New energy for the East Side.

Dear Neighbor,

My name is Michael Garman, and I’m a climate and democracy advocate. I’m a lifelong Rhode Islander, and I live at the corner of Olney and Prospect Streets on College Hill. I’m running to be your State Representative, because, now more than ever, we need Democratic leaders who will fight back at the State House against the cruelty of the national Republican agenda rather than abandon our principles. In recent decades, the General Assembly has time and again chosen to cut taxes for powerful corporate interests, reducing investments in healthcare, housing, and education for the most vulnerable, in order to enrich the most prosperous. We deserve leaders who will fight for economic equity and dignity for all.

I love Providence. I love having immigrant neighbors from across the world who share their cultures, cuisines and celebrations with us. I love living in a city with a vibrant queer community where my boyfriend and I can hold hands in public without having to fear for our safety. I love living blocks away from two world-class universities and all they have to offer. But I’m also afraid. Donald Trump and his allies are lawlessly deploying ICE, working to roll back LGBTQ+ protections and reproductive rights, and chilling academic freedom.

In the midst of the crises we are facing — as our constitutional order is being threatened, our neighbors are being kidnapped, the full force of climate change is being inflicted upon us, and the rights generations of activists fought fiercely to secure are being rolled back — the East Side, Providence, and all of Rhode Island deserve leaders who will stand up for everyone, no matter the personal cost.

The General Assembly’s extensive history of cutting Medicaid should alarm us all. Medicaid cuts affect all of us, not just Medicaid recipients. We have an acute provider shortage because our reimbursement rates are far lower than our neighbor states’. In 2012, my mother’s mother — my Grandma — became very sick. She couldn’t drive to church, pick my sister and me up from school, or cook the meals we loved. She was diagnosed with scleroderma, a rare condition that forced her to spend her final months on an oxygen tank before she passed away. That same year, our 17-term incumbent Representative, Edith Ajello, voted to cut Medicaid reimbursements and raise costs for oxygen tanks, wheelchairs and walkers. This was neither her first vote for Medicaid cuts nor her last. I believe we need to invest in Medicaid, not cut it, and I will always fight for a healthcare system that puts patients and providers over insurance executives’ wallets.

My dad was a professor in the Cultural and Historic Preservation program at Salve Regina. He taught me to appreciate our architectural beauty and the preservationists like Antoinette Downing who fought to save it from the wrecking ball, and he helped me see how addressing our housing crisis doesn’t have to mean compromising on preservation. Solutions like historic rehabilitation tax credits allow us to accomplish both goals. Housing affordability is an issue that affects me personally: I pay $1,150 a month to rent a 130 square foot room, and I have six roommates. We can’t afford to wait to build more housing in our state, and Providence can’t be the only community doing our part. No one should be priced out of our neighborhood because of a predatory landlord or the skyrocketing costs of homeownership and aging in place.

Academia wasn’t my dad’s true calling. He’d always wanted to be a farmer, but his parents told him it would have to wait until after his mid-life crisis. That’s exactly what happened. After my parents got divorced, my father and stepmother started an organic farm in Middletown, and I spent my summers there. The labor was grueling, but it taught me to work hard. And I had the privilege of knowing it wasn’t what I was going to do forever. The experience also taught me that not everyone is similarly fortunate. One of the farm’s largest clients is the local food pantry, and every time we made a delivery, we would chat with the people waiting in line. I picture their faces and remember their stories whenever I think about the General Assembly voting to defund Medicaid, affordable housing, and public schools in order to cut taxes for corporate interests.

I am firmly committed to tax equity and strongly disagree with Rep. Ajello’s votes to cut taxes for Citizens Bank, the Superman Building developer, and even Exxon. This commitment also means that I oppose regressive taxes, such as last year’s property tax increase, which disproportionately burdened single-family homeowners. (Rep. Ajello cosponsored the House bill authorizing the increase, as well as a more extreme proposal.) It’s easy to say that we should cut taxes to attract more businesses, but we already have the lowest corporate tax rate in New England, and businesses are still leaving for states like Massachusetts with higher tax rates. The solution is clear. We can keep families and jobs in our state by investing in services — quality public schools, infrastructure, and public transit — that make people want to move and stay here.

We need to fix the education funding formula to ensure that Providence gets its fair share from the state and use those extra funds to support teacher training, student mental health services, technology upgrades, and building repairs. We need to repair our roads and bridges and tighten our oversight of the contracts awarded for those projects to ensure that every dollar is spent effectively. We need to invest in the Transit Master Plan to improve the frequency and accessibility of RIPTA service. And we need to fund these services by taxing people and businesses relative to their ability to pay.

Growing up on an organic farm on an island meant I was staring the climate crisis in the face. It’s never been an abstract issue for me, and now it’s one I work on addressing every single day. After I graduated from Yale, I started working for an affiliate of the League of Conservation Voters, which advocates for clean energy, open space, and environmental justice. (The affiliate for which I work is not involved in Rhode Island politics and has no connection to my candidacy.) If we don’t reverse the General Assembly’s decision to weaken our renewable energy targets (for which Rep. Ajello voted), our future will be at risk. And it’s not enough to just have strong targets. We need to commit to investing in the programs needed to reach them, like strengthening our subsidies for green purchases (like electric vehicles, solar panels and heat pumps) and exploring creative options like balcony solar, which will help renters and condo owners access clean, affordable energy.

Climate action isn’t negotiable, and neither is defending democracy. I’ve spent years advocating for reforms like ranked choice voting that strengthen our power to hold our leaders accountable. Despite being a strongly Democratic state, we have some of the weakest voting rights laws in the country. I am committed to fighting to repeal our restrictive voter ID law, allowing same-day voter registration, and following Hawaii’s example by attempting a state-level workaround to Citizens United. I was very concerned to learn that, when Rep. Ajello chaired the Judiciary Committee under the infamous Speaker Gordon Fox, she overturned a unanimous vote to restore the Ethics Commission’s power to discipline legislators for voting on conflicts of interest — and her justification was a rule that didn’t exist. (By that point, she had already committed two campaign finance violations.) Now more than ever, we need Democrats who will protect democracy and clean government.

If I haven’t met you yet, I look forward to getting to know you soon! I’ll be talking to voters across the district until the primary and am eager to learn more about you and what matters most to you. Please visit MichaelJGarman.com and contact me at (401) 644-4108 or michaeljgarman10@gmail.com at any time. If you agree that this moment demands Democrats who will fight for our values and our neighbors, I hope to earn your vote in the primary on Wednesday, September 9th.

— Michael