Vote 2006: Challenger to Langevin says her youth is an asset

Democrat Jennifer L. Lawless, 30, says she and her young staffers will run "a very grass-roots campaign."

WARWICK - In the primary race for the state's 2nd Congressional District, the woman taking aim at Rep. James R. Langevin doesn't have a Rhode Island background, as Langevin does.

She almost certainly won't get the endorsement of the state Democratic Party; that will go to Langevin.

But Jennifer L. Lawless does have youth on her side.

"I think youth is one of my biggest assets, and one of the biggest assets for my campaign team," Lawless, who turned 30 on Monday, said yesterday after announcing her candidacy.

An assistant professor of political science at Brown University, Lawless moved to Rhode Island two years ago. Her campaign manager is Adam Deitch, a former student of hers who graduated from Brown this spring with a bachelor of arts degree in political science. The campaign has four other full-time staffers, all under age 25.

Lawless plans to channel her staffers' energy into "a very grass-roots campaign," involving frequent community meetings and much shoe leather. "I need to meet every Rhode Islander," she said.

Her formal announcement yesterday, at the Community College of Rhode Island's Warwick campus, came as no surprise: she proclaimed her intent to run against Langevin, a 41-year-old Warwick native and three-term incumbent, in April.

Lawless started her campaign strong on a pro-choice note. Although Rhode Island is the most Catholic state in the nation, Lawless quotes a Planned Parenthood poll that found Rhode Islanders favor legalized abortion nearly 2 to 1. Langevin generally opposes legalized abortion, though he makes exceptions for cases of rape or incest.

Education, health insurance and unemployment are among her priorities.

She delivered a speech yesterday studded with statistics: 70 percent of Rhode Island fourth graders perform below grade level in reading and math. Rhode Island's community colleges rank last in the nation, with a 10.4-percent three-year graduation rate. Rhode Island has 25,000 unemployed members of the labor force. One in 10 Rhode Islanders lacks health insurance.

Then, she took a dig at Langevin. "Rhode Island deserves innovative ideas and outspoken leaders, not people who are embedded in the Washington political establishment."

Asked to differentiate herself from Langevin on issues other than abortion, Lawless named two: medical marijuana and Terri Schiavo. She favors legalizing marijuana use for medicinal purposes. Langevin, on the other hand, told The Journal, "The benefit of using marijuana for medical purposes, according to many experts, does not outweigh the risks."

Lawless said the Terri Schiavo case "was not something that should have been taken up by Congress." Langevin voted in March in favor of allowing a federal court to intervene in the case of the brain-damaged Florida woman whose parents and husband were at odds over whether to continue her life support.

Lawless is starting to court endorsements. She's sitting down with state Democratic Party Chairman Bill Lynch next week. Lynch, however, says the meeting is only "a courtesy" and his mind is already made up. "The party is, and will be, 100 percent behind Jim Langevin," Lynch said by phone yesterday. "He's done a great job, and I believe he will be reelected by another huge plurality." Langevin snagged 75 percent of the vote in 2004.

She's also starting to raise money, though she won't say how much. For that, she said, the public will have to wait until she files her first quarterly report with the Federal Election Commission on July 15.

Lawless said she was inspired to run by research for her forthcoming book, due to be released by Cambridge University Press in August. For the book, entitled It Takes a Candidate: Why People Don't Run for Office, Lawless and coauthor Richard Fox, a political scientist at Union College in Schenectady, N.Y., surveyed and interviewed more than 4,000 people, and, broadly speaking, concluded that people who want to see change in the political system hesitate to get involved because they believe one person can't make a difference.

Originally from upstate New York, Lawless became a resident of the 2nd District - which includes all of Washington and Kent counties, as well as Foster, Glocester, Scituate and the southern and western sections of Providence - last month, when she moved to Cranston's Edgewood section from Providence's East Side, which is in Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy's district.

The only response from Langevin's camp yesterday emphasized Lawless' newness to the district. "I welcome her to Rhode Island, to the Second District and to the race," Langevin spokeswoman Joy Fox said.

Facing off against a candidate who spent more than $700,000 in his last race, Lawless recognizes she has an uphill battle. That's why she's starting so early. A full 15 months before the primary, she's opened a campaign office on West Shore Road in Warwick's Conimicut section. She has a campaign Web site, www.lawlessforcongress.com, that outlines her issues. (The pages take an informal tone, referring to Lawless as "Jen.")

At times, Lawless sounded as if her chief goal was to make Langevin work for his seat: "Without challengers in primaries or general elections, incumbents typically sail to reelection."

When asked if she thought she could beat Langevin, though, she said: "I would not be running for office if I didn't intend to win."

This article, written by Elizabeth Gudrais, appeared on June 16, 2005, in the Providence Journal.