PROVIDENCE — While Gina Raimondo reached all over for staff when she became governor in 2015 — employing one or more of outbound Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley’s top aides — Dan McKee is relying upon those close, familiar and trusted.
Significantly more than a hail that is few the 02864 zip code. Their hometown.
And therefore makes Cumberland, house associated with 2014 New England local minimal League baseball champions, the latest center associated with the Rhode Island universe that is political.
It really is a 26.45-square-mile town that is suburban with a populace of 35,263 in 2019, that rated eighth-largest among Rhode Island’s municipalities. The populace is 93.4% white.
Tony Silva is McKee’s $148,960.24 chief of staff into the lieutenant that is tiny’s workplace. He could be likely to have the exact same name when Raimondo makes and McKee is sworn-in to displace her, probably, this week.
Silva led the Division of cars under Gov. Lincoln Chafee and before that, the state’s municipal police training academy.
“He [also] served as McKee’s campaign supervisor in previous years and ended up being commonly rumored as an applicant for mayor,” the Valley Breeze reported in 2014. “But he stepped out from the governmental spotlight . [saying] challenges stayed unresolved during the DMV.”
With Silva already deployed to McKee’s COVID vaccination work, the latest governor is anticipated to depend, at the very least initially, on other people with Cumberland ties for many associated with day-to-day items that a chief of staff would otherwise manage.
They consist of: McKee’s present senior policy adviser, previous Cumberland Town Council president Craig Dwyer, and Christopher Farrell.
Farrell aided to operate state that is former Peter Kilmartin’s very first campaign for attorney general, had been manager of community outreach when you look at the lawyer general’s workplace and a subsequent Quinnipiac University class of Law graduate.
As you go along, Farrell ran the pro-McKee action that is political going RI Forward Inc. during McKee’s very first run for lieutenant governor in 2014.
Farrell popped up in exactly what appeared as if an organizing role at a recently available conference of McKee’s COVID group that is advisory.
Farrell, a Cumberland highschool graduate, declined touch upon their future part into the McKee that is new management.
Dwyer is certainly not a Cumberland native.
But he has got resided into the city nearly a half-century and traces their relationship with McKee back 40 years to whenever McKee coached the guys from the Boys & Girls Club basketball group “and I was coaching the girls because I had daughters. We hit it off there.”
Dwyer has also been the treasurer of McKee’s very first campaign for lieutenant governor.
He will not yet know precisely exactly what he shall be doing after McKee is sworn in. “truthfully I do not especially care,” he told Political Scene.
Within the lieutenant governor’s office, he stated: “you need to be a jack of all of the trades and also you do a little little bit of every thing.”
“I been senior policy adviser. He is guaranteed me personally this has nothing in connection with my age and then he does not constantly tune in to the thing I need certainly to state anyhow,” jokes Dwyer, 73.
Dwyer suspects he might need certainly to hang straight back for a time to simply help whoever McKee picks to restore him as lieutenant governor. “we could be investing a while in-between.”
Communications staff
Andrea Palagi , associated with the Palagi frozen dessert family members, could keep her communications manager name as she moves one flight up when you look at the State home towards the governor’s workplace.
She too was raised in Cumberland, went along to Cumberland senior high school from 2009 to to 2012, and composed a column that is”bi-weekly on Cumberland senior school news and occasions” when it comes to Valley Breeze www.paydayloanstexas.org/cities/kountze/.
Palagi, 27, interned when you look at the lieutenant governor’s workplace while she is at Emerson university. She spent some time working full-time for McKee since January 2016. FWIW: Her mother, Lesley Palagi, is manager of communications, marketing & activities at the Northern Rhode Island Chamber of Commerce.
“As for my link with the Lt. Governor, last year, we served on then-Mayor McKee’s Youth Commission, a bunch specialized in youth that is giving voice in the city federal government and engaging them in providing back again to the city,” she told Political Scene.
Her Peter that is great-great-grandfather Palagi Palagi’s Ice Cream Co. after showing up in the us from Italy in 1896.
“Growing up, I invested numerous summers regarding the vehicle with my grandfather whom worked their life that is entire in company. The organization ultimately offered to its present owner, Alex Arteaga, whom worked alongside my grandfather for a long time.”
“There will always be Palagis into the frozen dessert business today,” Andrea Palagi stated. “Me, I’m just in the commercial of eating it.”
McKee has additionally tapped Pawtucket that is former Times Jonathan Bissonnette for his communications group.
Finance assistance
At McKee’s demand, Raimondo in her own closing times named James Thorsen, who was raised a mile through the McKee household in Cumberland, as acting manager regarding the Department of management.
