“Man, I sure wish this was a debate,” one candidate running to be Rhode Island’s next attorney general remarked during a two-hour forum Thursday night at the Dwares Jewish Community Center in Providence.
It was by design. Organizers at the Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island asked four of the candidates vying for the office to avoid direct exchanges to maintain a level of “model civil discourse” amid a time of growing polarization.
“Tonight, let us model the kind of community and democracy that we all want to be part of — one in which we can disagree strongly on policy and principle, while remaining committed to respectful dialogue across differences,” Emily Gaudreau, director of community advocacy and engagement, said when laying the ground rules of the forum…