I was in Providence that summer to watch him fight the charges that led to his second conviction Cianci’s attitude–I may be a fallen human, but how about this rising city?-was widely shared by his constituents, who had, after all, elected him six times, with no illusions that he was Mr. ![]() ![]() But look at the city,” Cianci told me, in the summer of 2002, referring to his first conviction (for torturing his ex-wife’s boyfriend with, among other things, a fireplace log and a burning cigarette), a case in which he pleaded no contest. “Yeah, I punched a guy in the mouth for fucking my wife. He was Providence’s first Italian-American mayor (breaking a long Irish-American lock on power) he was its first Republican mayor since the forties (although, after his first two terms, he disaffiliated and declared himself an independent) he was the longest-serving mayor in the history of the city (and one of the longest-serving mayors of any American city) and, as the patriarch of Providence’s transformation from a desolate post-industrial, Mafia-dominated wasteland to a vibrant, thriving, model of new urbanism, a cultural and culinary destination city with falling crime rates and rising property values, Cianci was deservedly one of the most celebrated American city fathers of our times-except, of course, for his penchant for running afoul of the law. In the intervening years, he served as mayor twice-in a scandal-plagued first round, from January, 1975, to April, 1984, and again from January, 1991, to September, 2002-and both times was forced to resign after being convicted of felonies. That is a teaching that would fit handsomely on a tombstone for Cianci, who got himself elected for the first time, in 1974, as an anti-corruption candidate, and died in that city Thursday morning, at the age of seventy-four, with a reputation as one of America’s most thoroughly corrupt political personalities. “The toe you stepped on yesterday may be connected to the ass you have to kiss today.” ![]() “Be careful,” the notoriously thuggish Mayor Vincent Albert (Buddy) Cianci, of Providence, Rhode Island, told an officer of that city’s notoriously sniffy-patrician University Club, back in 1998. Buddy Cianci was elected six times to the mayoralty of Providence, Rhode Island, and had to resign twice, each time after a felony conviction.
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