Incumbent Democratic Governor Goes Down In Primary

Filed 54m ago · Via HuffPost · The Buffoon Desk

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Glee Club Polka

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: The White House · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons

Helena Foulkes defeated incumbent Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee in Thursday's Democratic primary, making him the first sitting U.S. governor to lose a party primary since 2018 and the first Rhode Island governor beaten in a primary in over 30 years. Foulkes, a former CVS and Hudson's Bay executive who narrowly lost to McKee in a crowded 2022 field, built her campaign around frustration over the slow, costly replacement of Providence's Washington Bridge, closed since 2023.

McKee maintains his handling of the bridge kept people safe and that construction will finish by 2028, comparing it favorably to the pace of rebuilding Baltimore's collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge. Foulkes countered that state government works for a powerful few, while McKee cast her as an out-of-touch executive tied to the opioid crisis during her CVS tenure, a company that later paid $5 billion to settle nationwide opioid lawsuits without admitting wrongdoing.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

Voters have a long memory for a bridge they can't drive across at full speed, and eight years of incumbents skating through primaries didn't survive contact with orange traffic cones. Both sides in this race pointed fingers at the other's résumé, which is what happens when neither can point to a finished bridge. Rhode Island just proved that patience has a shelf life, even for the party running the place.

Source: Read the original at HuffPost → Scored: Glee Club Polka · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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