- Are you in favor of women's rights?

- Oh, 100& we are, not even- - So no opposition to Roe or no opposition to Dobbs, no opposition to abortion pills by mail or anything like that?

- Well, we're not getting into all those little bitty issues.

What I can tell- - Little bitty issue, that's one of the major issues of our time.

- Joe Shekarchi's gonna be Supreme Court Justice.

It's in part because Dan McKee didn't get out of the governor's race.

Now, was there horse trading going on?

- It's the PACS that actually drive the money to the candidates.

Out of the 14 or so house seats that we're looking at, we think we can pick up between six and eight.

(bright upbeat music) - And welcome into this episode of "Lively."

I'm Jim Hummel.

Joined this week by Bill Bartholomew, founder of the "Bartholomew Town Podcast," and making his "Lively" debut, David Leveque, who's with the League of Rhode Island Businesses.

House Speaker, Joe Shekarchi made it official late this week he is stepping down as the most powerful politician in Rhode Island.

We'll have more on that a little later.

But first, Democrats have had a stranglehold on the Rhode Island State House and Senate for decades with many seats going unopposed.

But could that change this year?

One business group hopes so, and has been not so quietly fundraising and recruiting candidates to take on the incumbents.

David, welcome to the show, first of all.

The League started a while ago, but you guys have been doing an awful lot behind the scenes.

Tell me how all of a sudden a guy who owns a business Brewed Awakenings is right in the middle of the political arena.

- Well, we got brought in just about a year and a half ago when the gun bill became hot, and some people reached out and said, "Can you get the speaker in a room?"

And we did.

And about 22 of us talked to the speaker and were convinced that we had to do something about that gun bill.

And from there, that started the group.

And we were told by the speaker to put a group together to be organized, to fundraise, to get candidates, and to be in it for the long term.

And from that point we did.

And that's how the group started.

And now we decided to go after both House and Senate seats to make a change up at the State House.

- As you walked out of the speaker's house door, do you think he ever thought that you were gonna follow his advice?

- No, and I think you even see that in the current, the news piece where on June, I think it was November 25th, where he said it's not a big deal.

It's not gonna happen.

It's people, we tell people to do this, and no one ever follows through.

So no, he didn't think we were gonna follow through.

- So League of Rhode Island Businesses was formed as a 501(c)(4), which means you can do political activity, donations though are not tax deductible.

And so your goal is to take out people who you think what?

- Well, let me back up a second.

We have multiple things.

We have, it's the League of Rhode Island Businesses main PAC is the original PAC, Political Action Committee.

From there we formed 39 more political action committees named after every city in town League of Rhode Island Businesses, Narragansett, LORIB, Warwick.

And then we decided to form a 501(c)(4) to be the main structure of the group that we could do social good for the community, and 49% could be for political action.

So it's the PACs that actually drive the money to the candidates, and where all the action's gonna come up with the State House.

That's not the 501(c)(4), but we do have the 501(c)(4) as a major group.

- What would you say is the ideological goal, or what's the litmus test as you evaluate candidates that may or may not fit your rubric?

- Well, there's a lot of different candidates.

Number one, we look that people have to follow the constitution.

Anybody that we decide to endorse, or anybody that's up there, constitution is your main, you know, that's your Bible, and then you go do what's right for your constituents.

We don't care about the parties anymore.

We think the two-party system is broken.

The Democrats don't like the Republicans.

The Republicans don't like the Democrats, and you could have good people on both sides and they don't help the system.

We look at people over party.

So we just want to get the right person in.

So the litmus test is gonna be a bunch of things.

One, do you follow the constitution?

And two, are you producing good pro-business bills?

We don't want people up the State House wasting energy and time and there's far too much of that.

- Well, what would you define as good pro-business activity and also not following the Constitution?

Which elected General Assembly member right now that you're primary or challenging in general is not following the Constitution?

- Well, we got, there's some 30 different seats we're looking at.

So we take up the whole podcast and we put all of them on - Give me one.

- Yeah, I'll give you one.

Julie Casimiro, you know she- - Casimiro.

- Casimiro, yep.

In district 31 North Kingstown rep seat, we got a drop on her that she didn't wanna vote for the gun bill.

Her constituents didn't want it, she didn't want it.

And that she was flippable.

This was about a year and a half ago.

- And you're talking about last year's gun bill 2025 which was the Assault Weapons Ban, Magazine, Large Capacity Magazines.

- That's correct, yep.

So we people in our group, we had a conference call with her and basically she said that, "I don't wanna do the bill, "my constituents don't want it, "I'm being forced to do it.

"And Jason Knight told me it was a good bill."

So based on all of that, we told her, "If you don't vote for the bill, "we'll help you stay in office."

'Cause she felt she would be primaried.

And at that time she decided that she's gonna vote for the bill.

She went against everything that she told us, if you haven't read a bill, if your constituents don't want it, and you don't want it, and you're only doing it because you're being pressured, that's pretty bad.

- So, but how is that unconstitutional?

- Well, voting for the gun bill is unconstitutional.

- Her act of voting for a piece of legislation is unconstitutional?

- In the Rhode Island constitutions, "The right to be around shall not be infringed."

And we believe that you should follow that.

So her voting for that, we look at that as a- - So the limus test is if someone is pro Ban on Assault Weapons, they are unconstitutional and therefore subject to challenge by your group?

- Yeah, that's one of the issues.

The other big pieces, we're not just a 2A group, we fought that 2A issue, but we're a bunch of business people from all different aspects of Rhode Island.

And we look at business policy as well as someone's not putting a good business policy.

- Would it be fair to say that you're not gonna be supporting progressive candidates, but as you go across the political spectrum, moderate Democrats, independents, Republicans, that's probably who's in your wheelhouse, right?

- It is correct.

- We don't want any far right people that are off the reservation, and we don't want any far left people.

We want middle of the road.

All we care about is people over party.

Are you doing what's right based on Rhode Island so we can have a strong business community- - Which as Bill says, is a matter of opinion.

- Right.

- And I get your point about whether voting for this or that.

Let's look at the larger historical thing here.

We used to have Republican governors, we had Ed DiPrete for years, we had Lincoln Almond, we had Don Carcieri, the legislature's been overwhelmingly Democrat probably since the '80s was the last time in 1983 when they had the big Rocco Quattrocchi and all that.

Most people don't know what I'm talking about, but the old timers will.

And I wonder, the Republicans under Sue Cienki six or eight years ago, recruited more candidates than you could shake a stick at, because a lot of times the seats go unopposed, and they had virtually no success at all.

- Correct.

- So a lot of people are looking at your group and saying, "Okay, he's recruiting candidates.

"What's gonna translate to getting bodies in the seats?"

How are you going to be successful?

- Well, we are successful because we are not looking at the two-party system.

- You're saying you're already successful.

- Well, it's not even a question, we're already successful.

We are looking at the people in the district.

So I'll give you an example.

Down in my town where I live in Narragansett, we have Elaine DeMario.

I might have even voted for her.

I didn't pay attention to the local politics.

So I was the problem.

And now we're trying to get people engaged to pay attention.

Know who your center is, know who your rep is.

Before this group even started with the 39 PACs, Mark Mesrobian came to me and said it was on a call and I was the second person he talked to, "I wanna run for Senate."

I went, "Wow, this is a great idea.

"I never even thought about it."

Mark's been a friend for 20 plus years.

He's a business owner, he's a wonderful gentleman.

Married, runs Bonnet Shores down in Narraganset for the last three years.

He's taken it from a successful operation to a major successful operation.

He's running as a pro-business democrat down in Narraganset.

He will take out Elaine DeMario, this is not even a question.

Mark Mesrobian set a state record history in seven weeks raising over $70,000.

That's a state record history for someone who's never been in office running.

After the last filing, the second quarter, he's over a hundred thousand dollars race.

This guy is talented, he's smart and he's gonna protect your rights, and he's gonna protect businesses.

He's the right guy for the job.

- When you say he is gonna protect rights, what rights are we talking about here though?

- Well, it could be, let's talk about the 2A rights.

He's gonna follow the constitution.

When you talk about businesses, he's gonna make sure that there's good pro-business law going in or bills and policies.

Here's- - Such as?

- Well, such as let's say they just put a bill in this session, and it was, "If you have 500 or more employees, you go from a 32 hour work week, I mean a 48-hour work week down to a 32-hour work week, and you lose 20% of your productivity.

And if you work any hours over the 32, they could be paid a time and a half and the 32-hour work would be at 40 hours that you were compensated at the original 40 hours.

That sent, even though that bill's never gonna pass, that's signal sent out across the entire country don't come to Rhode Island if you're a big company.

And if you're a big company in Rhode Island, you wanna expand past that 500 employee mark, you better move out of the state because we are gonna be coming after you.

And that's a problem.

- Hmm, yeah, I'm not familiar with that piece of legislation.

- You have never run for office and now you have a lot of candidates coming to you.

I wonder campaigning is different now than it was even four or five years ago before COVID.

What are your, each candidate can do whatever they want with his or her own money.

In your eye, where does this money get spent?

Is it social media a lot of, in these State House and Senate seats, it's door to door.

It's being a part of the community like you say, if they know the business owner.

How do you run a campaign, a successful campaign in 2026?

- Well, it's gonna be different for everybody how they run their campaigns.

But our group, it doesn't matter how much money we raise for somebody, our group, because we control 40 PACs, if the PACS individually decide- - And that's a little different.

That's a little different.

It's legal, but we've never seen this many individual PACs.

- Right, well we've seen it where you've had unions and other groups have two, three, four, five PACs.

So it's always been out there.

But what we decide to do is take it on steroids and win on the big playing table.

You can't make changes if you don't have resources.

By controlling 40 PACs with the group, we can literally put a million dollars on the table this year and anybody that runs for office, we can give them up to $80,000 because all PACs can contribute to that particular candidate, at two grand at a time it's done.

Whether it's Joe Shekarchi having a couple PACs or it's a union fire station, what you're having two, three, four, five PACs, they've always been doing it.

And if you look at their donations, you go look under the union donations or even some of these other PACs, you'll see aggregate $15,000.

Where'd that money come from?

We don't know.

It's because small contributions go in and at the end of the quarter, they put in $15,000 aggregate.

That's the same thing that the league is doing.

But to get to the piece about where they're spending the money, it's gonna be different for all the different candidates.

Mark Mesrobian who raised about a hundred grand, has spent less than $3,000 in the last six months.

His outreach to the community, his videos, his interaction, talking to people is probably off the chops.

It's one of the best candidates you could possibly have, or best campaigns that you possibly could have.

So he's not spending a lot of money doing it, he's just doing it very wisely.

- What percentage of your candidates are taking on incumbents in the primary and what are either gonna be independents or Republicans taking on somebody in the general election?

- No independence, as of this week, we are now probably 50-50 Republican and Democrat.

- So you're supporting some Democrats who are gonna take on who you see as Democrats who are maybe a little too far to the left in your mind?

- Oh yeah, yeah.

- And so what's the percentage of taking on incumbents versus the general election ballpark?

- I think we're probably, if I had to guess, maybe 70-30.

70-30 would be primary, and the other subject would be primary.

- Because the reality is that's where a lot of the elections are decided, right?

In the primary.

- Not even even a question.

- Exactly.

And I think for voters, right now, there's no doubt there's an appetite for change.

I think there's clearly that you can see it in a polling, you can see it anecdotally when you're talking about the governor's race in polling and even just sentiment right now.

But I wonder from a definition standpoint, 'cause there are a lot of pro-business groups in Rhode Island and organizations that are doing a lot of good work.

But I wonder when people look at an endorsed candidate from the League of Rhode Island Businesses, I think it's important that they understand the ideological makeup of what you're putting out there.

And you're kind of leading with two way, you're kinda leading with issues that are typically more right than left.

Do you think it's important to signal to Rhode Islanders where you are in terms of ideologically on some of these big issues?

For example, are you in favor of women's rights?

- Oh, 100& we are.

Not even another question.

- So, no opposition to Roe or no opposition to Dobbs, no opposition to abortion pills by mail or anything like that?

- Well, we're not getting into all those little bitty issues.

What I can tell you- - Little bitty issue, that's one of the major issues of our time.

- I understand, but what- - You don't have a position on it?

- Well, we're looking at here for our group is that we need pro-business.

Without a strong business community in Rhode Island, nothing survives.

It doesn't matter what you want to do.

If you don't have every single community of strong business and growing that, then Rhode Island's gonna be set back and we're gonna be in a situation we just can't afford to pay our bills, which we're already in.

So the candidates that we look at, we wanna make sure that they're producing bills or they're going up at the State House doing what's right for all Rhode Islanders and especially businesses.

Let's take energy for cost.

We are paying at least 25%.

I'm even told it's highest, 27% on energy more than we should, just because of the progressive bills that were put in that you gotta meet.

Wind and solar and buy the higher costs, we literally could stop that energy expense right now and put almost $30 million a month back in the hands of Rhode Island businesses and individual homeowners.

Just if we got rid of all those extra fees and those mandates of having to hit some sort of carbon neutral thing by a certain time period.

- So are you in favor of renewable energy?

Are you in favor of continuing our diversification of our energy sources?

Are you in favor of restructuring the way that our power is distributed?

And are you in favor of the way that power is, that energy is a profit venture right now?

Or should the grid be nationalized?

- Well, we're in favor of having, yes, everybody wants to have clean energy.

Everybody wants to move forward.

There should always be progress, but it shouldn't be yet to the point where it's gotta be funded and backed because it's not profitable, it's not successful.

Rhode Island Energy, I sat down with them not too long ago and they did a period study in the middle of this winter when we had all this snow and cold weather.

The renewable pot maybe was like a small two fraction, you know, 2, 3, 4, 5% Of what was producing for Rhode Islanders.

So if it was all renewal and we push it and we're spending all this money on that, it couldn't support the state for all the energy that you needed.

You have to have the regular local cost of fuel going down where you, you know, oil and stuff like that.

You can't say everything's gonna be wind and solar.

It just doesn't work.

- Right.

- Let me ask you one last question before we move on.

Realistically, what are you hoping in terms of numbers in the house and in the Senate?

- For us to win?

- [Jim] Yeah.

- Well, we think we- - I mean, I know even picking up one or two was gonna be considered a victory, but what, in your mind, when you play it out late at night, what do you think will be a victory in your mind?

- Well, I was told if we had one win, we'd be successful.

We see that we have the potential now- - Dave, if we can just save one child we'll be successful.

What realistically?

- Realistically we think we can, as of right now, we got four Senate seats that we think we can win.

We have another potential senator jumping on board.

If he does, that'll be sat five solid Senate seats that we win.

Out of the 14 or so house seats that we're looking at, we think we can pick up between six and eight.

- Last word.

- Yeah, I think, again, I just think it's important for Rhode Islanders to know ideologically where these types of groups stand.

So I just have one question.

Did Joe Biden win the 2020 presidential election?

- Well, we're not talking about Joe Biden.

- Well that's, I think that's a very important question in terms of establishing, I think you would understand that in an era where Republicanism is even fractured, do you personally believe that Joe Biden was elected president in 2020?

- Well, I can tell you, I believe that Joe Biden was a lousy president.

I can tell you that.

- Yes or no, was Joe Biden elected president in 2020?

- It's, I don't wanna go back and forth.

We're focusing on Rhode Island here.

And that's the big picture there.

- There couldn't be a more fundamental question to establish in credibility.

Was he elect, was Joe Biden elected president in 2020?

- You can say he was elected president.

- All right, let's hold it there.

What has been rumor for weeks is playing out in real time this week is Joe Shekarchi is stepping aside as Speaker of the House to put his hat in the ring for a Supreme Court justice seat.

Got a lot to get there between now and then.

Bill, let's begin with you.

You've been talking an awful lot about this.

There are a lot of steps to get from here to there.

I wonder why it took so long.

- Interesting.

Yeah, that's an interesting way to frame it.

Look, there's no doubt that Speaker Shekarchi has had enough time, has served enough time as speaker of the house to his satisfaction.

He's a little bit bored with the job.

So we've seen him flirt with the idea of running for governor.

We've known him to be interested in running for Senate.

There's no path for governor this year.

There probably won't be a pathway for governor anytime soon.

Senatorially, also, it's not likely that Senator Reed is gonna retire anytime soon, it seems.

- Yeah, he's up for a reelection this year.

- Exactly.

So, and something tells me he will get past Connor Burbridge in the Democrat primary.

So look, this is an obvious spot for Shekarchi given his appetite for some kind of capstone on his career, and the reality in front of him.

So there's that piece.

Now, was there horse trading going on?

We've heard a lot of questions about whether this is from an ethics standpoint, literally from an observational optic standpoint, is this the right thing?

But at this point, it seems like most people, other than a handful of commentators have accepted the idea.

Joe Shekarchi is gonna be Supreme Court Justice.

He probably is gonna be a Supreme Court justice in part because Dan McKee didn't get out of the governor's race.

And I think that's just the way that it is from one lens.

- Yep.

- What do you think about him stepping aside?

- Well, I think it was time for him to step aside.

I don't think he's doing enough up at the State House.

So do I think it's the right thing?

I don't, I'm not sure.

- I think this session, has a lot of it has been consumed with, if a lot of people have been frustrated and Mike Chippendale talked about this, the house minority leader, about how everything's, we're kind of waiting, is Joe gonna run for governor?

Is he gonna step aside?

And I think the interesting part maybe for your group is now you have the majority leader, Chris Paplauskas coming in, he's to the left of Shekarchi, and his potential majority leader, Katherine Kazarian is a little bit to the left of him.

So that changes the dynamic in the chamber even more for your group.

- It does, it means we gotta work harder to get more candidates up and running.

We got till the end of May and we'll shut our spigot off of getting candidates.

But yeah, it definitely makes it harder.

- Yeah, and I think that the complexion, I don't think the complexion of ideologically the shift in the general assembly is as profound as just the experience and the arbiter that Joe Shekarchi is.

He's a legitimate mind, when he assesses problems from a very fair standpoint.

I'm not saying that Blazejewski is not that, I don't know Chris that well, but we know that what we have with Shekarchi is a deliberative individual, and that is such an important quality of a speaker that actually makes him, the judgeship actually becomes more obvious when you think about that driving principle of Shekarchism.

But where we are right now in the general setting- - Is that a new term, Shekarchism?

- Yeah, it just happened right now.

- Yeah, we'll put that in a dictionary.

- All right.

- Not easy to say.

- I think he's gonna sell, don't sell Larry Brock, they're gonna be selling merch outside the stadium today, we got.

- But I wonder for your group, particularly as you're putting together candidates, I wonder how the rest of the general assembly session plays out, we're still relatively early.

I mean, I know it's late, but it's April and a lot of business, if it does veer to the left a little bit, that's gonna be a referendum for your candidates as they are knocking on people's doors, right?

- It would be, it would be.

But I think that there is enough time to get more candidates.

And if we get enough people to switch, let's take, let's go back to the Senate for example.

If we make four gains and we hold everything else that we have there, you got both the good Democrats and the good Republicans up there, the moderates, middle of the road column, that can team together and stop a budget.

And that's when you really start to make effect and change if you can hold up a budget.

So if we get five or six senators elected, then you got a lot of power up there.

On the house side, you're gonna start to be more of 8, 10, 12 changes before you can really do that.

But given where we are now, where we got six to eight potential candidates that can win, I mean, we just endorsed Billy Manzo for District 7 in Providence, you know, to go running.

That's a great seat.

I think we're really gonna pick that up.

You know, they're trying to put in Joanne Ryan from the city council, which isn't, you know, would be a bad play.

- Just to put a bow on this, the Ethics commission.

So the, we've got the process is he puts his name in it for the judicial nominating commission.

And this is what we happened with Senator Aaron Lynch Prata years ago.

- [David] That's right.

- The staff said this is not a good idea because of the revolving door.

We don't think she should get it.

The commission basically the commissioners said we're gonna not listen to what you're saying and they put her in there.

I wonder if that precedent affects Shekarchi.

You have an entirely new ethics commission.

- [David] Yeah.

- How do you think that's gonna play out before the Ethics commission?

- I think that does affect and what the argument is, if you look, and I've taken, I've took, I've gone through the ethics laws in Rhode Island recently, and at the end of the day, the main prohibited activity is staying within the same branch of government as an employee.

So what the argument here that they're gonna make and which now Justice Lynch Prata made was, you're leaving branches of government for a different job.

So there's- - Legislative judicial.

- Exactly.

So when you leave the branch that you're in for one of the other two, that does not trigger revolving door.

And that may be the simple argument.

Now Michael Gelensky at Roger Williams University, John Marion at Common cause, other people in this space may disagree with that, but at the end of the day it's happening in real time.

That's the precedent from Lynch Prata.

And it seems like there's nothing that's gonna stop Shekarchi from getting this.

- We got a couple of minutes left.

Late last week we heard the Providence Place Mall is being sold.

Joe Paolino I think a lot of people are kind of relieved that a local guy kind of wish they bought the Providence Journal all those years ago, right?

- And what did you think about that?

I mean, he's a businessman and malls are dying, but Joe Paolino sees something in the Providence Place Mall.

- He does.

Joe Paolino has a big investment in Providence as we all know.

And if this mall dies, it's already on the dying side, but if it dies, it's down for the city.

The biggest problem we have in the city of Providence is safety.

I live in Narragansett and I have so many people that don't come to Providence because the perception is, it's not safe.

But the best thing that happened with Joe Paolino in the Providence Place Mall was he literally gave the legal Rhode Island business an endorsement without saying the name.

He's no longer gonna support the same old people in office.

He's gonna start looking at the people who's the right person for that office.

Not just because it's my friend that we are able to get 'em in or it's my friend that I've been able to keep 'em in.

And that's what our group's about.

We look at the district, we look at the person, can we win?

Are they gonna do what's right for their constituents in the state of Rhode Island?

- Well, I was, Providence is is a safe city.

It's one of the safest cities in the country.

And even Mr.

Paolino even said that- - Yeah, you said perception, but a lot of people have that perception.

- Perception is an issue, there's no doubt about it.

Look, I think Mr.Paolino's acquisition of this, the mall with Pyramid Group, and when it goes through there still has, there's appraisals, there's a lot to do, there's a lot of legal work to make this happen.

If they close, if this goes through, they're talking about Costco, this, that and the other, I think there'll be, it will end up looking like a hard pivot at some point on this property.

I don't think it'll be a mall.

I think it's gonna become- - Residential, you think?

- I think, given- - Because I heard Joe Paolino say maybe not and maybe he has to pursue the businesses first.

I don't see a Costco at all.

I mean- - [David] No.

- You go to a Costco in North Carolina and or anywhere, it's like lots of carts, lots of people.

I mean, where are you gonna park?

How are you gonna get into the garage with your like 15, you know, rolls of toilet paper.

(David laughing) - Just lastly, police substation at the Providence Place Mall.

- What do you think about that?

- They shouldn't do a police substation.

The last thing we need is to make it feel anything like a prison in there.

And it's not that different from having a roving police officer have the substation, but Mr.

Paolino's idea to have retired Providence police officers as security and get rid of traditional security guards, super smart idea, that would be great.

A Hugh Clements like figure leading the security at Providence Place Mall changes perception.

- Last word on that.

- Yeah, I agree, I agree.

But I also think that you're probably right, it's gonna end up being some sort of mixed use like a lot of these big developments are doing.

'Cause the mall system isn't the way it used to be anymore.

- [Jim] All right.

- So I think there'll be a change.

- Let's go to outages and or kudos.

Bill, what do you have this week?

- I think back to my youth tuning into WRX on 103.7 fm, then WFNX briefly, an alternative rock format flip then, some of the greatest radio ever, Dale & Neumy on WEEI, waking up during Red Sox fever and really falling in love with radio and the notion of talk radio through that band.

Now congratulations to Ocean State Media who are occupying 103.7 FM as of this week.

A lot of history there.

That's a big piece of real estate responsibility and I'm sure that they will be great stewards of it.

It's great to have people on the radio.

So you've got 99.7 FM for WPRO, 103.7 for Ocean State Media.

People should get on the radio.

It's free, it's not entirely clear, the billionaires, but it's a lot less connected to billionaires than your typical communications members.

- Yeah, and if you wanna hear more about that, our CEO, Pam Johnston has a nice piece.

She talked with Lewis Hernandez on the radio side just about what this means.

You can see that on the Ocean State Media YouTube page.

Outrage or kudo, you have the last minute, sir.

- Yeah, I'm gonna stick on the political scene and I got one of both, outrage.

I'm really disappointed at what I'm seeing up at status of how many entrenched politicians continue to keep the same old people in up there.

They will defend their people that they work with their colleagues, even if they're producing bad bills.

So I'm outraged by that.

Kudos to Mike Chippendale who jumped in to say that the league is gonna be one of the leading sources of changing Rhode Island and it's regardless of party and kudos to him.

- All right, we will see both of you, Bill and Dave, it's a quick half hour.

Thank you.

- Thank you very much.

- Thanks for having me.

- Hope you'll join us back here after your debut.

Good to see you.

And thank you for joining us.

Be sure and check us out on Facebook, X, Instagram, and on the Ocean State Media YouTube channel.

We'll see you next time right here on "Lively."

(gentle upbeat music) - [Narrator] "Lively" is generously supported in part by John Hazen White's Lookout.