That description also fit an earlier Cicilline
opponent, former Providence Mayor Vincent
“Buddy” Cianci , a charismatic and seemingly
indestructible politician who ran the city for
more than two decades. Cicilline braved a run
to unseat Cianci in 2002 at a time when the
incumbent was fending off corruption charges
but still intent on winning a seventh term. By
that year’s end, Cicilline was headed to the
mayor’s office, Cianci to federal prison, and the
seeds were planted for a bitter political rivalry
that would last until Cianci died in 2016.
“If you can take on Buddy Cianci, you can
certainly take on Mark Zuckerberg,” said Darrell
West, a former political science professor at
Brown University in Providence who now
directs the Brookings Institution’s Center for
Technology Innovation.
Cicilline is adept at social media and drives a
Tesla, but until recently hasn’t been considered
among the tech policy wonks in Congress.
As a law student and lawyer, he didn’t spend
much time studying the nation’s century-old
antitrust laws, first used to target oil barons and
railroad monopolies.
Yet for those who have followed his career, it
fits into a trend of siding with the underdog.
For Cicilline, the federal government’s lack
of scrutiny as Google gobbled up its digital
advertising competitors and Facebook acquired
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