It started with an e-mail, sent to the governor’s office on Saturday morning when no one was around to read it.
Matthew Thomas, the chief sachem of the Narragansett Indians, wrote to Governor Carcieri informing him that the smoke shop was going to open that day.
Thomas, the tribe’s leader, said they were opening the shop due to the failure of Carcieri and the General Assembly to pass a referendum on the casino issue.
The tribe sent the e-mail at 9 a.m. to an address used by the governor’s office for constituent relations. The smoke shop opened for business two hours later.
(photo) Governor Carcieri concludes a news conference at the State House last night in which he said he has directed state police commander Col. Steven M. Pare, standing beside hime, to investigate Monday’s events.The Carcieri administration did not receive the chief’s e-mail that day, but the opening was no secret; the tribe also sent a news release to the media. That morning, people had started to flood the smoke shop to buy the tribe’s offering of tax-free cigarettes — by far the best deal around.
The governor, meanwhile, was flying to Cincinnati to celebrate his grandson Nicholas’s fourth birthday. When he landed Saturday morning, there was a phone message from his chief of staff, Ken McKay.
The Narragansetts were selling cigarettes.
What unfolded over the next 48 hours, as described in interviews with Carcieri, Thomas, the tribe’s lobbyist Guy Dufault and governor’s spokesman Jeff Neal, was a period of negotiations, deliberations and finally a communication breakdown that led to the melee in Charlestown on Monday.
From the beginning, it was clear to all sides that the opening of the smoke shop was not just about the right to sell cigarettes. This was a game of political brinkmanship that began as most of them do: with closed-door meetings, intense lobbying and phone calls. But this ended in a way that most political spats do not: in violence.
Carcieri arrived at his son’s house in Cincinnati Saturday morning, expecting to spend the weekend with his family before heading out to the Republican governor’s conference in Colorado Springs on Monday.
Instead, he would spend the next two days on the phone with his staff and with Thomas in Rhode Island.
Carcieri first contacted Thomas on Saturday at about 3 p.m. Thomas said the governor told him that the smoke shop was illegal and asked the tribe to close down.
“You are putting us in a situation where we are going to possibly have a confrontation,” Carcieri said. “I don’t want this.”
Thomas said he didn’t want a confrontation either, but the tribe planned to keep the shop open. That afternoon, the chief said he pleaded with the governor to use restraint on the issue.
“I said, ‘Governor if you are going to close this, please do it in the courts. I ask you this because emotions are running really high right now, they are very frustrated right now because of the way the state has been dealing with us, especially on the casino issue’,” Thomas said. ” ‘Let’s battle this like gentlemen in the courtroom.’ “
Carcieri woke up Thomas at about 8 a.m. on Sunday. The administration wanted to meet with the tribe.
(photo) Chief Sachem Matthew Thomas of the Narragansett Indians, accompanied by tribal police officer Edward McQuaide, greets supporters outside the federal courthouse in Providence yesterday.”We needed to avoid this, what they are doing is illegal,” Carcieri said he told Thomas. “What can we do?”
Carcieri offered a possible compromise. If Thomas closed the business, the governor would try to entertain the idea of a “compact” between the state and tribe. It might resemble agreements that other states had reached with tribes regarding taxation and other regulation.
The two sides reserved a private room at the Crowne Plaza in Warwick and agreed to meet Sunday afternoon.
Thomas, Dufault, the tribe’s lawyer, John Killoy Jr., and Randy Noka, the tribe’s first councilman, sat on one side of a large table.
McKay, Andrew Hodgkin, the executive counsel, and Jeff Grybowski, the governor’s policy director, sat on the other side.
It was soon pretty clear that Thomas had grander ambitions than the smoke shop. He wanted the governor to drop his opposition to a referendum on the casino issue. Thomas said it was time for voters to decide the issue.
The tribe had tried again this year to lobby for such a referendum and failed. After more than a decade of struggle on this issue, the tribe’s patience had grown thin. Carcieri had offered to help promote economic development opportunities for the tribe. He had visited the tribal lands in Charlestown.
But Thomas said the governor proposed finding jobs for tribal members in non-Indian businesses. The impoverished tribe wants to be self- sufficient, Thomas said. The Narragansetts wanted a casino or at least a smoke shop.
Thomas said in an interview that the smoke shop opening was timed with yesterday’s General Assembly session when lawmakers convened to override Carcieri’s budget veto.
The government had one more chance to take up the casino issue, Thomas figured.
After more than two hours of discussion at the Crowne Plaza, the meeting broke down.
The governor’s team would not budge on the casino issue. The tribe said the smoke shop would remain open. “OK, I’ll see you in court,” Thomas told the governor’s team. The two sides shook hands and went
home.
That night, Thomas went out to dinner with his wife.
The Narragansetts closed for business. After two days, Dufault said the tribe had generated $17,000 in gross cigarette sales.
The governor called Atty. Gen. Patrick Lynch to discuss the next course of action.
Carcieri said that the attorney general recommended that the state police serve a search warrant on the property. The governor said he discussed several ideas with prosecutors, but this one seemed the best.
Carcieri spoke with Col. Steven M. Pare, superintendent of the state police, several times that night to discuss the serving of the search warrant.
At some point during those conversations, Carcieri said he told Pare that if there was any confrontation, the state police should back down.
On Monday morning, Thomas put on a collared shirt and tie. He was expecting to go to court, where he thought the state would seek a restraining order to shut down his business.
Reporters, expecting a story about a court dispute, camped out in the gravel lot of the smoke shop. Thomas was interviewed on TV.
Carcieri called Pare and told him to execute the search warrant at the smoke shop.
Shortly before 1 p.m., Thomas received a call on his cell phone. It was Hiawatha Brown, calling from his car on the way to T.F. Green Airport.
He said there was a convoy of state police cars, driving down Route 2, heading for the smoke shop.
Originally written BY MICHAEL CORKERY
Journal Staff Writer
