A Conversation With Former State Senator Mike Lenihan

Former State Senator Mike Lenihan, whose district covered portions of East Greenwich and North Kingstown, served in the Rhode Island Senate for 20 years, eight of them as chairman of the Finance Committee.

Before running for state office he accumulated a total of 40 years of service locally, including being a member on four boards and putting in 12 years on the Town Council.

In a recent interview, Lenihan said he saw vulnerability for long-time East Greenwich Republican state representative Robert Watson in 2012.

Watson is fighting charges of drunken driving and possession of marijuana brought against him after being stopped at a sobriety check point in East Haven, Conn., last spring. Watson denies the charges. He said the marijuana found in his car was for a medical condition, and that he did not use it on the day of the arrest.

Lenihan said he would not be surprised to see a Republican challenger for Watson’s seat. Former Town Councilor Mark Schwager, a Democrat, has already announced he will be running for the position. If a Republican surfaces and Watson chose to run for re-election, he would face two races: a primary and the general election.

Shortly after Watson’s arrest, he lost his position as House Minority Leader, which Lenihan says drastically changes things for him. “The block he is affiliated with doesn’t have any more strength now than it did previously,” Lenihan said, “but at least as the minority leader he had a bully pulpit from which to speak and he has lost that.”

The biggest challenge for any candidate is raising money, something Lenihan always found distasteful. He said he didn’t want people to feel they had to contribute something in order to get decent government, but nevertheless he knows it is out there and a fact of life. Party structure on both sides is not very strong, according to Lenihan, so that as candidates go forward they have to figure out what they need to raise and how they are going to do it.

If the General Assembly does something with pension reform other than what State Treasurer Gina Raimondo has proposed, Lenihan says it will have to be as sweeping as her proposal and then they would have to defend it in terms of money it saves because the state can not continue to spend as it is now. His opinion is that what is going to be enacted is something very much like what is currently on the table.

Looking back at how the spending problems developed, Lenihan says the health care plan for state employees, which was supposed to be covered by their contributions, started to fall short due to rising health care costs, requiring ever increasing state contributions. At the same time, he says, the state was overspending.

They did have a plan on the Senate side, Lenihan says, to reduce debts owed, to pay them off early, opening up room in the capital fund, or allow more operating capital, or even reduce taxes.

“That,” he says, “was a tough sell.”

In his retirement Lenihan says he just wants to sit by the side of the road and be a friend to man for a while and not commit to any particular situation. He has joined forces with former Common Cause Director Phil West and together they are working with some graduate students, but he doesn’t want to step out in a public position.