Cranston Mayor Ken Hopkins, left, and Democratic challenger Robert Ferri, right, are shown during the final debate of the election season recorded at WPRI-12 on Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. (James Bartone/WPRI-TV)
“Beautiful room,” said Cranston City Councilor Robert Ferri as he glanced around the television studio at WPRI-12 in East Providence.
The Democrat stood at a podium Friday morning, ready for his last debate with sitting Republican Cranston Mayor Ken Hopkins — the denouement in a long mayoral race that has captivated even non-Cranston voters this election cycle.
“Last debate of the season,” said Ted Nesi, the politics editor and investigative reporter at Target 12 who moderated the pre-taped debate alongside investigative reporter and managing editor Tim White.
“Last debate of my lifetime,” Hopkins said.
“Until you run for governor,” Nesi joked.
The next 28 minutes saw both candidates cogent and confident, reiterating their main talking points for the final time before Cranstonians decide in 11 days who will be mayor. Ferri was smiley and affable, but assertive when he did attack. Hopkins looked just as self-assured, gripping the podium while speaking, often with one leg slightly forward — a power stance.
Hopkins last visited the studio on Aug. 30 when he debated Rep. Barbara Ann Fenton-Fung in a fierce round ahead of winning September’s Republican primary. This debate was no less energetic as each candidate offered different visions of Cranston’s future.
The debate airs at 6:30 p.m. Friday on Fox Providence. Reruns will air at 5:30 a.m. Sunday on WPRI and 10 a.m. on Fox Providence. The debate is also available online.
The unhoused population
An executive order Hopkins issued in August allowed police to crack down on encampments of unhoused people on city land.
“My opponent feels that making homelessness a crime is the way to solve the problem,” Ferri said, adding that, if elected, he would consult with experts to determine the best course of action to provide social services and, ultimately, find more ways to provide temporary shelter that could potentially get people off the streets.
Hopkins, meanwhile, maintained the problem with encampments is “the lawlessness that comes with it.” The mayor described landscapes of “rats, feces and human waste” where sex work and drugs are sold in the open on public land. These vistas become “intolerable for the people that live in that area,” Hopkins said, and pointed to one example near the police station where “crack pipes and used needles” decorate the grounds.
“Servicing the people that are homeless is the answer,” Ferri argued, but Hopkins was unconvinced, and cited Harrington Hall, a state-run shelter in the city, as one resource that goes underused.
“We have a program already in place, we have social workers go in,” Hopkins said. “We go in with intent to try to get them into housing, but understand that, because of some of their lawlessness, they don’t want public housing. They want to be able to just go out and do their own thing.”
A noisy gun range
In a rapid fire round, the candidates returned to another quality of life issue: Complaints about noise pollution in a neighborhood close to a Cranston Police Department gun range.
Hopkins said an initiative to use silencers on the firearms that’s already in progress would solve the problem. Ferri didn’t think the range’s current location is sustainable, and was noncommittal about the silencers.
“I’d have to go there and listen before I can make a decision,” Ferri said.
Cranston Mayor Ken Hopkins listens as Democratic challenger Robert Ferri, seen on a monitor at left, speaks during the final debate of the election season at WPRI-12 on Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. (Alexander Castro/Rhode Island Current)
City finances
A major point of Ferri’s campaign has been criticism of the mayor’s spending. Nesi pointed out that a recent state Auditor General’s report on municipal finances showed Cranston had the second-lowest rainy day fund in the state in 2023.
Hopkins said he had reduced the budget by $7 million in his tenure, with a surplus of maybe $700,000 to $800,000 in the upcoming year thanks to his wise spending choices, like cutting 24 positions from the city — and all this, he said, despite inheriting “over a $7 million budget deficit.”
“I had to fix that,” Hopkins said. “I didn’t blame anybody else. I took on the challenge.” He also pointed out that the city’s bond rating with Moody’s has risen.
Ferri replied, “I do not feel the city’s financial health is as rosy as Ken says it is.” He argued that $30 million in federal COVID relief money was mainly used to “plug holes and pay bills,” while city services have suffered. Ferri forecasted a structural deficit on the horizon and balked at Hopkins’ talk of a surplus.
“Any accountant can tell you to have a surplus when you really don’t have one,” Ferri said.
Hopkins was firm that there was no structural deficit in the budget, and that a $4 million spending reduction was moved to the rainy day fund: “That’s why the bond ratings are giving us such good grades,” Hopkins said. “The city of Cranston financially is booming.”
Toward the end of the debate, the candidates sparred fiercely on what the Knightsville Rehabilitation Project actually cost. The upgrades are a “pet project” for Hopkins, Ferri said, and estimated taxpayers have spent between $6 million and $8 million of city money beautifying the neighborhood. Hopkins maintained the three-phase project has cost no more than $3 million in city funds, with the rest of the money coming from federal sources.
Trains and automobiles
Hopkins may have been victorious in September’s Republican primary, but his opponent Fenton-Fung’s campaign planted one seed that continues to flower: The allegation that Hopkins took a vintage MG for a test drive and never returned or paid for it.
White said there was no need to recap the story, which is well known to Cranston voters after weeks of media coverage, and Hopkins stuck to his side of the tale: That he had a “gentlemen’s agreement” with the car’s owner, Kevin Broccoli, and that the theft allegations were a political maneuver by Fenton-Fung and her husband, former Cranston mayor Allan Fung.
“The car’s at my house, in my garage at this moment,” Hopkins said, and added later, “I bought that car because it was the initials of my late wife: MG. That’s why I bought it. I wanted to restore it in her memory.”
Ferri thought Hopkins acted unethically, and has lacked transparency about the transaction.
My opponent feels that making homelessness a crime is the way to solve the problem.
– Robert Ferri, Democratic challenger for Cranston mayor
Hopkins used his resume as a shield: “I was an educator for 37 years, I was an administrator, I was a college coach for 40 years. If I was unethical, I never would have gotten those jobs…I’m offended by his, maybe, ‘Ferri tales’ that he tells. He lies about the things that represent me.”
Ferri pounced: “I’m not lying about you taking the car. Am I lying about you taking the car? Am I? Did you take the car without a title?”
“Mr. Ferri,” said White. “We’ll get to you in a moment.”
“Once again, this is the temperament we’re looking at…The courts will decide what happened with that car,” Hopkins said.
“I just think that people need an answer,” said Ferri.
Nesi pivoted smoothly, “Well, we’re gonna switch from cars to light rail,” and asked the candidates if they supported infrastructure for light rail through Cranston, a project idea recently floated by the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority.
Both candidates affirmed that they did. But they diverged again towards the end of the debate, when asked about overnight street parking. Hopkins is firmly against the idea, and thinks it will encourage crime. Ferri welcomes at least a pilot program to gauge its feasibility, and said a neighborhood like Edgewood would be a good place to start.
Tim White, Target 12 investigative reporter and managing editor, chats with Cranston mayoral candidates Ken Hopkins and Robert Ferri, at right, ahead of a pretaped debate at WPRI-12 in East Providence. (James Bartone/WPRI-TV)
All’s fair in politics
The Cranston mayoral race has demonstrated how a super polarized national scene can be weaponized in municipal politics, from Hopkins’ primary assertions that his GOP opponent was a liberal in disguise, to the shifting alliances and identities of the candidates themselves.
Nesi pointed out Ferri was once a Republican himself, and even campaigned on Hopkins’ behalf in the not-too-distant past. What happened?
Ferri said he “did not get along with the other Republicans” in Cranston, and did not feel “pressured to vote or act any certain way” since becoming a Democrat.
I’m offended by his, maybe, ‘Ferri tales’ that he tells. He lies about the things that represent me.
– Cranston Mayor Ken Hopkins
Nesi offered further that Hopkins, as the mayor of one of Rhode Island’s largest cities, is arguably the highest-ranking Republican in the solidly blue Ocean State. Would he still vote for Gov. Dan McKee?
Hopkins said he might now prefer Michael Traficante, a former Cranston mayor, but that he continues to admire McKee and golfs and dinners with the governor.
“Ted, I’m sorry, but if I’m the only Republican mayor in the state, I have to work with the opposition,” Hopkins said. “I tell people all the time. I’m a moderate as moderate can be.”
Among the ostensible opposition Hopkins has worked with: former Rhode Island House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello, a conservative Democrat who held a fundraiser for Hopkins on Oct. 17, Nesi tweeted.
After closing statements, the cameras stopped. Nesi and White congratulated each other on successfully completing another debate season. The candidates, however, were not feeling comradely, and suddenly revived the discussion about Knightsville, with each maintaining their cost estimate was the right one.
“You’re an idiot,” Hopkins said as he and the councilor departed in opposite directions.
Ferri said Hopkins sounded like Donald Trump.
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