Two candidates for the R.I. Senate District 11 (Portsmouth and Bristol) seat tackled issues ranging from substance abuse to affordable house during a forum last week hosted by the League of Women Voters of Rhode Island and East Bay Media Group.

The District 11 seat is being vacated due to the retirement of Sen. James Seveney (D) of Portsmouth. 

The virtual forum, which used the Zoom format, started off on a surprise note when one of the candidates, Andrew Kelly, a registered Democrat who was running for the seat as an independent, announced he was bowing out of the race due to work reasons. 

“So that’s unprecedented, and unanticipated, but it will shorten tonight’s forum. We made news today,” moderator Scott Pickering said after Kelly read a statement and abruptly walked from the camera’s view.

Another candidate for the seat, Mario J. Teixeira (I), did not appear at the Oct. 13 forum.

That left just two candidates who took questions: Kenneth Mendonça (R), a longtime program manager in the local defense industry and a former state representative, and Linda Ujifusa, an attorney and vice president of the Portsmouth Town Council. Here’s how they responded to the eight questions posed by Pickering. (Answers have been edited for space.)

Do you support the Senate leadership team at the State House? Why, or why not?

Mendonça: “What we’d have to look at it is, should I be elected by the voters of Bristol and Portsmouth, to see who is running for leadership because they vote on that annually. I would have to look and see who the candidates are, what they believe in, do they align with me, and whether or not I support them.”

Ujifusa: “I would definitely vow to work with Senate leadership and, like my opponent, would like to see who’s running for Senate leadership. However, I am committed to doing what’s best for my constituents and will work closely with whomever they are, and I believe there is a Venn diagram of an overlap of interests and goals that we will be able to move forward on legislation that all parties want to pursue.”

What are your views on abortion?

Ujifusa: “I am pro-choice, and I don’t think there’s anyone I know who would simply describe themselves as pro-abortion. And those who call themselves pro-life, I am also pro-life to the extent that I have been pursuing universal, comprehensive health care for all for several years now. And, for those who do not support healthcare for all, a living wage, decent housing, adequate food supply, they are not pro-life; they are simply pro-birth. And I definitely support a women’s right to choose. I think it’s a decision that has to be made between women and their physicians.”

Mendonça: “I am for life, with exceptions.”

What policies would you initiate or support in order to help people who are living with a substance abuse disorder?

Mendonça: “That is a real question that has deep meaning. Obviously mental health issues are a big issue and it’s been complicated and compounded by COVID. We need to be able to make sure we are providing the proper resources to try to help those with drug and mental disorders and that is one of the important things talking to constituents that they do have concerns about.”

Ujifusa: “I’m been working on health care issues for several years like I said, and mental health care is included in that comprehensive health care. One of the things I’d want to do is make sure that our parity laws are enforced properly. Parity laws require that the amounts of money spent by insurers to cover mental health is equal to that which is used to cover physical health. Unfortunately, our private insurers have not met the parity requirement, however the penalty they face was not sufficient in my mind. They were allowed to make a donation to the Rhode Island Foundation as their penalty for not following parity laws, and that has to be changed so we can more closely follow states who are able to enforce parity properly such as Massachusetts and California.”

Should the state regulate access to military-style weapons, high-capacity clips or other firearms/weapons?

Ujifusa: “There can be more done to create gun safety, and you will note there were three bills that passed and they had the support of the Police Chiefs Association in Rhode Island. So, even when I speak to the most conservative folks, who are even members of the NRA, there are areas again of Venn diagram overlap, where if we go line by line through legislation, we will find areas on which we can agree and we will move forward, and I look forward to that happening when I’m elected.”

Mendonça: “This past General Assembly session they passed legislation that limited the capacity of high-capacity magazines, so I’m not sure what that is in reference to. I would also like to know what that language will be, and will it make law-abiding citizens felons?” Mendonça said some people have purchased firearms legitimately, and then “by a wave of the pen, they were not potentially criminals. That, in my opinion is wrong. There was no avenue to try to grandfather those in, there was no avenue to try to reimburse them for it.” It would be “critical to learn” how the language in that bill reads, he said.

Would you advocate for any additional changes to Rhode Island’s current gun laws?

Mendonça: “I would have to look at what was proposed, but I would saw we have one of the most stringent firearms laws in the national already, and we should not be infringing upon those people who legitimately have the right to own and bear firearms.”

Ujifusa: “We can have stronger gun safety laws. Again, even speaking with people who are gun-owners, they agree that that is a way forward, that we could make laws that make it safer to have guns in our community. Again, we have the police chiefs supporting the legislation that passed, and even my most conservative friends would certainly support the views of the police.”

What should the government’s role be in protecting our environment?

Ujifusa: “I believe we have an important role to play on several fronts. One, you can see that people in Florida are really at risk for serious harm because so many are lying in coastal areas, and that is exactly the situation in Portsmouth and Bristol. We have to take measures that will protect the safety of our residents.” As a member of the Town Council, Ujifusa said, she wrote an application for a grant from the R.I. Infrastructure Bank that assisted with resiliency efforts in Common Fence Point and Island Park. “I’d like to move at the state level to do more to enforce the Act on Climate bill, which is a great first step but needs to be built on because it does not have, for example, penalties for failure to see certain goals. We need to protect our people, we need to control carbon emissions.”

Mendonça: “Without a doubt, we live in a coastal community and we have to be aware of any break walls and seawalls to make sure they’re properly reinforced and supported to prepare for some of the sea level rise that will occur. Certainly the federal government is a great resource to be able to provide that, but I think we also have to look at what’s imposed upon us and try to make sure we’re not imposing heavy economic barriers to residents of Bristol and Portsmouth by some of these acts without thinking them all the way through as to what the plan is and what is the end goal. Have we done any prep work, have we done any testing, do we know how this is going to impact them? We have to be cost-conscious as well for the individual taxpayers in the district here.”

What is your position on charter schools?

Mendonça: “Charter schools do serve a role. I think there has to be a balance with charter schools and public schools. Having someone very close to me who’s been a public school teacher for 30 years, I understand the impacts of being able to move money out of districts and how that hurts those individual schools. At one point there was a governor who believed in it and you thought there would be more funding to try to help, because clearly there are very poor-performing areas. Our inner cities are poor-performing. When you look at the taxes, when you look at the school state aid formula and how much has been taken out of the Bristol-Warren community and how much has been taken out of Portsmouth that’s been shuffled up to the Providence school system — 90-some percent of their budget is funded by that — to properly fund this, we have to educate the kids or we’ll continue to be in a downward spiral.”

Ujifusa: “I do not support expanding charter schools. When you have two tracts like this — public schools and charter schools — you are draining public school money to fund that second tract. I understand there are charter schools in the inner cities that purport to help children more, however I believe it would be a better use of our money to shore up our public school system because to have two different systems only costs more money, and it also creates two separate groups of students, and that isn’t right.” As for the state funding formula, she said “you need to have someone at the State House that’s going to be able to understand it and try to do what’s best for our community. In Portsmouth, we suffered because transportation costs were not included properly in the school funding formula, and I will work to make sure that gets fixed. The school funding formula is about to be renewed, and the Senate is leading a workshop that I attended … and I think it’s important to have someone in the State House who has already worked closely with our School Committee and is in close contact with teachers to understand the situation.”

What are your views on how Rhode Island has spent, and is planning to spend, federal ARPA funds?

Ujifusa: “It would be something I’d have to do more research on to get very specific, but in general we should not be using those funds to do one-shot payments that disappear but are getting built into the budget so that we might have to rely on them to maintain programs. That’s my fear. At least in Portsmouth, we made sure we were spending the money on infrastructure and not trying to create future budget deficits, so I’m a little concerned at the state level that perhaps money is being given away as a one-time short in the arm, rather than things that are going to last over time such as infrastructure and payments for programs that could be self-sustaining later on.”

Mendonça: “I’m disappointed that we haven’t done more with that money. We know there is an affordability issue, we know there’s the high cost of energy. Rhode Islanders are hurting. The governor should be able to free up some of that $750 million or so that’s remaining to be able to try to provide some economic relief to all of Rhode Island. There’s certainly money they can use to plug the budget but we’ve talked about how it’s been a fiscal deficit, that the budget has been running in the red for years. In this past year, we actually have a profit. I would advocate we should be doing something more with that money.”

What is an important issue to you that you have not already talked about tonight?

Mendonça: Without a doubt, talking to the people of Bristol and Portsmouth, it is the economy and the affordable housing issue. People are really being hurt. They don’t know what the electric bill is going to be, what their oil bill is going to be. Affordable housing — I have a daughter who’s paying a lot for rent with a roommate, and I’m hearing that from people in Bristol and Portsmouth. Where are they going to live, because it’s so expensive? There are some things we can do at the state level, to try to help from an economic standpoint, and also from a housing affordability standpoint, to try to make it easier, whether it’s looking at building and zoning laws, to meeting with the building trades and finding out what are some of the obstacles they have in order to build more and faster, so we can keep our kids in the district. We need them to take care of us when we grow old.”

Ujifusa: “Our state’s approach to economic development must stop focusing on corporate welfare, which just gives large cash or tax breaks to large corporations without proof that Rhode Islanders are actually benefitting. We need to follow what has followed in other states and invest in public infrastructure, create an educated workforce and pass legislation that does more than benefit narrow special interests. We should also stop assuming that privatization of government functions benefits Rhode Islanders. We must audit the private companies that are running our state Medicaid system and also acting as pharmacy benefit managers. Other states have found that these managed care organizations and pharmacy benefit managers were unjustifiably costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars each year. In addition, the state should reverse the 2006 tax cuts for the wealthiest Rhode Islanders; today, that would be people making over $450,000. Instead of creating the intended ‘trickle-down’ effect, surprise, this policy simply reduced the state income at which in turn reduced state aid to municipalities, and forced municipalities to raise taxes on property owners, thus shifting the tax burden to the middle class. I think if you look at my record on the Town Council, we’ve been incredibly, fiscally prudent.” 

Closing statements

The forum’s format also gave the candidates the opportunity for the following closing statements:

Mendonça: “I want to share your concerns about higher heating costs, doubling of electricity bills, high grocery bills, the higher costs to have a roof over your heads and your children’s, and the high cost of every day items. There are a few steps that I will take legislatively to reduce the economic squeeze on you, such as reducing the sales tax, readjusting the home heating assistance formula, enforcing the affordable housing laws that are on the books, and making it easier to build.”

Ujifusa: “I want to address an underlying concern that I hear at all the doors, that we are in a situation now where politics seems so fraught with conflict that nothing can get done. I want to point out that in my own personal experience is that when I was a parent raising young children, I would have other parents watch my kids — the most precious thing in the world to me — because I knew they would pick them up on time, they would feed them, they’d make sure they had a coat when they when outside. And I never knew what their political views were. When you find a goal, you can work towards it without getting caught up in distractions about political labeling and theoretical differences. You focus on the goal, and you get things done, and I think that is the model of the person that you will elect if you elect me to go to the Senate. I focus on specific tasks, I’ll work with anybody of any political stripe, because we will all be working to achieve the same goal.”