A pithy insight from state Sen. Sam Bell
The outspoken progressive from Providence shared his opinion about what many political prognosticators are missing – they need to pay attention to what voters on the ground actually want, different from what political insiders think they want
State Sen. Sam Bell, in a file photo from the patio at Olga's in 2018.
In recent years, the R.I. General Assembly has proven to be skinflints when it comes paying cost-of-living increases in Medicaid rates due to the nursing homes. At the same time, thanks to UHIP, the backlog in determining eligibility for Medicaid patients for long-term supports and services still continues to plague nursing homes, with applications pending for more than 90 days, contrary to state law, remains in the hundreds. Finally, the rates of reimbursements from Medicaid for health care services, including dental care and mental health and behavioral health services, are among the lowest in the region.
The first step, as recommended by state Sen. Sam Bell, would be to have the Senate request an audit of the private contractors for Medicaid, to determine what the actual costs are.
PROVIDENCE – There is a wonderful short story by James Thurber that first appeared in The New Yorker [and was later part of the collection, The Thurber Carnival], entitled, “Here Lies Miss Groby,” which recounted Thurber’s experience in the classroom with the fictional Miss Groby, who had taught him English composition.
“The shape of a sentence crucified on a blackboard [parsed, she called it] brought a light to her eye,” Thurber wrote. What delighted and thrilled Miss Groby most, according to Thurber, was the certainty that she brought to her analysis about the form and content of English verse, because so much of it could be diagrammed, analyzed and counted.
Thurber imagined her demise: “Here lies Miss Groby, not dead, I think, but put away on a shelf with all the other T squares and rules whose edges have lost their certainty.”
During a time of pandemic and political upheaval, when our lives have been dissected with daily charts, opinion polls and analyses tracking the spread of the coronavirus, the rising death toll in the U.S. as it approaches 200,000 lives, and electoral maps parsing potential outcomes of the Presidential election in November, all dispatched with the certainty reminiscent of the certainty with which Thurber’s Miss Groby crucified the shape of a sentence on a blackboard, what often gets lost in translation, it seems, is what the voters actually want.
The politics of uncertainty
What brought up the memory of Thurber’s fictional portrayal of Miss Groby was an answer that state Sen. Sam Bell gave to ConvergenceRI in a series of questions asked in the immediate aftermath of his resounding primary victory on Sept. 8.
ConvergenceRI: “What do you think are the most important lessons to be learned by the news media in the way they cover elections, following yesterday’s primary results?
BELL: Rhode Island’s reporters often listen to political insiders when they decide what elections to cover. For instance, my election got a lot of coverage because political insiders were “buzzing” about the possibility of defeating me [to quote Boston Globe reporter Dan McGowan].
Lenny Cioe, [who came very close to defeating Sen. President Dominick Ruggerio, falling short by 347 votes], on the other hand, got very little coverage because political insiders wrote him off.
The media should take progressives more seriously in the future, thinking more about which candidates voters are likely to select than which candidates machine operatives talk up.
ConvergenceRI: What are your top priorities in the next two months in terms of legislation?
BELL: My top priority is stopping or slowing down brutal cuts to our schools, public health, state jobs, and other essential services. We cannot afford to hit Rhode Islanders while so many in our state are suffering. We must stop these cuts.
ConvergenceRI: How important will it be to conduct an audit of the private contractors with R.I. Medicaid, as a cost-saving effort?
BELL: This is a crucial initiative to generate long-term savings. Ultimately, I believe that an audit would show that we should de-privatize Medicaid, as happened in Connecticut. There is a lot of waste in our privatized Medicaid system, and it is not serving patients well.
ConvergenceRI: In terms of your interactions with voters, what did they tell you were the three most important issues that mattered to them?
BELL: Stopping budget cuts, stopping the pandemic, and removing [Sen. President] Ruggerio and [House Speaker] Mattiello to achieve lasting change.
When the status quo cookie crumbles
What Bell identified in his answer, in ConvergenceRI’s opinion, was the tendency that many political reporters and prognosticators have in reporting on the political status quo – listening to political insiders rather than paying attention to what the voters say they want.
That message was delivered forcefully by Tiara Mack, who defeated incumbent Sen. Harold Metts, in the Sept. 8 primary, and by Cynthia Mendes, who defeated incumbent Sen. William Conley, in the Sept. 8 primary, when they appeared as guests on WPRI’s Newsmakers, with Tim White and Ted Nesi, in an edition that aired last weekend.
Mendes made it very clear that the top issues in the voters’ minds were health care, the environment, and the economy, and those issues were all connected in a holistic fashion. Mack, in turn, talked about the importance of going door-to-door and talking with people, being able to converse in Spanish with her constituents, where once again, health care issues resonated. Both made clear that they would not support Sen. President Ruggerio.
What proved to be the successful strategy, according to both Mack and Mendes [and for Bell], was the old-fashioned, going door-to-door, talking with constituents, listening to what the voters had to say.
What surprised Nesi most, apparently, was when Mack said that voters in her district were concerned by her opponent's championing of photo ID voter registration law.
