11 to Watch in 2011: Gordon Fox

11 to Watch in 2011: Gordon Fox

In some ways Gordon Fox is the anti-Speaker. Charming, smart and experienced melded with a lower-middle-class background, biracial and openly gay. If America is the world’s melting pot, then Fox is America’s poster child.

He grew up in the historically black neighborhood off Mount Hope, attended Classical, Rhode Island College and then off to Northeastern for law school – all the time working full-time.

Fox enters 2011, his first full-term after succeeding Bill Murphy, with a rock-solid majority and a new Independent governor who won with 36% of the vote. For Fox and the rest of Rhode Island’s leadership the challenges are daunting.

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It’s the Economy…

Fox, Governor-elect Lincoln Chafee and Senate President Teresa Paiva-Weed face a state with a massive budget deficit, double-digit unemployment and a public education system at war with itself. (Oh, did we mention the unfunded pension liability?)

Opportunity

But, Fox may be the right person at the right time. Smart, passionate and trusted – he could drive change in 2011 that reinvents the relationship between government and public unions and drives private sector job growth.

Speaker Fox is one of the 11 to watch in 2011.