NEWS

R.I. adult entertainment 'a very powerful lobby'

Brian Amaral
bamaral@providencejournal.com
The Foxy Lady, Club Desire and the Cadillac Lounge [The Providence Journal, file]

Rhode Island's Republican Party chairman said his party is considering filing a complaint with the Board of Elections over political contributions from the strip-club industry that falsely listed the donors’ employer as the strip club industry’s former high-powered lobbying firm.

“This sounds like another sad episode of Rhode Island Vice,” Rhode Island Republican Party Chairman Brandon S. Bell said in an email.

Bell’s comments came after a report in Sunday’s Providence Journal that revealed the true source of thousands of dollars in political contributions from people who own or work at strip clubs. Recipients included House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello, Gov. Gina Raimondo and former lieutenant governor candidate Aaron Regunberg, all Democrats.

When donors give more than a certain amount, they have to say where they work, an important transparency measure so the public can see who is trying to influence policy.

In a series of donations from 2014 to 2018 in Board of Elections records, the public didn’t have a chance: Donations from people involved in strip clubs listed their employer as the Goldberg Law Offices. Firm principal Robert D. Goldberg lobbied for the Rhode Island Entertainment Association, made up of leaders from various strip clubs in the state, until 2015.

Goldberg said he did not know why the contributions listed his firm as the employer of the people involved in the strip-club industry, and that it “has never been my practice to bundle political donations.” Donors listed in campaign finance records as working for Goldberg’s lobby shop included the owner and the president of Club Desire, the owner and managers of the Foxy Lady, and employees of the Cadillac Lounge.

Mattiello was the first to receive the donations in question. He said the donors had “evidently” provided incorrect information to his campaign in 2014.

Bell, of the Rhode Island Republican Party, didn’t buy it.

“It is more likely that Mattiello was trying to hide this fact from more conservative constituents, that he takes money from the adult entertainment industry,” Bell said.

Bell added: “Between the possible legalization of marijuana, the expansion of gambling without voter approval and a new study commission on legalization of prostitution, Rhode Island may eventually be known as the brothel of New England.”

Criticism came from both sides of the aisle.

"It's disturbing enough that powerful politicians are taking money from the strip club industry,” state Sen. Samuel W. Bell, a Providence Democrat — no relation to the GOP chair — said in a written statement. “It's even more disturbing that Speaker Mattiello would try to obscure the source of the donations. It's also a serious problem that former high-level legislative leaders like Goldberg are lobbyists in the the first place."

Goldberg was formerly the Rhode Island Senate minority leader; his wife is state Supreme Court Justice Maureen McKenna Goldberg, who recently participated in a case related to the Foxy Lady strip club.

Bell, the state senator, said the justice clearly should have recused herself. (A spokesman for the court had said that she saw no reason to do so, because her husband doesn't represent the Foxy Lady and hasn't represented the strip-club industry association for several years.)

Former state Rep. Joanne Giannini said she wasn’t surprised by the mixing of politics and the sex industry in Rhode Island. It’s something she learned about when she was working to criminalize indoor prostitution a decade ago.

“It’s a very powerful lobby that they have,” Giannini said.

Among those who worked with Giannini to close the indoor prostitution loophole was University of Rhode Island women’s studies Prof. Donna Hughes. Hughes said in an interview that the newspaper’s findings rang true to her — both in the influence of the sex industry in politics and in the influence of organized crime in the sex industry.

“The candidates know it doesn’t look good if you’re taking political donations from questionable businesses,” Hughes said. “Especially when people that know the history of Rhode Island and Providence know that there’s an organized crime influence.”

In a related story, The Journal also reported that two members of the family that runs the Foxy Lady, in Providence, have connections to organized crime and convictions for organized criminal gambling, a fact that was not revealed in liquor-license applications. One of them, Gaythorne “Poochie” Angell Jr., also had a previously undisclosed financial interest in the club, according to court records unearthed by The Journal.

Other reactions to the Journal investigation into strip clubs in Rhode Island were more muted.

Mayor Jorge Elorza of Providence again declined to be interviewed about the newspaper’s findings. A spokesman for the mayor noted that the city and the Foxy Lady were in mediation ordered by the Rhode Island Supreme Court over the city’s effort to shut the club down in the wake of prostitution arrests in December.

Charles Newton, a commissioner on the Providence Board of Licenses — the city’s liquor authority — deferred to the mediation process.

“I do think we have some very strong, intelligent individuals working [for] and representing the city,” Newton said. “And so I defer to their expertise, especially on legal matters.”

City Council President Sabina Matos declined to be interviewed for this story, but said in a statement sent by a spokesman: “The Board of Licenses has a duty to ensure that a licensee is providing accurate information on their applications, and do so through testimony, and public hearings. If they later learn that false information was provided, I believe it imperative that they address those concerns immediately.”

Johanna Harris, a former chair of the Providence Board of Licenses who has since moved out of state but still follows the board's activities, said she saw a “mess of incompetence” at the city level.

“If somebody really dug into the ownership records of these clubs that are notoriously bad,” she said, “they’d find exactly what the Providence Journal article found.”