Vincent A. Cianci Jr., Celebrated and Scorned Ex-Mayor of Providence, R.I., Dies at 74

By DAN BARRY JAN. 28, 2016

His nickname of “Buddy” hovered in the murky middle between friendly engagement and what’s-it-to-you aggression. Either way, it seemed to capture Vincent A. Cianci Jr., the former mayor of Providence, R.I., known for his finger-snap wit, protracted troubles with the law, and unfailing devotion to his city.

Mr. Cianci died on Thursday morning after falling ill on Wednesday night while taping a weekly television show that featured his skills as a vexing, amusing polemicist. The buddy of Providence was 74.

Although Mr. Cianci had not been mayor since his federal conviction for racketeering in 2002, the shadow he cast over the city for 40 years is difficult to overstate. Even while serving his sentence in a federal penitentiary in New Jersey, the man seemed present. If you told a stranger you were from Providence — or even from Rhode Island — one question invariably followed: What’s Buddy like?

The answer was never pat. Short, compact and faintly menacing, Mr. Cianci walked about Providence with the swagger of a man who left his imprint on the skyline and even the pavement of the city. But his strutting could never quite shake the tragic air that enveloped him: a gregarious man who seemed lonely; a supremely gifted politician whose ego and foibles had brought him low; a walking coulda-been.
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Mr. Cianci during a live broadcast of “The Buddy Cianci Show” in 2010, three years after he was released from federal prison, where he served five years. Credit Steven Senne/Associated Press

“Whether you loved him or hated him, you couldn’t ignore him; endlessly fascinating and endlessly exacerbating,” said Mike Stanton, a former reporter for The Providence Journal and the author of “The Prince of Providence,” a 2003 best seller about Mr. Cianci. “He did a lot for the city and a lot to the city.”

In announcing that the flags at City Hall would be flown at half-staff in Mr. Cianci’s honor, Mayor Jorge O. Elorza said: “Mayor Cianci’s love for the City of Providence is undeniable, and his mark on the city will not be forgotten.”

Vincent Albert Cianci Jr., a grandson of Italian immigrants, was born in Providence on April 30, 1941, and was raised in Cranston, R.I. His father, Vincent Sr., was a proctologist; his mother, the former Esther Capobianco, came from a family active in Democratic politics in Providence’s North End. A grandfather of hers had been mayor of Benevento, a town in Italy.


Buddy grew up in a rambling and crowded brick house with a swimming pool that a grandfather had built. Mr. Stanton wrote, “Raised in a household of doting women — mother, sister, grandmother, aunts and cousins — he was both spoiled and pushed to excel.”

He attended the Moses Brown School, a Providence prep school across the street from Brown University, and was a member of its football and wrestling teams. His college career was spent entirely at Roman Catholic universities, starting with a semester at St. Louis University. He transferred to Fairfield University in Connecticut, where he earned a degree in political science, then received a master’s at Villanova and a law degree at Marquette.

After law school he was drafted into the Army and served most of his duty at Fort Devens, Mass. On his discharge, he opened a private law practice and became a state prosecutor on the attorney general’s anti-corruption task force.

It was as a laser-sharp prosecutor going after mob families that Mr. Cianci first gained notice in the early 1970s. He liked to flaunt his pampered upbringing as a doctor’s son by taking a chauffeured car to work every day. With his fast wit and charm ever on display, he ran for mayor as a Republican in 1974, and his defeat of the entrenched Democratic power base made him the city’s first Italian-American mayor.

Mr. Cianci became a Republican darling, Exhibit A in the party’s argument that it had relevance in the cities of the Northeast. He was invited to speak at the 1976 Republican National Convention. But the struggling city of Providence had profound problems, as did its mayor.

In 1983, Mr. Cianci diverted attention from a continuing federal investigation into municipal corruption in a manner not generally recommended by political advisers: Suspecting that a local contractor was having an affair with his wife, the mayor summoned the man to his home and — according to the contractor — assaulted him. With an ashtray, a fireplace log, and a lighted cigarette. While a city police officer stood by.

Mr. Cianci resigned from office after pleading no contest to assault and receiving a five-year suspended sentence. But he bided his time, holding forth as a radio talk-show host until he was eligible to run again, in 1990. Using the campaign slogan of “He never stopped caring about Providence,” he won in a three-way race, by 317 votes.

Buoyed by his astounding comeback, Mr. Cianci deftly worked the Providence streets and the national airwaves — most often on the “Imus in the Morning” radio show — to promote his city as the center of a New England renaissance. Some downtown development, including the building of a glittering mall, supported the impression, but the revival did not much benefit the city’s poorer neighborhoods or dysfunctional school system.

He even started his own pasta sauce business — Mayor’s Own Marinara Sauce — promising to donate proceeds to a scholarship fund for needy children.

Then came federal investigators, again, exploring allegations of widespread corruption in the second Cianci administration. Even after being indicted on an assortment of racketeering charges — that his City Hall was effectively run as a criminal enterprise — Mr. Cianci remained cuttingly defiant in maintaining his innocence, making fun of a city official who was taped saying that the mayor had taught him how to take a bribe.

“What the hell does he think?” Mr. Cianci asked. “That I’m running a seminar? Stealing 101?”

He was found guilty of a single racketeering charge and sentenced to five years in prison. In delivering his sentence, Judge Ernest C. Torres of Federal District Court, recalled the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in saying there appeared to be two very different Buddy Ciancis.

“The first Buddy Cianci is a skilled charismatic political figure, one of the most talented Rhode Island has ever seen,” the judge said. He added: “Then there’s the Buddy Cianci who’s been portrayed here. That’s the Buddy Cianci who was mayor of an administration that was corrupt at all levels.”


While in federal prison, Cianci read week-old copies of The Providence Journal, keeping abreast, waiting. “I took my medicine,” he once told The New York Times. “I took it like a man.”

When the Providence Preservation Society inducted him into its Hall of Fame, Mr. Cianci sent his regrets from prison, writing that he was “figuratively and literally ‘tied up.’”

He was released in 2007, a new Cianci, without the trademark toupee that he called “the squirrel.” He promptly returned to the airwaves to observe, tease, agitate — and wait for another chance. In the meantime he wrote an autobiography, “Politics and Pasta,” with David Fisher.

Last year he ran once more for mayor. No longer was he the barrel-chested force, accompanied always by jackbooted police officers. Now he was older, thinner — in part from a bout with cancer — but still demonstrating an unparalleled ability to connect with people on the street.

“All I can tell you is, I am who I am,” he explained. “What you see is what you get. I’m the most vetted candidate maybe in America.”

He lost and returned to talking for a living.

Mr. Cianci’s professional career came at considerable personal cost. His only marriage, to Sheila Bentley McKenna, ended in divorce in 1983. His only child, Nicole Cianci, died in 2012. At his death he was engaged to Tara Marie Haywood, a model and actress in her 30s, of whom he recently said, “I could marry her or adopt her.”

Besides Ms. Haywood, his survivors include his sister, Carol Turchetta, and three grandchildren.

Once, in a more serious mood, Mr. Cianci said: “Yeah, I’m lonely. I lost a family to this job. I lost a girlfriend to this job. I lost a — you know. I guess I had this work ethic and this thing about always working. And it’s too late to change now.”

Joseph R. Paolino Jr., who served as mayor between the bookends of two Cianci administrations, was once a critic of the man who preceded and succeeded him. But on Thursday he released a statement saying that Providence had lost its “greatest champion.”

“He gave his heart to Providence,” Mr. Paolino said.

A clearly frail Mr. Cianci returned to City Hall in November for the unveiling of his official portrait. In a hot and crowded room, he got off another signature line, joking that “this is not the first time I’ve been framed.”

Soon after, he lost his strength, fell back onto a padded bench, and was taken by ambulance to a hospital. Just two hours later, though, he was walking into a restaurant for one more dinner in his honor.