The Providence Journal: Why Operation Plunder Dome lives on after 25 years.

Tom Mooney analyzes Operation Plunder Dome and former Providence mayor Buddy Cianci and how their legacy continues to impact the capitol of Rhode Island years later. This article was originally published in the Providence Journal on April 24th, 2024. 

Mooney’s piece quoted Common Cause Rhode Island’s executive director, John Marion.  

“John Marion flew to Providence for the first time in spring 2001 with his wife, Karen Ng, who had accepted a physician’s job here. “I remember turning on the news, and it was all about the leak of the [Corrente] tape, and there’s a briefcase, and a tow list and I’m like: ‘What the heck was I getting myself into?’” Marion, who now heads the good-government group Common Cause Rhode Island, says Rhode Island didn’t invent corruption. But it is one of the few places that “developed an outsized reputation for corruption in large part because of Cianci’s performative corruption.”  With a wink to his many admirers, “he made corruption part of his personality.”

“Cianci was known for presiding over the city’s revitalization, says Marion, but he was also known for “how he engaged in corruption in his political career.” A federal investigation of Cianci’s administration in the 1980s led to two dozen convictions. Cianci was a “Trump prototype,” says Marion. “A melding of entertainment and politics.” He wasn’t the first corrupt American politician in that respect, “but Buddy was the one who played to the cameras, unlike everyone else, and that really, to me, was the difference.”

To read the full article, click here.