Former Providence Mayor Vincent Buddy Cianci dies at 74

“I send my condolences to his family and friends”.

His bare-fisted style of politics made Cianci larger than life even in a tiny state known for the outsized personalities of its public figures. Here’s how Cianci put it after announcing his second comeback attempt in 2014 in a hallway at the talk-radio station where he worked as an afternoon host. FILE – In this December 5, 2002, file photo, former Providence, R.I., Mayor Vincent “Buddy” Cianci Jr., walks away from the media following an impromptu news conference outside the Biltmore Hotel where he was living in Pro…

Cianci was loved and reviled in a city that, like America, has been rocked by financial troubles and shaped by demographic change.

Cianci eventually wrote an autobiography, “Politics and Pasta: How I Prosecuted Mobsters, Rebuilt a Dying City, Advised a President, Dined with Sinatra, Spent Five Years in a Federally Funded Gated Community, and Lived to Tell the Tale”.

Paolino, former U.S. Ambassador to Malta, says Providence “lost its greatest champion” when Cianci died. After his release in 2007, Cianci joined the Providence ABC affiliate WLNE-TV as chief political analyst, where he hosted a daily political segment called The World According to Buddy and a weekly public affairs program, On the Record With Buddy Cianci. The city’s first Italian-American mayor, Cianci quickly became a national star in Republican circles, delivering a prime-time speech during the 1976 Republican National Convention. During Cianci’s second tenure it grew by 8 percent.

“Whether you loved him or hated him, you couldn’t ignore him; endlessly fascinating and endlessly exacerbating”, said Mike Stanton, a former reporter for The Providence Journal and the author of “The Prince of Providence”, a 2003 best-seller about Cianci. But the struggling city of Providence had profound problems, as did its mayor.

A hospital spokeswoman said Thursday morning that Cianci’s condition was unavailable.

He was diagnosed with cancer in 2014 and underwent chemotherapy.

In November, Cianci returned to City Hall for his first significant visit since his conviction.

Cianci was the longest serving mayor in city history.

He was forced from office in 1984, however, after pleading no contest to felony assault of a man he believed to be sleeping with his estranged wife, Sheila. He also ran again for mayor in 2014 but was defeated.