Ready for Reform: An interview with Senator-elect Cynthia Mendes

When asked why she supported Gayle Goldin for Senate President and Jeanine Calkin for Senate Majority Leader, Senator-elect Cynthia Mendes was straightforward: “A leadership that, one: does blatant and egregious power-grabs, and two: controls a Senate in a way that they cannot be
critiqued or criticized or challenged, is a leadership that needs to go.”
Mendes was elected in November to represent Senate District 18, a district that includes Riverside, portions of Kent Heights and Rumford in East Providence, and the Darlington neighborhood of Pawtucket. Her upset victory over Senate Finance Committee Chairman William Conley Jr sent shockwaves through the political establishment. The following interview
has been edited for clarity and length.

Alex Kithes (Motif): You were a first-time candidate this year, correct? What inspired you to run?

Cynthia Mendes: The deep need in our community to feel represented in the State House – but I did not think that was going to be me! Some community members and friends had expressed how frustrated they
were with the General Assembly, that it wasn’t really listening to them, and they suggested that I run – so they were my first inspiration. Another big inspiration would be Jeanine Calkin. Knowing that she ran and won, then meeting her and hearing how she planned to come back with a team was really inspiring.

AK: You ran with the Rhode Island Political Cooperative. The organization achieved quite a few big wins this year, both in the primary and general elections. What was it like, running as part of such a big team of GA candidates? Do you see the organization growing and continuing to flip seats in 2022 and beyond? How does this factor into the leadership
discussion?

CM: I couldn’t imagine doing it any other way. Running with the Co-op was incredibly important to me, and foundational to the way that we ran our campaign, and also the way that we are legislating together. It was this commitment to listen to our community, learn from each other, and to really champion policies that we knew were going to advocate for and help working class families in our community. And now, the legislation that we are able to sponsor – and hopefully see turn into policy – was originally our platform. We worked that out together as a group, and we were able to bring the perspective of each of our districts and our community to that because we know what the stakes are. Running with a co-op meant running with a platform that was really robust, but reflected all corners of the state. And that was really, really valuable.

The Co-op is able to do what the Rhode Island Democratic Party was supposed to do but has never done, which is to support working-class people to run for office and provide for them what they need to represent their community. Just in the wins that we accomplished recently, the
[General Assembly] leadership got very wobbly. They took a blow – they took several blows – and they’re not able to stand firm. With the hits that they took this year, it will be almost impossible for them to retain power for too much longer.

AK: You had a very heated race against one of the most powerful people in the Senate, and you won around 62%. Tell me a little about that. What were some key issues in the campaign, and where did you and your opponent differ?

CM: There were some really important things that were key to the campaign. In some places we didn’t differ. For example, taxing the 1%. He had come out and said that he was for that – but the problem is, he said that after I had already announced. He had been chair of the finance
committee, and been in office for four terms. So if he actually cared about that, he could have maybe tried to do that. So there was a really deep sense of lack of genuineness that had really been strongly communicated to the community. So even when he was championing things that we were aligned on, the evidence wasn’t there that he actually cared about those things.
I was unapologetic about a living wage for working-class people; and his voting history has been sketchy at best on that. He has always sided with big corporations and never really championed working-class people or a living wage. Not until the pressure was on after I announced was that
even a talking point for him. And it was the same thing with environmental issues.

The Keep Metacomet Green issue really shed some light on how much our community really cares about environmental issues. A large portion of the district is a coastal district, and we have a lot of green space that continues to be developed without – what the community feels – is proper consideration for our limited green space and our environmental impact. He has a history of being on the wrong side of, for example, the Burrillville LNG issue – he lost the Sierra Club endorsement a while back, because when given a choice between siding between big corporations and big money, or the planet and the people, he’s always big corporations’ ally.
You can only do that for so long before working-class people say, well these are the two things that matter to us – the people and the planet – so you’re not our guy.

There was something underneath the surface that really fueled a lot of it, and that goes to my original point regarding the RI Democratic Party. My district is 64% [of voters registered as] unaffiliated. That doesn’t mean we do not share very strong Democratic values. What it tells me, and what was confirmed by conversation after conversation on the doors, is that my district doesn’t fundamentally trust the Rhode Island Democratic Party. They have proven themselves to be untrustworthy. That anti-establishment sentiment has been bubbling under the surface for a very long time. When you have a green space issue in our community where they’re seeking to
rezone limited space for commercial developers, and the lawyer for the developer — against the city and against 5,000 people that have signed a petition in our community saying that they don’t want it — was my opponent!

So the other thing that propped [the Keep Metacomet Green issue] up and really fueled it was that they’re out for themselves, they’re not fighting for us, they’re not listening to us, and this is why we don’t trust the Rhode Island Democratic Party. This is the most important thing, and I’ve said it a million times on the doors: it’s a trust problem. We have a trust problem with the RI Democratic Party, and they have yet to earn it back.

AK: I know you were active with Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign – you were the top vote getter among the Congressional District 1 Sanders delegates. How do you see the relationship between the #NotMeUs movement and Rhode Island politics?

CM: Bernie has been saying for years that he wants to see progressive values represented on every level of government, and that every day working-class people should be involved, and their voices should be heard on every level of government. So that inspiration has pulled back the veil
for a lot of people who thought that leadership only looks like a certain thing. Leadership looks like a connected, wealthy, corporate establishment lawyer.

But the Bernie movement and “Not Me, Us” has taken root in our community, because what we can all agree on is that the best leaders usually come from among us. Those are the people who are doing the work already. I would often say on the doors, if our State House had a fraction of
the character that our community has, our State House would look very different.

AK: How did you make the decision to vote for Senator Goldin for Senate President and Senator Calkin for Senate Majority Leader? Where do you see existing leadership has failed, and where would they do better?

CM: The vote for Jeanine was a no-brainer. She was my inspiration for running, and her and Jennifer Rourke are two of my biggest heroes. The state would have been absolutely lucky to have her as Majority Leader.
And Gayle has a history of being brave at her own expense. She’s done it over and over again in the Senate, to the point where she has often been targeted by the establishment because she didn’t toe the line. That bravery and character is something that we need in a leader. I am all for female leaders, but there are too many in the State House that are willing to buckle under the current male leadership, and she is not one of them. So not only is she willing to be vocal for good government, and women’s rights, and living wages, and some of the common-sense basics that our community believes in. But she has consistently proven to do that in the face of an
establishment that was going to throw their full weight against her as she keeps going back for me and taking them on. Voting for her was easy, and actually exciting for me.

There are a couple of things that I noticed after that. Leadership did change in the state house – Ruggerio had to pick different [committee] chairs. Those changes were strategic, and to anyone paying attention, they were evident that the white-knuckled death-grip around the necks of working-class people, and the power of the state house, is kind of flipping. Because they had to make concessions, and had to shift their leadership style and start to make some serious changes, or they were on the brink of being as extinct as they deserve to be.

Last year, I remember testifying in the judiciary committee for the senate rules. There was a recurring word in the bill, “at the Senate President’s discretion.” That infuriated me, and it fueled me when I decided to run, because it was a blatant power-grab. And two senators – Sam Bell and Donna Nesselbush – were the only two people brave enough to walk into that Judiciary Committee and testify that this was an egregious power-grab. Everyone else was too weak to speak up. And that is the reason why I am really adamant that we need new leadership. Because a leadership that, one, does blatant and egregious power-grabs, and two,
controls a Senate in a way that they cannot be critiqued or criticized or challenged, is a leadership that needs to go.

AK: Do you see senate leadership moving on any of the key progressive issues after the caucus?

CM: They’re going to move as much as they have to, to stay in power. That’s the first thing. And they have announced very bold plans going into this legislative session. They’ve talked about marijuana legalization, they’ve talked about a $15 minimum wage, and they’ve talked about several things. Surprisingly the one thing they didn’t talk about is education, when we literally have schools crumbling right now, schools that were in really difficult situations prior to COVID.

So I found it really interesting that education reform was not one of the things that they brought up, and that makes me a little concerned because they are known for letting things fall to pieces and then coming up with a plan that’s not going to help people. So I’m very concerned with moving to characterization and school choice and things like that, because they’re fake
Democrats and don’t care about funding proper public infrastructure well.
Now how bold, brave, and decent they’re going to be about some of this legislation, we will see.

AK: What are you planning on working on this term in the State Senate?

CM: I promised my community that I would be fighting for Medicare for All. There are four or five pieces of legislation that have been circling the state house for a very long time, that have not typically made it out of committee, [including] a study on the impact of Medicare for All on Rhode Island. Just a study – we’ve been asking for that for a while, so I think it’s time we study
it.

I’ll definitely be fighting for some really bold legislation around jobs. We’ve had job losses like we’ve never seen before, and we’re also in the middle of a climate crisis. There’s absolutely no reason why Rhode Island can’t be on the front end of addressing the climate crisis while providing good, high-paying, quality jobs to the people in our community right now. There’s an
entire workforce waiting to be put to work, and we can also give ourselves a livable future at the same time, and Rhode Island can, for once, lead the way on environmental issues.

AK: Is there anything that you want to say that we haven’t covered?

CM: There are some legislators who are currently in office, who I truly believe wanted to be a little braver and needed some support. And now, they feel unleashed because there may be some friends there [new progressive legislators]. I saw that firsthand in the Keep Metacomet Green
issue in my community. It wasn’t until after I took out Conley, did Rep Gregg Amore come out and propose eminent domain on that land. This was quite a controversial thing in the community.

As things started ramping up with KMG, he started becoming a little more vocal. He put out a blanket statement of support about green space, but really stayed low-key. But once Conley was out, he did something really aggressive. Eminent domain is not a small thing, and I give him a lot of credit – that was a brave thing to do. But it also was very convenient that that didn’t happen until Conley lost. And that tells me that the more that we win progressives, the standard of our current legislators will go up. Their ability to legislate to their values will go up the more we take out the entrenched, power-hoarding leadership – you’ll start to see the bar raised.

Note: Alex Kithes is a member of the RI Political Cooperative along with Cynthia Mendes.

Read the other interviews in this series on Gayle Goldin and Jeanine Calkin.