Ideology and attendance record in question in Cumberland’s Senate District 19

Editor’s note: This is the fourth in a six-part series on state legislative races, chosen based on expected competitiveness between candidates and relevant issues to the district. Of the 113 seats in the Rhode Island General Assembly, all of which are elected every two years, 22 have primaries in September.

Once poised to preside over the upper chamber Sen. Ryan Pearson’s public feud and falling out with Senate leaders — past and present — appeared to relegate the seven-term Cumberland Democrat to legislative Siberia.

Cumberland Town Councilor James Metivier didn’t expect Pearson to seek reelection when Metivier filed to run for the Senate District 19 seat. 

“He hasn’t really been showing up this year,” said Metivier, 60, a retired IT manager for Amica Mutual Insurance Co. 

Pearson tells it differently.

“I’ve always seen my role in the district focused on two things: being focused on bringing back returns for my district, and being a leader on statewide issues,” Pearson, 38, said. “I have a really strong record on both of those things, and I hope to continue doing that.”

And despite his failed challenges of Senate President Valarie Lawson and before her, the late President Dominick Ruggerio, during leadership elections, Pearson says he has still been able to pass bills and shape policy — even with missing 13 of the chamber’s 43 floor sessions this year.

“No one has ever criticized me for not doing the work,” Pearson said, chalking up his absences to work obligations, health issues or, in one case, a legislative calendar that featured no actual policy votes. Pearson works as a senior vice president for Citizens Bank.

Metivier acknowledged he was not clued in to the details of Pearson’s personal disagreements with legislative leaders. He believed he offered a more independent-minded option for district voters. Literally. 

During his eight years on the nonpartisan Cumberland Town Council, Metivier was unaffiliated. He opted to run for the Senate seat as a Democrat in order to “get better results” for the district encompassing parts of Cumberland and Lincoln, he said.

Backed by the conservative leaning League of RI Businesses, Metivier’s platform espouses some viewpoints traditionally associated with the Republican party: fiscal conservatism, deregulation and gun rights. He expressed skepticism over the state’s climate change mandates, which some critics, including Democratic Gov. Dan McKee, have blamed for raising energy costs.

“We’ve put in a lot of mandates but we need to make sure it’s not just a virtue signal,” Metivier said of the state’s 2021 Act on Climate Law. 

Eyeing the state’s record $15.2 billion budget, Metivier called for curtailing spending, although he could not name specific areas for cuts when asked. He was certain in his conviction that the series of state housing laws that supersede municipal planning and zoning restrictions were too broad and far-reaching. So too was the recently approved millionaire’s tax and the three-year charter school moratorium, he said.

Pearson, who supported all of these Democratic-led initiatives in the chamber, helping craft many of them during his former role as majority leader, accused Metivier of masquerading as a Democrat while tying himself to a “MAGA conservative group” in the League of RI Businesses. The League’s founder, Dave Levesque, was a featured speaker at a Rhode Island First rally in May that also featured Roger Stone, a conservative consultant who worked on campaigns for former President George W. Bush and President Donald Trump. Stone was convicted and sentenced to 40 months prison on felony charges for interfering with a congressional investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.  He was later pardoned by Trump.

“It’s an interesting strategy,” said Pearson.

Metivier said he was not aware of The League’s ties to the Trump administration, and differentiated an endorsement from being a part of the political organization. 

Endorsed by the District 19 Democratic Committee, as well as the Cumberland and Lincoln Town Democrats, Pearson maintained that his record reflected the priorities of voters in his district. If reelected, he wants to prioritize increasing state Medicaid reimbursement rates for healthcare providers and expanding the purview of the Office of the Health Insurance Commissioner to consider not only insurance premiums, but also provider availability.

The winner of the District 19 Democratic primary is unopposed in the Nov. 3 general election.