< The 2014 Pension 40: The Battle Is On
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Gina Raimondo
Governor-elect
Rhode Island
Last year: 11
“I was the underdog,” Gina Raimondo says of the 2014 Rhode Island gubernatorial election she narrowly won, the first Democrat to be elected governor of the state in 24 years. As a woman and a political newcomer, despite serving four years as Rhode Island’s general treasurer, Raimondo, 43, had a few strikes against her in her race against Allan Fung, the Republican mayor of Cranston. The biggest challenge, in both the primary and general elections, was her leading role in the Rhode Island Retirement Security Act of 2011, which reformed the state’s underfunded, $7 billion defined benefit retirement fund over objections from most state employee unions. The bill, currently being challenged in the courts, tied cost-of-living adjustments to the plan’s funded levels and investment returns, and created a hybrid defined benefit and defined contribution system. For Raimondo, a Rhodes scholar and Yale Law School grad who went into venture capital, putting the state pension fund on a sound fiscal basis was just the first step in her plan for an economic revival of Rhode Island, which has one of the highest unemployment rates in the U.S. Reducing the amount of state revenue going to pensions gives Rhode Island the opportunity to invest in other things. “Having the money to invest in the future and ability to attract businesses was totally enabled by what we did around pensions,” she says. Raimondo’s election shows that it is possible for a Democrat to take on pension reform and survive. “People love leaders who actually get things done,” she says.
The 2014 Pension 40
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| Bruce Rauner Illinois | John and Laura Arnold Laura and John Arnold Foundation | Randi Weingarten American Federation of Teachers | Rahm Emanuel Chicago | David Boies Boies, Schiller & Flexner |
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| Randy DeFrehn National Coordinating Committee for Multiemployer Plans | Damon Silvers AFL-CIO | Laurence Fink BlackRock | Chris Christie New Jersey | Robin Diamonte United Technologies Corp. |
| 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 |
| Ted Eliopoulos California Public Employees’ Retirement System | John Kline Minnesota | J. Mark Iwry U.S. Treasury Department | Gina Raimondo Rhode Island | Phyllis Borzi U.S. Labor Department |
| 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 |
| Orrin Hatch Utah | Abigail Johnson Fidelity Investments | Ted Wheeler Oregon | Caitlin Long Morgan Stanley | James Hoffa International Brotherhood of Teamsters |
| 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 |
| Amy Kessler Prudential Financial | Alejandro García Padilla Puerto Rico | Christopher Klein U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Caifornia | Steven Rhodes Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Michigan | Kevin de León California |
| 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 |
| David Draine Pew Charitable Trusts | Jordan Marks National Public Pension Coalition | Sam Liccardo California | Joshua Rauh Stanford Graduate School of Business | Karen Ferguson and Karen Friedman Pension Rights Center |
| 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 |
| Timothy Blake Moody’s Investors Service | Kathleen Kennedy Townsend Center for Retirement Initiatives, Georgetown University | Edward (Ted) Siedle Benchmark Financial Services | Daniel Loeb Third Point | Judy Mares Employee Benefits Security Administration, U.S. Labor Department |
| 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 |
| Andrew Biggs American Enterprise Institute | Andy Stern Columbia University | Kenneth Mehlman KKR & Co. | Teresa Ghilarducci New School for Social Research | A. Melissa Moye U.S. Treasury Department |
