Buddy

Vincent Albert Cianci Jr. served as mayor of Providence for nearly twenty-one years across two separate stints, which makes him the longest-serving mayor in the city's history. He was also convicted of federal racketeering and sent to prison. These two facts about him are not in contradiction. They are, in fact, the same story.

Cianci first won the mayor's office in nineteen seventy-five, becoming the first Republican mayor of Providence in decades. He was charismatic in the specific way that makes voters and reporters want to be in the same room. He attended parades, weddings, neighborhood barbecues; a local joke held that he would show up at the opening of an envelope. In nineteen eighty-four he resigned after pleading no contest to felony assault in a domestic incident, and that should have been the end of it.

He came back in nineteen ninety-one and ran the city for another eleven years. This is the Cianci administration most people remember: the river relocation project, the development of Waterplace Park, the Providence Place mall, the arts district tax incentives that drew galleries and studios downtown. WaterFire was born during his tenure. Providence, which had lost population for four decades, started growing again.

In two thousand and one, the FBI's Operation Plunder Dome resulted in Cianci's indictment on racketeering, extortion, and corruption charges. He was acquitted of twenty-six out of twenty-seven counts but convicted on the remaining one, conspiracy, and sentenced to five years in federal prison at Fort Dix, New Jersey. He served four years, came home, launched a radio show, bottled a marinara sauce he called Mayor's Own, and ran for mayor again in two thousand and fourteen. He lost narrowly. He died in two thousand and sixteen.

Providence has never entirely decided how it feels about him.