Sabina Matos wants to win back Rhode Island’s trust

And then it all came crashing down.

Matos found herself mired in the most vexing of political scandals: a voter signature debacle that was both difficult to explain to average voters and that had just enough merit to entirely derail her campaign. She lost the Democratic primary in embarrassing fashion, finishing fourth and earning just 3,200 votes.

Now she finds herself picking up the pieces of her political career from a relatively sleepy office in state government that grants her far less power and has a smaller budget than she had when she was City Council president in Providence.

“Last year was tough,” Matos told me on Sunday, a phrase she uttered no fewer than six times during an hour-long lunch at La Lupita in Olneyville, the neighborhood she represented on the council. “But I’m a survivor.”

Having just turned 50, she’s going to need to prove herself all over again because she understands that she’s viewed as vulnerable as she begins thinking about 2026, when she plans to run for a second and final term as lieutenant governor.

There’s been talk that Central Falls Mayor Maria Rivera is eyeing the job, and Rivera has already hired a talented campaign manager in Jason Roias and top fund-raiser Kate Ramstad for a reelection campaign this year that looks more like a trial run for something bigger in a few years. Even Attorney General Peter Neronha’s name has been whispered as a potential candidate (in a text message, he said, “Probably not, but who knows? Maybe with the right gubernatorial candidate as a ticket.”)

Matos knows she can’t afford to ignore politics — she’s beginning to raise funds again and says she fully supports McKee for reelection — but she said that she first wants to win back any trust voters may have lost in her and begin to carve out a policy niche in the lieutenant governor’s office.

Start with the signatures.

Christopher Cotham, a former campaign worker, was charged in March with two felonies and two misdemeanors for allegedly looking up voters’ names on whitepages.com and writing and signing their names on nomination papers for Matos during the congressional campaign last year.

More than 500 signatures on Matos’ nomination papers were disqualified last year amid intense scrutiny into signature collection — in some cases, people who allegedly signed her papers were deceased — but she still collected more than enough valid signatures to qualify for the ballot.

But the damage was already done. In a special election when most of the Democratic candidates held the same policy views, the signature scandal dominated headlines for several weeks. Matos never recovered.

The hardest part for Matos wasn’t losing, she said. It was explaining to her 81-year-old father, a former mayor of Paraiso in the province of Barahona in the Dominican Republic, that she didn’t deliberately cheat to secure signatures.

“I really want to make sure this never happens to anyone again,” Matos said, noting that she supports Secretary of State Gregg Amore’s proposal to give candidates more time to collect signatures.

Matos acknowledged that she could have handled the signature situation better. She said that she wishes she “trusted my gut” more, and addressed the issue sooner. She’s quick to point out that she did earn enough signatures to appear on the ballot, a fact that was reported but largely ignored by her critics in the heat of the campaign.

As for her top priority as lieutenant governor for at least the next two years, Matos is honing in on what has been referred to as the silver tsunami, the oncoming mass retirement of baby boomers and what it means for the businesses they run.

When McKee appointed her lieutenant governor in 2021, Matos wanted housing to be her biggest issue. But she said that she is glad House Speaker Joe Shekarchi made it his top priority, because, as the state’s most powerful politician, he has had an outsized role in shaping and funding policies that she hopes will result in more housing.

But Matos said retiring business owners who don’t have anyone to pass off their companies to are going to need support in the near future. She hasn’t fully fleshed out a plan, but she wants to figure out ways to offer legal advice, transition support, and potentially, seed money to help employees potentially take over those businesses.

“You don’t want to close after you worked so hard for so long,” Matos said.

In some ways, Matos could make the same argument about herself. She’s proven herself as an effective politician over the years, winning three terms on the council and then a statewide election for lieutenant governor.

But she’s hit a rough patch in her political career.

Digging out would be her most impressive step yet.

Dan McGowan can be reached at dan.mcgowan@globe.com. Follow him @danmcgowan.