If you’re like most people, you don’t recognize the name Gina Raimondo. George Will, a conservative columnist for The Washington Post, thinks that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden should recognize her most of all.
Raimondo is the governor of Rhode Island, and Will said her achievements in America’s smallest state are so impressive that Biden should make her his vice presidential nominee.
She has definitely gotten things done. Her education includes a law degree and a doctorate in sociology, and she co-founded Rhode Island’s first venture-capital firm in 2000.
Elected state treasurer in 2010, she told the public that employee pensions were eating up too much of the state budget, and sold reforms like a pause in annual cost-of-living increases and a higher retirement age to the Legislature.
When she ran for governor in 2014, Rhode Island had the nation’s highest unemployment rate. Raimondo attacked that, Will wrote, by making the state more attractive to business.
Achievements include a reduction in taxes each year and the removal of 8,000 pages of regulations — 30 percent of the state’s total. That sounds pretty Republican, but here’s the Democratic stuff: Rhode Island’s minimum wage is $11.50 an hour, workers there have a sick leave entitlement, the largest infrastructure program in state history has been approved and the state has set up a tuition-free community college program. Will observed that today’s political culture permits those “with the most time and inclination for full-time self-promotion, such as U.S. senators,” to eclipse others like governors, who “are preoccupied with serious responsibilities.” The odds of Biden choosing Raimondo are slim, and that’s too bad, because Will believes she could help restore “adult supervision in Washington.”
Jack Ryan, Enterprise-Journal
