PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) - A waitress, a teacher and a motorcycle repairman are taking seats in the Rhode Island General Assembly after ousting incumbent lawmakers in fall’s elections.
Sixteen new legislators being sworn in Tuesday at the State House also include a farmer, a code enforcement officer, a fitness instructor and a taxi driver who ran his campaign out of a Winnebago.
They bring different experiences and perspectives to a part-time legislature that’s heavily populated with lawyers.
The new lawmakers - only three of whom are Republicans - also are likely to inch the Democratic-controlled legislature further left. Democrats not only gained a handful of seats from Republicans, but several incoming Democrats who defeated incumbents from the same party in the primary have more liberal views than the longtime Democratic lawmakers they replace.
A look at three newcomers:
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WAITRESS
Providence Democratic Rep.-elect Moira Walsh was elected as part of a slate of self-described progressives who campaigned on a promise to stand up to the state’s entrenched leadership. The former community organizer and single mom waits tables at Providence’s Classic Cafe and said she was “as surprised as anyone” that she defeated longtime Democratic Rep. Thomas Palangio in the September primary.
“You’re not supposed to be a regular person and be able to win. That was definitely a surprise,” she said. “I didn’t feel like anybody there looked like me or had the same problems as I did.”
She hopes to help push for a cultural change in the State House because “there are a lot of issues people neglect to think about because they’re not in low-income neighborhoods.”
Her policy goals include raising the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour, raising the tipped minimum wage, supporting domestic violence prevention and accelerating the discussion into legalizing recreational marijuana.
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TEACHER
Providence Democratic Rep.-elect Marcia Ranglin-Vassell also wants to raise the minimum wage to $15 and strengthen gun control laws to curtail youth and domestic violence. The public high school teacher who campaigned on “defeating 24 years of status quo” shocked the state’s political leadership when she beat Democratic House Majority Leader John DeSimone in September’s primary. She beat DeSimone again in November after he launched a failed write-in campaign.
“I know the names of my students who have been killed by gun violence,” she wrote in a campaign message before the election. “They sat before me in class. I corrected their essays. I know their grieving families.”
The Jamaica-born Ranglin-Vassell has lived in Rhode Island since 1990.
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MOTORCYCLE REPAIRMAN
Scituate Republican Rep.-elect Bob Quattrocchi plans to fight for veterans and seniors and for curbing regulations such as those he said contributed to the demise of his motorcycle repair business.
“Rhode Island’s economy put me out of business,” he said. “It’s just overregulation, over-taxation. It’s unbearable for small businesses to survive.”
Quattrocchi’s grandfather in the 1940s founded the well-known Quatro Motorcycle company, a Harvey-Davidson dealership in Pawtucket. The incoming lawmaker opened his own business with the same name in 1994 but closed the Coventry-based shop in 2013.
He defeated Democratic Rep. Michael Marcello in a rural, conservative-leaning district that also went for Republican President-elect Donald Trump.
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