RI gov candidate Chafee's campaign manager resigns

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — The campaign manager for independent Rhode Island gubernatorial candidate Lincoln Chafee resigned Thursday after he acknowledged he received unemployment benefits while listed on the payroll of the Chafee campaign.

J.R. Pagliarini stepped down after inquiries from the media, although he maintains no intentional wrongdoing occurred, according to Mike Trainor, the acting campaign manager, and a statement from Pagliarini.

Trainor attributed the overlap in the payroll and unemployment benefits to a peculiarity of the campaign's payroll system: He was put on the payroll a month before he was actually paid, and his first paycheck came after his jobless benefits had stopped. However, Pagliarini resigned because he did not want political discussion of the matter to become a distraction.

Pagliarini's departure less than three weeks before the Nov. 2 election is the latest bad news for the Chafee campaign in the race to succeed term-limited Republican Gov. Don Carcieri. His main competitor in the race, Democratic General Treasurer Frank Caprio has been criticizing him for his disclosure last week that his old Senate campaign failed to pay taxes for five years due to his treasurers' misunderstanding of tax regulations.

Pagliarini was laid off last year from a job with the state board of higher education, which is chaired by Caprio's father.

He received his last unemployment check on Jan. 2 and officially started with the Chafee campaign on Jan. 4, Trainor said. The campaign's payroll system delays payments for several weeks for new employees, so he was listed on the payroll Dec. 19, Trainor said. But he was not paid until Jan. 15, after he had stopped receiving unemployment.

"This is an artifact of the odd holdback of the payroll service," he said.

"Sen. Chafee has accepted his resignation with reluctance, and is confident that when J.R. is given due process, it will be proven that no intentional wrongdoing has occured," he said.

Pagliarini painted it as a political attack.

"Those political operatives who created this story chose to wait until a few short weeks before the most important election in recent history ... to leak documents to make it appear I am someone other than the person I am, and who I am known to be," he said in a written statement. "As is often the case with last-minute political attacks, when the full story is told I will be vindicated."

Trainor said one of the media organizations that asked about the benefits, WJAR-TV, had presented the campaign with "illegally obtained records" about Pagliarini's unemployment benefits, which are private under state law. Pagliarini said he hired a lawyer to "pursue every avenue to right this wrong" and restore his reputation.

There have been no reliable polls in the race, which pits Chafee and Caprio against Republican John Robitaille, a former Carcieri aide, and Ken Block, an entrepreneur who is running with the nascent Moderate Party. But Caprio has dominated fundraising in the race, having raised $2.7 million. Chafee has raised far less, and has loaned himself $1.1 million to wage the campaign without any party support.

Robitaille and Block have trailed far behind in the money race, with Caprio and Chafee flooding TV airwaves with their ads.

Pagliarini worked for Chafee when he was a Republican U.S. senator, until Chafee lost re-election in 2006. He then became a deputy chief of staff for Carcieri before moving to the higher education board in 2008.

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