Gina Raimondo Math Convinces Rhode Island of America’s Prospects
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Gina Raimondo was running a Rhode Island venture-capital firm in Providence when the mother of two read with alarm that a growing fiscal crisis might force cutbacks in library hours and bus service in 2009.
The threat drove her to seek public office for the first time. “I literally put the paper down and said, ‘I have to do this, I have to run,’” the Democrat said in an interview. Raimondo, 40, won the state treasurer’s office in 2010 with 62 percent of the vote, partly on a pledge to revamp pensions, an issue so politically toxic her backers urged her to avoid it.