First woman backed for top RI Senate post

Paiva-Weed is told to act quickly

HISTORIC AND TROUBLED TIMES If elected, M. Teresa Paiva-Weed will take office during the state's worst economic crisis since a deep recession in the early 1990s.

PROVIDENCE - The first time M. Teresa Paiva-Weed came face-to-face with a harsh critic on the campaign trail, she tearfully retreated from the woman's doorstep and told her campaign manager that she was done knocking on doors.

Her meltdown lasted five minutes. Paiva-Weed regrouped, continued down that Newport street, and won the 1992 election to the state Senate.

After a career spent opening doors for women in a male-dominated Rhode Island State House, Paiva-Weed is ready to walk through one more. Democratic lawmakers have endorsed her as their candidate to become the first female Senate president in state history. Her party's majority virtually assures her election when the Legislature starts its new session in January.

Paiva-Weed will need the poise she learned by enduring that doorstep browbeating. If elected, she will take office during the state's worst economic crisis since a deep recession in the early 1990s. Unemployment has soared. Job losses are mounting. The state faces massive budget deficits, and the potential responses - spending cuts, tax raises, consolidations - are certain to anger many.

"It takes a long time to develop thick skin," Paiva-Weed said, "and that's one of the benefits of that experience in the Senate."

She faces pressure to act quickly. Governor Don Carcieri has warned of emergency spending cuts, and House Speaker William Murphy said he thinks lawmakers could come back before January to address the financial crisis.

"There's no plan," said Senator Lou Raptakis, a Democrat who opposes Paiva-Weed. "Right now, if we had a true leader, she would have announced that we meet right away."

Politics came early to Paiva-Weed, the daughter of a working-class family from Newport. Her father was a mailman and her mother was a public housing manager. As a girl, Paiva-Weed accompanied her parents to Democratic fund-raisers, said Kathleen Silvia, a longtime friend and campaign manager.

Paiva-Weed worked as a State House page during college, often shadowing former Senator Robert McKenna, a family friend who later became mayor of Newport.

Paiva-Weed, 49, hasn't strayed far from her hometown. After graduating from Catholic University's law school in Washington, she returned, started a family law practice, and married her teenage sweetheart.

Women were struggling to find their place in the local court system, said Patricia Beede, an attorney who practiced in Newport. Sheriffs sometimes groped female lawyers, many of whom felt they were treated like secretaries. One day, Beede listened as a judge used a homophobic slur to describe a female attorney.

At the time, a group of male attorneys met monthly to swap professional advice and network. Beede decided the half-dozen female lawyers in Newport needed their own outlet.

"It's lonely on the front when you're the only female in a group of 30 or 40 guys," Beede said.

Paiva-Weed showed up at an early function. She was among several women from that circle who entered politics.

Her first bid in public office came when she ran as a delegate to the 1986 state constitutional convention but lost. Another opportunity opened in 1992, when her next-door neighbor, Democratic Senator David Carlin, left his General Assembly seat to run for Congress. Paiva-Weed won Carlin's seat with 62 percent of the vote.

She served on the Finance Committee, which shapes the state budget. Her legal experience was an odd fit in a State House where women were expected to focus on domestic concerns, such as healthcare or daycare.

"Women in many ways, in my opinion, had been limited in their ability to participate in policy," Paiva-Weed said.

Her big break came when Paul Kelly, who was Senate majority leader, selected Paiva-Weed to chair the Judiciary Committee, a powerful group of lawmakers that vets potential judges, department directors, and other state officials nominated by the governor.

A corruption scandal cleared the way for her next promotion.

In 2004, Senate President William Irons resigned amid accusations that he voted on legislation affecting pharmacies at the same time he had a business relationship with the CVS pharmacy chain and Blue Cross & Blue Shield. Irons was never charged, but a related investigation snared another senator, a former House majority leader, the state's largest care insurer, and a hospital executive.

Newly elected Senate President Joseph Montalbano applauded Paiva-Weed for her integrity and urged fellow Democrats to pick her as majority leader. Hours after Montalbano lost his seat this month, Paiva-Weed returned to the State House and began working out the succession.