With graduation approaching, Brown seniors are struggling as they decide what they'd like to do next. Ethan Ris '05 thinks he might like to become your city councilman.
Though he has not yet made a final decision, Ris said he is thinking "seriously" about the possibility of running for Providence City Council in 2006.
"I am very much still a student - I'm focusing on graduating. While getting involved in local politics is something I've thought about, I definitely haven't made any decisions about what I'm going to do," Ris said. "I'm just talking to people in the neighborhood and in the city government, getting a sense of the situation and also of whether this is something that I'd really want to do."
Ris said he expects to make a decision by the end of the summer. Over the summer, in preparation for a potential campaign, Ris will have to file papers through the state declaring himself as a potential candidate, start raising money and appoint a treasurer to oversee fundraising.
If he does decide to enter the race, he will run as a Democrat in Ward 1, representing the College Hill and Fox Point neighborhoods, a position currently held by David Segal of the Green Party, who was elected in 2002.
Last summer, Ris, a former president of the Brown Democrats, was given a three-month-long mayoral fellowship at Providence City Hall in the Department of Operations. He said the experience made him excited about what could get done in a city like Providence but also made him frustrated about what was not getting done.
"Things seemed to move at a glacial pace, and a lot of times, people have good ideas that never get heard by the right people," he said.
One of Ris' main issues is the divide between Brown and the surrounding community. "Brown students don't understand the community, and the community doesn't understand Brown," he said. "And there is nobody in the community right now trying to bridge that gap."
"I think the only person who can do that is someone who, for example, is a recent Brown graduate and reaches out to the community, becomes a member of the community and who moves things forward," he said. Though Ris grew up in Maryland, he said he has considered himself a resident of Providence since he began at Brown and that he intends to spend the rest of his life here.
The election is more than a year and a half in the future, but Ris' tentative plans have already begun to cause a stir, particularly among supporters of Segal.
According to Ris, on March 8, "(Segal) sent me an e-mail essentially trying to scare me out of the race by listing a lengthy list of people and organizations, a lot of unions, a lot of lobbying groups, that he claims supported him. ... The vast majority of groups or people on that list don't know who I am. I've never met with them. So, I don't think it's fair to say that, in a potential match-up between me and Councilman Segal, they've weighed the alternatives and have chosen him."
But Segal said the intent of the e-mail was not to scare Ris out of running. Rather, he said he wanted to make clear that he would run for re-election and "to assert that I am doing work that I think is very important and that many individuals and organizations with whom I work think is very important and which wouldn't happen if I weren't in office."
Segal said he also wanted "to ask (Ris) why he's considering doing something so potentially destructive when we will be in an election year that will potentially have very tight races on many levels of government and when his energies could be put towards those efforts."
Robert Walsh '83, the executive director of the Rhode Island chapter of the National Education Association and a supporter of Segal, pointed out Segal's unique position as the only non-Democrat of the 15 City Council members. "He gets the benefit of picking and choosing which committee he wants to sit on because he's the only 'other' party representative, thus making him a more powerful progressive," he said.
Segal and his supporters are less worried that Ris may win the election and more that he may act as a "spoiler" by splitting the progressive vote, thus causing a more conservative candidate to be elected.
"My guess is that Ethan doesn't have any real chance to get more votes than David. What he maybe has a chance to do is, ironically and if things go the wrong way, to possibly be the spoiler person," said Peter Asen '04, who was the co-volunteer coordinator of Segal's campaign in 2002.
According to the current president of the Brown Democrats, Seth Magaziner '06, "That's the same thing people said about David in 2002." In that race, Segal ran as a Green Party candidate against a Democrat, an independent and a Republican candidate.
"People were afraid that he was just going to end up stealing votes from (Kyle) Diggins (the Democratic candidate), but as a matter of fact, the neighborhood was so progressive that they ended up coming in first and second," Magaziner said.
But Asen questioned what Ris' motivation would be in running against a fellow progressive. "He has to answer the question of 'why is he running against David?' " he said. "How does he see himself as being different? And if he doesn't really, that raises the question of 'why put your energy into this?' "
Ris said that while he often agrees with Segal on an ideological level, their strategies differ. He cited as an example Segal's sponsorship of Council resolutions against the war in Iraq and the USA Patriot Act.
"It's nice to have resolutions against the Patriot Act - I agree that people should take a stand against that - but I would much rather see the Providence City Council concern itself with issues like trash collection and transportation issues and taxation issues, because those affect people's lives much more," Ris said.
Though he said it is too early to make forecasts about votes being split, Magaziner, a friend of both Segal and Ris, said he thinks political issues will not be the focus of a race between the two. "Their politics are pretty much identical. Their personalities are very different. They might have different priorities, but I put them in approximately the same place on the conservative-liberal spectrum," he said. "When the issues are really similar, it ends up coming down to leadership skills, things like that."
Ris said that, in his recent conversations with Providence residents, he has noticed "a lot of dissatisfaction" with the state of leadership on the East Side and in the city in general.
"I'm going to keep having those conversations," Ris said. "Even if I decide not to run for office, I still intend to be very involved in local city politics. I feel like I've done a good job of orienting myself in the past four years, understanding the community and the politics of Providence, and I think I'm in a good position to become involved," he said.
"I'm excited about, if not now, at some point serving the people."
