Providence Mayor Brett Smiley has been thrust into the national spotlight following the mass shooting at Brown University that killed two students and injured nine more.
So what else should you know about the first-term mayor of New England’s third-largest city?
Here’s an overview.
He was raised in the Chicago suburbs
Smiley, 46, grew up in the Chicago suburbs and earned an undergraduate and graduate degree from DePaul University. He was heavily involved in Democratic politics, and moved to Rhode Island to run then-lieutenant governor Charlie Fogarty’s campaign for governor in 2006. Around the same time, he met his future husband, Jim DeRentis, one of the most prominent realtors in Rhode Island. In the years that followed, he opened a campaign finance compliance company and then became a top aide to Providence mayor Jorge Elorza and Rhode Island governor Gina Raimondo.
He was elected mayor in 2022
Smiley left his job as state director of administration in 2021 to run for mayor (he previously ran for mayor in 2014, but dropped out of the race before the Democratic primary. He won a three-way way primary with 41.8 percent of the vote, and faced no opposition in the general election.
He calls himself a moderate Democrat
Both as a candidate and as the mayor, Smiley has pitched himself as a technocrat who largely avoids the ideological battles that have defined the Democratic party in recent years. He tends to be publicly supportive of his police department, and has pushed back against a more progressive City Council that has occasionally clashed with the city’s police union over department policies.
He’s a gun safety advocate
Although he acknowledges he owns a firearm and enjoys recreational shooting, Smiley has long supported gun safety measures in the state. As a candidate for mayor in 2014, he proposed a 10 percent supplemental sales tax on all firearms sold in the state with the proceeds being distributed to anti-violence efforts. He didn’t make that proposal during his 2022 campaign. More recently, he has supported the state’s ban on the sale of assault-style weapons and a ban on high-capacity magazines.
He functions as Providence’s public safety commissioner
While the last two mayors had former State Police colonel Steven Pare as the city’s public safety commissioner, Smiley chose to not fill the role when he took office in 2023. That means he functions as both mayor and public safety commissioner, and it’s part of the reason that he has been front-and-center at all of the press briefings following the shooting.
Dan McGowan can be reached at dan.mcgowan@globe.com. Follow him @danmcgowan.