When Gina M. Raimondo began to seriously think about running for treasurer, the first person she called was U.S. Sen. Jack Reed.
Raimondo’s grandparents and Reed’s parents had adjacent summer cottages at Scarborough Beach, and her mother still asks, “How’s Jackie? Tell him he looked good on TV.”
“I’ve literally known him my whole life because our families were friends and he played in the backyard with my brother and sister,” Raimondo said. “We’re kind of cut from the same cloth. His dad was a janitor — humble roots, taught the value of service. Same with my family. We were an old-fashioned Italian-American family — work hard and give back.”
The daughter of a factory worker and a homemaker, Raimondo, 38, was born and raised in Smithfield and lives in Providence. She became a Rhodes Scholar and founded the state’s largest venture capital firm. Her first political involvement came when she volunteered on Reed’s 1990 campaign for the U.S. House of Representatives. (He was a state senator. She was assistant press secretary).
In November, when General Treasurer Frank T. Caprio confirmed he’s running for governor, Raimondo called Reed, and he was “very encouraging.”
When asked about Raimondo’s run for the open treasurer’s seat, Reed said, “She’s wonderfully talented. I think she’s a very capable, decent, honest person. It’s also refreshing to see someone who has accomplished a great deal in life — Harvard, Rhodes Scholar — and she hasn’t forgotten her roots.”
Raimondo, a Democrat who has never been a candidate before, said she is running because “I’ve just been getting more anxious about where Rhode Island is going” and she considers the treasurer’s job a “perfect fit” with her background as cofounder of Point Judith Capital, which invests in start-up companies.
Raimondo wasted no time in starting up her campaign. Within 17 days of opening a campaign account, she had $251,359 in cash, including $100,000 of her own money, according to campaign finance reports through Dec. 31. The other announced candidate, North Kingstown Democrat Thomas A. Sgouros Jr., had $45,544. State Sen. William A. Walaska, D-Warwick, plans to decide within a week whether to run.
You can’t call Raimondo under-qualified. She received an economics degree from Harvard, a law degree from Yale and a doctorate in sociology from Oxford University. She also clerked for federal Judge Kimba M. Wood, whose nomination as attorney general faltered because she’d hired an undocumented immigrant as a nanny. (Raimondo said her only nanny problem is that her parents want to spend more time baby-sitting her two children.)
At Point Judith Capital, Raimondo has invested in local companies ranging from NABsys, a medical device company, to the Narragansett Brewing Co. (Hey neighbor, have a ’Gansett — and my campaign brochure.)
Raimondo plans to use the treasurer’s office to create jobs. “I know a lot about creating jobs,” she said. “I can use my bully pulpit to talk about creating a regulatory environment that isn’t onerous so you can more easily create jobs.”
And she plans to invest a small percentage of the state’s $7-billion pension fund in local businesses. “It’s a real shot in the arm to this economy, and I’d do it in a way that doesn’t add risk to the portfolio,” she said.
Stay tuned to see if Raimondo follows Reed’s path from the beach house to the State House.
efitzpat@projo.com