Providence longs for its former mayor, Vincent “Buddy” Cianci. If he were mayor today, the Brown University shooter would not still be at large.

Alexander J Destino, Jr Dec 16

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More than three days after the Brown University shooting, Providence has no suspect in custody, little public clarity, and growing uncertainty—despite a campus saturated with cameras, security infrastructure, and institutional resources. Under Mayor Brett Smiley, the response has felt hesitant and unfocused, raising serious questions about leadership, priorities, and how profoundly both the city—and the Democratic Party—have changed.

To understand that shift, it helps to look backward.

Vincent “Buddy” Cianci Jr. was the former mayor of Providence and the first Italian-American ever elected to lead the city. He won office in 1974 at just 33 years old, emerging from a hard-edged, working-class political culture. Cianci was a classic urban populist. His governing priority was simple and unapologetic: keep the city clean, orderly, and safe.

Cianci famously argued there wasn’t a political way to run a city—just the right way to run a city. He regularly pointed to Providence’s standing among America’s safest cities during his tenure as proof that results, not ideology, mattered most.

One couldn’t help but respect how remarkably non-partisan he was in practice. Cianci shunned the “D” label during his first term despite it being the surest path to victory in Rhode Island. He governed as a true independent and made a point of earning the respect of people across political lines.

He led with a distinctly masculine, command-driven style. Police were empowered and highly visible. Disorder was not tolerated. Everyone knew who was in charge.

Working-class citizens loved him because they felt protected—and because City Hall worked for neighborhoods, not elites. Cianci also operated comfortably in Providence’s political gray zones, including relationships with power brokers tied to organized crime.

Yes, he was deeply flawed and ultimately corrupt. But his governing philosophy was unmistakable: a city cannot function if people do not feel safe.

Cianci was not an outlier. He was part of a governing tradition. Old-school, working-class Democratic mayors like Frank Rizzo in Philadelphia, Richard J. Daley in Chicago, Kevin White and Ray Flynn in Boston, William Donald Schaefer in Baltimore, and Dianne Feinstein in San Francisco believed the same thing: cities survive only when order is enforced.

The most successful modern practitioner of that model was a Republican—Rudy Giuliani. He didn’t invent the approach; he inherited it, applying those same principles to produce historic crime reductions in New York City.

That governing tradition didn’t fade gradually. It was deliberately replaced.

Providence today is led by a very different kind of Democrat. Mayor Brett Smiley represents a post-Obama Democratic Party shaped by elite institutions, academic culture, activist priorities, and identity politics.

His public-safety agenda emphasizes inclusivity and the clarification of police roles through executive actions like “A Safe Providence for All,” but stops short of the blunt law-and-order posture that once defined Democratic urban governance. Public safety is now treated as one concern among many—balanced against messaging, optics, and coalition sensitivities.

That shift is now impossible to ignore.

More than 3½ days after the Brown University murders, the shooter remains at large and armed, with no known location—yet city leaders continue to insist the public is not in danger. This, on a campus saturated with surveillance, where the only video released so far has come not from the university’s security system but from nearby residents.

The expectation that government would act decisively, communicate clearly, and answer first to the public no longer exists. That alone reveals how Providence—and the Democratic Party that governs it—have changed: from a party rooted in working-class accountability to one oriented toward institutional power, lobbyists, NGOs, and money—no longer answering first to the citizens, the sovereign they are meant to serve.