David Cicilline

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David N. Cicilline (born 1961) is Mayor of Providence, Rhode Island. He is the first openly gay mayor of an U.S. state capital. Providence is the largest U.S. city to have an openly gay mayor.^[1]

Cicilline was born and raised in Providence and then Narragansett. Cicilline had an Italian father and a Jewish mother. His father, Jack Cicilline, had been an aid to Joseph Doorley and later on became a mob lawyer. He attended Brown University (where he was a classmate of John F. Kennedy, Jr.) and Georgetown University Law Center. He worked as a lawyer in Washington, D.C., and Providence before being elected to the Rhode Island House of Representatives in 1995. He served a total of four terms in the legislature, during which time he came out publicly. Since making public his homosexuality, Cicilline's campaigns have won the backing of the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund.

As a state representative, he garnered the endorsement of the Million Mom March and won Common Cause of Rhode Island's Number One ranking in 2002 for his dedication to ethics in government and reform of the political process.

[edit] As Mayor

On February 11, 2002, Cicilline announced his candidacy for Mayor of the City of Providence, in the face of the public's loss of confidence in government and deterioration of the city's neighborhoods. He called for a returned focus on quality services in the community, and urged a fundamental change in the way city business is conducted. He also called for the city to begin to include the many diverse residents within its structure, so that it resembled more closely those whom it served.

The sitting Mayor, Vincent A. "Buddy" Cianci was convicted of racketeering conspiracy in the spring of 2002 and sentenced to seven years in federal prision. His resignation as a result of the Plunder Dome scandal opened up the race and encouraged the entrance of several other candidates.

Since Mayor Cicilline took office, Providence has dropped to 17th in the state for per-capita property tax. There has been a double-digit drop in the rate of crime in every major category. Affordable housing production has increased to six times the rate of the 1990s.

City bonds have been given "A" ratings by all three major Wall Street agencies. Three billion dollars in new real estate investment has been made in Providence. Cicilline's Neighborhood Performing Arts Initiative was the recipient of the 2005 U.S. Conference of Mayors’ City Livability Award.

On September 10 2006, Cicilline won the Democratic primary, and went on to win the general election with 84% of the vote.