In the meantime, if Cicilline wants to sew up support on the South Side, he will have to make the case that he has been attentive to Providence's least fortunate. Last week, in an interview in his office, he talked of foreclosure prevention efforts and affordable housing work. His after-school and community policing initiatives, he said, are of particular import in the city's poorest corners.
But to win over the skeptics, the mayor will have to sharpen a communications and political operation that has been underwhelming to date. Observers say the administration is filled with well-intentioned folk with little political sense — with department heads, and a mayor himself, who have an aversion to the credit-taking, retail-style politics that Cianci mastered.
"David really hates doing that stuff, because he thinks that's sort of dirty politics," said a long-time Democratic observer and Cicilline supporter. "Seven years into his administration, the mayor hasn't been able to turn a new, diverse, energetic political base into a long-term political organization."
It is a problem compounded by constant criticism from Cianci and other talk-radio personalities who have harangued the mayor virtually unanswered for years now. And Cicilline, himself, seems to recognize the trouble.
"One of my frustrations has always been that I never feel like we are particularly good at telling the story," he said. "That's frankly one of the benefits of a campaign. It forces you to start reminding people of the work that has been accomplished."
After a few less-than-successful attempts to jumpstart his political operation, observers say he seems to be moving in the right direction. He has hired a new communications director, Karen Watts. And his new political director, Patrick Gould, has received high marks to date.
The success of the effort will have implications beyond what should, in the end, be a very winnable mayoral race. With one-third or more of this year's council races expected to be competitive, Cicilline has a chance to rebuild his fraying coalition on the panel — even if, as expected, he takes the sort of indirect, behind-the-scenes approach that he took to the last council races.
And with cities and towns facing sharp cuts in state aid amid persistent budget trouble, the mayor says he wants Providence voters to have a significant voice in the election of the next governor.
Then, of course, there is the question of the mayor's own future.
Cicilline, once the darling of Rhode Island politics, has taken some blows in his nearly two terms in office. But no one expects him to retreat from the public sphere when he leaves City Hall.
