Another Bad Democrat-- Rhode Island Conservative Anthony Gemma

Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI)

In 2010, when Patrick Kennedy decided to retire, Blue America backed David Segal for the open House seat in Rhode Island. David lost to a worthy opponent, progressive David Cicilline, the former Mayor of Providence and, now, the first openly gay Member of Congress from Rhode Island. After the primary David Segal called me and asked me to talk with Cicilline about Afghanistan and Iraq. He suggested that Blue America help him in the general election. It turned out to be a very Republican year-- with teabaggers and right wing maniacs winning seats everywhere, but Cicilline's extremist opponent, John Loughlin, only managed 44% in the end. David Cicciline went to Congress, promptly joined the Congressional Progressive Caucus and amassed an enviable and commendable voting record.

There was a third Democrat running in that 2010 primary, a very conservative shady character that David Segal had warned me about, Anthony Gemma. And today Gemma is back again, attacking David Cicilline for the very reasons Democrats should be backing him. Gemma is an anti-Choice fanatic and a business-friendly, anti-worker, anti-consumer kind of Democrat that gets into Congress and helps Republicans claim their audacious reactionary legislative agenda is "bipartisan." He's using his great personal fortune to try to defeat Cicilline and buy himself a congressional seat. He spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in his 2010 run and if he hasn't recovered from that defeat yet, he's been acting out by attacking constantly attacking Cicilline in the media. 

Cicilline is in trouble with some voters back in Rhode Island, but he's definitely one of the good guys in DC. He's an unabashed progressive and since taking office a little over a year ago he has wasted no time in getting out on the forefront on the economic and social issues that matter most to the progressive community. He just put forth a bill that would impose a lifetime ban on Members of Congress from ever becoming lobbyists, sponsored legislation to ban the big banks from charging a debit card fee for middle-class families to access their own money and has been outspoken advocate, in part thanks to David Segal's prompting, for getting out of Afghanistan immediately.

And the guy challenging him? Gemma is a self-described "pro-business" Democrat. He first supported privatizing Social Security before almost immediately walking that back-- apparently realizing that wasn’t a winner in a Democratic primary. In addition to being anti-EFCA, he has donated money to the former anti-Choice Republican Governor Carcieri and didn’t even bother to vote in the historic 2008 Democratic primary. Further, in addition to opposing the EFCA,  Gemma was cited for 32 labor violations while president of Gem Plumbing. Many of these violations were for his use of unlicensed plumbers. Fines totaled $26,000 but were reduced to $10,000 by Gov. Carcieri's labor director (the same Gov. Carcieri who received a thousand dollars from Gemma).

He seems determined to spend his personal fortune on a personal crusade to unseat Cicilline. And with a history of erratic behavior on the campaign trail-- at one point he was almost ejected from a debate for screaming over the moderator-- he appears to be planning to run a scorched-earth campaign that has nothing to do with the issues but is rather a score-settling vanity exercise.

Progressives should rally around Cicilline. He needs our support so he can keep championing progressive issues in Washington; he's done all he's promised he would-- and more. After the disaster in 2010, the last thing the progressive community needs is to lose another fighter in Congress-- and especially not to an anti-Choice freak show like Gemma.