RHODE ISLAND
State Profile
The following data and information about this state is taken from the 2006 Almanac of American Politics. The 2006 Almanac can be ordered online, or by phone at 1-800-356-4838.

State At A Glance  •  Key Elected Officials  •  Political History & Analysis

“Rhode Island suffered only modest job losses in the 2001 recession; it quickly recovered and is now more prosperous than it has been for decades.”

At A Glance

• Size: 1,545 square miles
• Population in 2000: 1,048,319; 90.9% urban; 9.1% rural
• Population in 1990: 1,003,464
• Population Change: Up 4.5% 1990-2000; Up 5.9% 1980-1990
• Population Rank: 43d of 50; 0.4% of total U.S. population
• Most Populous Cities: Providence (176,365); Warwick (87,365); Cranston (81,679); Pawtucket (74,330); East Providence (49,906)
• Registered Voters: No party registration
• State Senate: 33 D 5 R
• State House: 59 D 16 R
• State Legislative Term Limits: No

Key Elected Officials

• Gov. Donald Carcieri (R)
• Sen. Jack Reed (D)
• Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R)
• Representatives: (2 D):

Patrick Kennedy   (D-01)

Jim Langevin   (D-02)

About Rhode Island

The tiny city-state with a mouthful of an official name, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, has as turbulent a political history as any state in the Union. A successful trading community since the 1600s, a leader in manufacturing since Samuel Slater replicated from memory an English water-powered cotton textile mill in Pawtucket in 1791, Rhode Island also had its beginning as an upstart community, a refuge for religious dissenters, ''the sewer of New England,'' as the orthodox Cotton Mather put it. Rhode Island profited from slavery (two-thirds of America's slaves arrived on ships owned by Rhode Islanders) and war (the state boomed during the Civil War), and carried its tradition of tolerating just about anything into its politics. Rhode Island refused to pay its share for the Revolutionary War, declined to send delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention and delayed joining the Union until the other 12 states had, prompting George Washington to say, ''Rhode Island still perseveres in that impolitic, unjust--and one might add without much impropriety--scandalous conduct, which seems to have marked all her public counsels of late.'' The new nation's first bank failure occurred here in 1809, when a bank capitalized at $45 issued $800,000 in bank notes. In the 1840s, conflict between hard money merchants and soft money farmers resulted in two state governments and a conflict known as Dorr's War, with the outcome determined when merchant Dorr's two ancient cannons failed to fire.

Then, in the 1930s, Rhode Island had something resembling a political revolution. Thousands of immigrants from French Canada, Ireland and Italy came to Rhode Island to work in the textile mills and this colony of dissident Protestants became the most heavily Catholic state in the nation. Yankee Republicans tried to appeal to Catholics by running French Canadians for office. But national events--Al Smith's candidacy in 1928, when he carried Rhode Island, and Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal--moved the Catholics toward the Democrats. Then came the revolution: in 1935, the Democrats under Governor Theodore Green, although they had won only 20 of the 42 state Senate seats, refused to seat two Republicans. With the lieutenant governor's tie-breaker, they voted Democrats into the seats, and proceeded in 14 minutes to declare the state Supreme Court seats vacant, abolish state boards that controlled Democratic cities, strengthen the power of the governor and reorganize state government to purge Republicans. This ended the direct political control of Rhode Island's ''Five Families''--the Browns, Metcalfs, Goddards, Lippitts and Chafees--who owned or ran many of the textile mills, the Rhode Island Hospital Trust (long the largest bank), the Providence Journal-Bulletin, Brown University, the Rhode Island School of Design and the state Republican Party. The Democrats have won most elections with the lion's share of votes from Rhode Island's Catholic majority, starting with Green's election in 1936, at age 69, to the first of his four terms as U.S. senator. From 1940 to 1980, Democrats won every election for U.S. House seats; its Democratic percentages in presidential elections from 1968 to 2004 are rivaled only by Massachusetts. Republicans have won when they've been able to capitalize on scandal or Democratic disarray, as Governors Lincoln Almond and Donald Carcieri did in 1994 and 2002. But the only really durable Republican politician has been John Chafee, elected governor in 1962, 1964 and 1966, senator in 1976, 1982, 1988 and 1994, who died in 1999; and even he lost twice, in 1968 and 1972.

Rhode Island has gone through a long and often painful economic transformation, from blue collar to white collar, from textiles to high-tech. It suffered economic problems in the early 1990s, as the submarine factory and Navy base at Quonset Point shed thousands of jobs and employment in costume jewelry, Rhode Island's major manufacturer, fell from 32,500 in 1977 to 6,300 in 2000. But Republican Governor Lincoln Almond, elected in 1994 and 1998, persuaded the overwhelmingly Democratic legislature to gradually cut income taxes and eliminate the car tax, and Providence Mayor Buddy Cianci promoted brilliantly successful redevelopment in the state's capital and largest city. Tourism became Rhode Island's second largest industry, and computer data processing a major part of the economy. The state's population, after hovering around 1 million for decades, increased by more than 80,000 between 1990 and 2004. Providence, after losing population for decades, grew 10% in that period, and Latino immigrants--from the Dominican Republic and Guatemala, Peru and Ecuador--brought vitality to neighborhoods long given up for dead. This new Rhode Island suffered only modest job losses in the 2001 recession; it quickly recovered and is now more prosperous than it has been for decades.

There seemed to be a new sense of optimism--and fun. Tourists came to see Nibbles Woodaway, the 58-foot-long termite built by the New England Pest Control Company and the state marketed Mr. Potato Head, created in Pawtucket, as the symbol of "Rhode Island--the birthplace of fun." Yet there were also problems. Cianci, mayor from 1975 to 1984, and mayor again from 1991, was convicted in June 2002 of racketeering and conspiracy and went off to prison. His successor, David Cicilline, son of a prominent mob lawyer, is part Italian, part Jewish and openly gay: a new combination for a successful politician.