legislature, sort of knowing the way leadership thinks here, there may be a push to increase taxes on the wealthy, things like that. But there's just as much of a push the other side that would say, no, why would you raise taxes at a time when unemployment's through the roof and we're trying to reboot the economy?

There's all kinds of debates to be had about that. But truthfully, the legislature tends to think in terms of the dollars and cents of what their constituents say. And your average constituents are going to tell you, they don't want any changes to their taxes. That's what they tell the local governments when it comes to property taxes. And that's the same way at the state level.

ast fall and the primaries in: 2020

DAN MCGOWAN: Yeah. It's the number one question. If there were no-- if we were to pretend there was no pandemic to be dealing with, I think the number one issue in Rhode Island right now would be what are the progressives going to do with some of their big gains in the legislature, particularly the Senate. There were some major victories from brand new people who won case in Providence, knocked out 30 years of incumbent. So there are lots of new progressives. And you have now the 38th member chamber in the Senate, you have, I don't know, 10, 15 probable pretty strong progressives now. And so not enough to change leadership, I should say. The leadership remains pretty conservative on the Senate side. And so you still do have, I think, very moderate to conservative control.

But what happened last fall in our Democratic primaries is for the first time in a really long time, I think, you saw progressives very strategically pick vulnerable incumbents win, start to build their bench. And I think two years from now, you're going to have a very similar push. In fact, you might have more because you're going to-- it's a for us to be a statewide election year. You have everybody on the ballot-- Providence mayor, certainly the governor, all that. And so Democratic primaries, just like many other places in the country, the left has outsized influence. And that is real here, too. And so I think you potentially will see more.

me here, had great success in: 2020

SARAH BALDWIN: What do you think the likelihood of Rhode Island ever having-- I'll just say, the pandemic has really revealed the abysmal state of housing and stability and affordable housing in the country. And Rhode Island is no different. What do you think the likelihood-- if things continue in this way the way you just described, do you think that will ever have a line item in the budget for affordable housing?

DAN MCGOWAN: I think you will have a line item for affordable housing the budget if nothing were to change at all. I think that's coming this year. I think it's a priority in the case of if you look at the Senate leadership, the Senate President Tom [? Nicoterio ?] is a long time labor leader with a very big wig in that circle.

And what is a line item for affordable housing mean? Building, right. It means something for the trades. And so that's not to say they're not supportive at all of why it is good policy to do this. But you know, they're very much thinking about this as a jobs creator as much as an affordable housing addresser.

And so I think you will see that very quickly. The question is going to be, you tend to see, I think we've seen this in other states around the country when it comes to affordable housing. And you often see big cities take this on, Boston's been good at this. Although they certainly could be better. I think New York sees some effort in this.

At the state level, the question is going to be how much? Right? And it'll probably start off relatively small and be unsatisfying. But once it's in the budget, boy, I'd hate to be on the ballot and say that I cut-- I cut affordable housing once it's in there. So once you get it in there, you can chip away. You can get more going. So I think that's the way to do it.

SARAH BALDWIN: Dan, I want to ask you, you're a reporter for the Globe. And your beat is an entire state, which is pretty cool. I just wanted to hear your thoughts on, why the Globe thinks it's important to cover Rhode Island, and why local reporting in general is important?

DAN MCGOWAN: And probably the biggest cheerleader for local reporting that there is, I am bullish on the future of local reporting, which some folks are not. I think that there is real opportunity, particularly in places like Providence is a good example. But you know, any of the larger let's say top 100 television markets in the country, metro markets in the country where you might be seeing a local newspaper, your traditional newspaper of record going out of business, go out of print, things like that.

But really fortunate in this moment because of the internet and because suddenly you're able to kind of I think make a little bit more money on the web than you were maybe 10 or 15 years ago. And so you have lots of really interesting experiments happening. You have Axios starting to break into local reporting. You have plenty of nonprofits. The Vermont Digger, the Voice of San Diego, a bunch of different companies that are doing really important journalism that in some ways replaces the traditional newspaper of record.

And I think there's such an opportunity for local television to get a little more serious about covering the nitty gritty of statehouses and city halls and what's really happening in these places as opposed to the traditional sort of we're just going to cover the top line stuff, too much crime, too much whether, things like that.

And we saw it here in Providence. CBS, channel 12 invested in some really strong digital reporters. When I was there, I covered Providence and sort of owned that beat. My colleague, Ted Nesi covered the state house. And we also did a lot of other things, health care, education.

And suddenly you become a pretty dominant player in the market. And then to your question of why the Globe did Rhode Island, it wasn't something that was a giant plan originally. The truth is, two years ago, I got a call from the editor of the Globe, Brian McGrory, and he said, hey, we're thinking about coming to Rhode Island. What should we know?

I told him I thought this was a place that could use another major player. And the Globe certainly counts as that. It's of the biggest newspapers in the country. What we really wanted to do with Rhode Island was not do the let's replace the Providence Journal thing. We don't feel that way at all. We certainly want to compete with the Journal and with the television stations and everybody else.

We feel like we can come in and have thoughtful daily reporting, but talk about big issues. We don't have to cover everything. We don't have to do the stuff that you might get for free on television. It doesn't mean it's not good or anything like that. It just means I think the way people consume news is they have multiple ways to consume it. You can get it certainly on Twitter and all that stuff. You still can watch TV.

And I think we can fill a little bit of a void to be very deep to really tackle complicated issues. And it's really nice to be a part of a place that I've grown up in. This is a place I love. There's a lot of news. It's a great news place, right? There's always something crazy happening in Providence. There's always a fun political race to cover.

And the Globe sees Providence as a test market. In a few weeks we'll have six full time reporters and one editor here in Rhode Island. So a seven person staff doesn't get you all the way. It doesn't get you to cover the entire state. But it really does check a lot of boxes. I think we're going to be make a real impact.

And the big question is, what does the Globe do from here? Do we potentially go try to do this in Worcester, or Hartford, Connecticut. And I think those are things that are certainly on the table. I think just like in Providence, there's an ability to fill a void all over the region.

SARAH BALDWIN: I want to ask you just to break down the place where we started. And that is, what is the importance of local news? As a citizen, what do I lose when I lose my newspaper?

DAN MCGOWAN: It's a really great question. I mean, the number one thing is you lose sort of the connection to your community that a newspaper in particular can provide, right? A newspaper traditionally in a local market or in a local community is going to cover the tax rate and the school board. But you know what it's also going to do? It's going to publish the honor roll. It's going to publish the youth basketball league scores, right?

I think local newspapers have the unique ability to really bring people together. But then, most importantly is the work that I feel like certainly I try to do every day is tell people what's really happening, how your money is being spent, holding officials accountable, those are the key drivers to what a good local newsroom is. And I'd love to believe the Globe is pulling that off.

SARAH BALDWIN: Dan McGowan, thank you so much for coming on the show today.

DAN MCGOWAN: Thank you so much for having me.

SARAH BALDWIN: This episode was produced by Dan Richards and [? Elina ?] Coleman. Our theme music is by Henry Bloomfield. Additional music by the Blue Dot Sessions. I'm Sarah Baldwin. If you haven't yet, you should definitely subscribe to Dan McGowan's free newsletter from the Boston Globe, Roadmap. We'll put a link to it in the show notes.

And if you like us, leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Or if you have a friend who you think would like the show, tell them about it. We'll be back next week with another episode of Trending Globally. Thanks.