Geoffrey Schoos appears to be one of those Democrats who wants to return the party to its rightful role as the party of progress and hope for the majority of Americans. A vocal advocate in letters to The Cranston Herald on many topics including election reform and tax issues, Schoos was one of the voices early on to identify the “toxic” political environment fostered by our current Mayor. Despite recognizing the problems of Laffey’s tenure as Mayor, Schoos has also shown himself to be capable of non-partisanship, defending the Mayor’s right to freedom of speech. Schoos has also cast light on problems with our local Democratic party leadership, criticizing party chair, Mike Sepe, in this enlightening (and amusing) letter to The Herald.

We have been interviewing Geoff Schoos via email and will publish this interview on May 11th. In the meantime, here is the Projo article on his campaign announcement.

CRANSTON — Democrat Geoffrey Schoos has announced that he will challenge District 26 Sen. Beatrice Lanzi in a primary.

Schoos and Lanzi are well acquainted: Schoos was the campaign manager for Lanzi’s primary opponent in 2004, former Sen. Thomas Izzo.

Schoos, 57, a lawyer in private practice, ran for office only once before, in a three-way 1980 Democratic primary in which he and Stephen Fortunato — now a Superior Court judge — challenged then-Congressman Edward P. Beard. He proudly describes himself as a liberal Democrat and says his national and state parties have beem tending to lose their way.

“We’ve sort of forgotten who it is we represent and what it is we stand for,” Schoos said.

He said he expects that Lanzi will carry the party’s endorsement in the primary. But he asserted that he can appeal to the average Democratic voter — whereas he said Lanzi garners much of her support from Cranston’s public employee unions, particularly the police and fire firefighters.

“Once you become too dependent on the support of the unions, your perspective becomes limited,” Schoos said. While he is not against unions, he added, he is wary of office holders who are closely tied to one constituency.

Schoos said that one of his priorities is to ensure that companies that are given tax breaks to encourage them to move to Rhode Island provide the new jobs they promised.

“Are we getting the return on our investment?” he said.

He said he is also interested in tackling election reform and promoting skills development in the Rhode Island work force.

Lanzi, 39, was elected to the first of five terms in the House in 1992. In 2002, she ousted Senator Izzo, a seven-term incumbent, in a primary. Two years later, she fended off Izzo’s bid to regain the Senate seat.

Lanzi is a vice chairwoman of the Senate Finance Committee and sits on the chamber’s Education and Labor Committees.

The 2004 Izzo-Lanzi primary went down to the wire, and the margin of victory — 715 to 685 — led to the prospect of a manual recount, especially given that polling place workers apparently had fed some provisional ballots — those set aside for review because of questions about voter registration — into vote-counting machines.

But the number of provisional ballots turned out to be fewer than expected, and the Board of Elections affirmed Lanzi’s victory. She went on to turn back a Republican challenge by Randy Rossi that November.

Schoos said that the 2004 experience demonstrated that the election system needs reform — better-trained poll workers, and a more effective division of responsibility between the Board of Elections and the Secretary of State.

“The transparency wasn’t really there, the accountability wasn’t really there,” he said.

Lanzi said that her priorities for the coming session are addressing the high cost of living in Cranston and statewide, and reducing the cost of health care. She said she has not started campaigning in earnest yet, but regularly sees and discusses issues with voters during visits to places such as senior centers, schools and nursing homes.

Schoos grew up in Warwick and came to Cranston in 1972. He has an undergraduate degree from Rhode Island College and a law degree from New England School of Law, in Boston. He lives on Traymore Street with his wife, Kathleen. The couple’s daughter Jeannine is a senior at New York University.