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Garrahy boasts that he has been most concerned with luring new high-technology and offshore oil drilling companies to the state, which has helped cut its unemployment rate from 11.1% in 1975 to 7.3% last month. The state also is running an $8.5 million budget surplus. In contrast, notes Garrahy, Cianci has failed to stem Providence's mounting deficit, which could run as high as $26 million by the end of this fiscal year. Says Garrahy: "He simply cannot manage a budget adequately." Responds Cianci: "I've had to fix a dying city, and there are still things to be done." According to the latest polls, voters would prefer that he remain in Providence and do them.
WEST VIRGINIA. As Governor from 1969 to 1977, Arch Moore, 57, was a wily, backslapping politician who relished a tough fight, whether with the Democratic legislature or a Democratic candidate for his office. In 1972, he soundly thrashed Democrat John D. Rockefeller IV, even though Moore was outspent by $1.5 million to $700,000. Barred by state law from running for a third consecutive term, Moore went back to his law practice for four years, enabling Rockefeller to win election. Now, Moore is running again, and against Rockefeller.
The chief issue is money. Moore accuses the incumbent of trying to buy the election. Indeed, Rockefeller expects to spend more than $5 million on the campaign (vs. Moore's $750,000), much of it from his personal $20 million fortune. He is making heavy use of TV, including buying air time on stations as far away as Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C. He also held gargantuan picnics in 33 of the state's 55 counties. In all, he fed about 100,000 voters fried chicken and a campaign pitch. Rockefeller, who leads in the polls, argues that his wealth ensures voters of his incorruptibility—an oblique reminder of Moore's tax problems with the IRS and his acquittal in 1976 on charges of extorting $25,000 from a company seeking a bank charter.
Rockefeller maintains that, as chairman of the President's Commission on Coal, he can give the state's mining industry a powerful boost if he is reelected. Scoffs Moore: "I hear a lot about clout these days. You use the clout in the first four years of your administration, not in the second."