To steal a line from Mark McGwire, the baseball slugger who was called before Congress to talk about steroids in baseball but would only answer questions with “I’m not here to talk about the past. I’m here to make a positive impact”.
David Cicilline is looking to take the same tack and tell people to forget about the past. It’s the past, no need to revisit that, let’s move forward.
Earlier in the week, John Loughlin campaign spokesman, Michael Napolitano called for a federal investigation about what happened with Providence’s finances, budgeting and information during the Cicilline era as mayor.
Remember those public statements about the strong fiscal health of the city, those statements that all the reserve funds were at their required limits, those debates between the candidates when Loughlin exposed Cicilline for who he is? Remember when Cicilline blocked Providence’s own auditors from seeing the necessary accounts information to do their job?

Napolitano referenced the bad check written by Cicilline’s brother, John, and the allegations of former city tax collector Robert Ceprano that Cicilline ignored the issue. He also referenced the high default rate of loans granted by the Providence Economic Development Partnership, a problem that was exposed by WPRO’s Jim Hummel, and the most recent incident that has come to light with the Providence Community Action Program. (ProCAP)

So yesterday, the Cicilline camp fired back.

“The Loughlin campaign wants to rerun the last campaign but David Cicilline is now in Congress and working to create jobs and to save Medicare from efforts by some in Mr. Loughlin’s party to privatize or virtually eliminate it,” Kayner told WPRI.com.

Wait. Back up for a second. What’d she say? David Cicilline is working to save Medicare from efforts of privatization? This is the first time I’ve heard this claim. I remember Cicilline’s television commercials scaring the seniors that he’d protect Social Security but nothing about Medicare. Why the switch to Medicare now? Does the Cicilline campaign finally agree that no one is trying to “privatize Social Security” least of which for seniors? It seems they finally agree that he may not have been as forthcoming as he might have liked. But I guess here comes the next step, Republicans are going to kill Medicare. We’re not here to talk about Social Security, that’s in the past, now we need to save Medicare. Great.
We saw how well McGwire’s strategy worked for him. It didn’t. He was widely mocked and ridiculed. Similarly, I don’t think everyone in Congressional District 1 will also be so swayed by it and many will remember not only what Cicilline did do while Mayor of Providence but also what he hasn’t gotten done as our Congressman. By the way, does anyone have a Hall of Fame Coin set?