Steve Laffey

Stephen Patrick Laffey (born 1962) is an American politician and businessman who served as Mayor of Cranston, Rhode Island from 2003 to 2007.

Laffey was born in 1962 in Warwick, Rhode Island, to John and Mary Laffey.

He grew up with four other siblings and at the age of four his family moved to Cranston.

Laffey's childhood was less than perfect.

His eldest brother died of AIDS and two other siblings suffered from schizophrenia.

His father worked as a toolmaker and union steward at Armbrust Chain Company while his mother worked as a night nurse.

Laffey attended Cranston High School East where he was described as an "assertive and aggressive student."

He was co-captain of the basketball team and president of the student council.

Laffey is credited as being the first person in his family to go to college.

He decided to apply to Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, on the advice of his high school history teacher and was accepted with full scholarship.

He attended Bowdoin from 1980 to 1984 where he majored in economics.

While at Bowdoin, Laffey began getting involved in politics.

He co-founded the Bowdoin Patriot, the school's conservative newspaper, and was elected president of the student government.

He also co-hosted the radio show The Joe Show on WBOR with his roommate Tom Marcelle.

He was also credited as being responsible for a full-fledged conservative movement at the university.

Upon graduating magna cum laude from Bowdoin in 1984, Laffey attended Harvard Business School.

He received a full ride to Harvard from the George and Mary Knox Scholarship at Bowdoin.

While at Harvard, he was published in the Wall Street Journal for an op-ed entitled What They Do Teach You at Harvard Biz. He graduated with an MBA from Harvard in 1986.

Laffey had a stated goal of becoming the president of a financial firm by the time he was 40 years old.

In June 1992, he began working for Morgan Keegan & Company, a Tennessee-based brokerage firm with $500 million in revenues and over 2,000 employees.

He worked in various positions within the company including director of research, head of equity trading, head of institutional sales, and chair of two venture capital funds.

In 2000, he was named president and chief operating officer at the age of 38.

He worked a total of 9 years for the company.

As President and COO, Laffey was responsible for a number of tasks including everything from administrative tasks to oversight of the company's private equity and institutional equity business.

One company insider described him as being in charge of everything except bond trading and the Wall Street Journal cited him as the "sole decision maker" over picking stocks for the firm's focus list.

He also served as the chairman of several investment committees and directly oversaw the firm's group of private equity investments and their analyst research branch.

He left the company in 2001 after initiating and overseeing the sale of the firm to Regions Financial Corporation, a deal reported to be worth $789 million.

He was replaced by Doug Edwards; and, in addition to Edwards, Keegan hired three additional executives to assume the duties of Laffey.

Upon leaving Keegan, Laffey went to Vermont during the summer of 2001.

While there, he attended a retreat at Camp of the Woods, a Christian conference center in the Adirondacks.

He attended the retreat with some of his Harvard Business School classmates and it was at that time that he stated he felt the "call" to enter politics.

Laffey was quoted as saying:

"When I was asked where I was from, I said I was from Cranston, Rhode Island,' Laffey recalls. 'Why did I say I was from Cranston? I'd been away for 20 years. But I felt I was supposed to go back to Cranston, Rhode Island, even though I didn't know why."

Laffey moved back to Cranston with his wife and children and ran for mayor in 2002.

Laffey challenged well-known Democrat Aram Garabedian in 2002 for mayor of Cranston.

He recruited numerous local and well-known Cranston residents, including Democratic gubernatorial candidate executive committee member Norman Orodenker who stepped down from his position to assist Laffey with his campaign.

A former member of the Republican Party (now unaffiliated), Laffey lost primary bids for the United States Senate from Rhode Island in 2006 and the House of Representatives from Colorado's 4th congressional district in 2014.

A former executive of Morgan Keegan & Company, Laffey wrote the 2012 documentary Fixing America.

In February 2023, Laffey announced he would seek the Republican nomination for the 2024 United States presidential election.

He withdrew from the race on October 6, 2023, and left the Republican Party to become an independent.