Rhode Island Governor’s Race Shake-Up + Did Memes Numb us to AI? Mike Raia Joins

Half Street Group’s Mike Raia joins the show to break down how independent gubernatorial candidate Ken Block entering the race could disrupt the strategies of Governor Dan McKee and challenger Helena Foulkes.

We dig into whether Block plays the role of a “spoiler,” how similar candidates have performed historically in Rhode Island politics, and what this unique election cycle could signal about voter sentiment and fragmentation heading into November.

Then, a cultural pivot: a recent The New York Times Magazine piece explores whether meme culture has pushed us into a kind of “brain rot”—and how that might be shaping not just how we consume information, but how we interact with and even train AI systems.

Is the internet rewiring our attention spans—and could that feedback loop be influencing the future of intelligence itself?

Inside Communications is presented by Half Street Group

Transcript

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Bill Bartholomew 0:00

Mike Rea, welcome back to the show.

Mike Raia 0:02

Thanks for having me. It's nice to be in person and in studio right now.

Bill Bartholomew 0:05

You know, welcome to Bartholomewtownripodcast.com 2026 at the Salty Bryan Broadcast Center, the home of WPRO. Here we are.

Mike Raia 0:13

Gotta love it. I mean, there's not a lot going right in 2026, but this feels right.

Bill Bartholomew 0:17

Yeah. Definitely nice to be in here. And we'll be rolling out a lot more stuff with video and all kinds of stuff over the course of the year. As we teased in a press release that Half Street Group released late last year, of course, Mike, the founder and president of Half Street Group, in with us every month for inside communications, where we break down the hottest media analysis. You heard the promo a zillion times now. Mike, you know, when we look at the the immediate moment right now, this is a boring governor's race on a lot of levels. But we've got a new candidate that just got in Ken Block, who look, for a lot of people who follow politics closely, they know who Ken Block is. But the recap, he ran first, he founded the Moderate Party in 2010, which is shocking. It's been that long. Lost, but got the Moderate Party to a level of credibility, ran as a Republican in 2014 for governor, lost to Alan Fung in that primary. And it's just kind of been around politics as an oftentimes a critic of now the governor, especially on the Washington Bridge, but sort of a government watchdog. You were Gina Raimundo's spokesperson inside those meetings, just on a general level right now, on an observational level, what does this Ken Block conversation do to the conversation? What does Ken Block's entrance do to the Rhode Island political conversation?

Mike Raia 1:30

You know, I think it gives people something to talk about for the next week or two. And then it will be seen as to whether or not candidates in the other campaign should take him that seriously. I think Dan McGowan hit it on the head a little bit in Roadmap today of this is another kind of wrinkle into a governor's race. There's a long tradition in Rhode Island of having these quixotic third-party or independent candidates that that come in. I mean, we we elected Link Chafey as an independent governor. Um I don't think he blows up or changes the Democratic primary in too much, which really, I mean, for all intents and purposes, is probably the race for the general election anyway, in this state, looking at what the demographics are, looking at how seriously the state Republican Party seems to be taking the governor's race. Um and I don't think that he's going to necessarily up-end any component of that. If anything, he might give the governor a little bit of a headache because of his credible critique of the Washington Bridge. I do think that Ken Bloch comes at that conversation with credibility as someone who lives on the East Bay, as someone who has been a bit of this government efficiency or making government work properly, gadfly persona that he's brought about. But I do kind of find it like I had my head scratching a little bit of the effect of is this the best thing for Ken Block to be doing to be able to give back to Rhode Island? I mean, here's a guy who, by all intents and purposes, has been extraordinarily successful. Um he's pocketed or or I not pocketed, that that sounds pejorative. Um he's he's earned millions. Um guy doesn't need to work on a daily basis, um, is running a quixotic campaign for governor and what's likely going to be losing to whomever wins the Democratic primary, uh, the best use of those resources. Um I that's for him to decide. I mean, I I think that there's certainly opportunity for him to be able to do other things to be able to contribute where he might be able to have a more meaningful impact than scoring a couple of points about his kind of key topics or or his kit key pet peeves. Um, but that's that's up to him. Um at the end of the day, I think right now it's those of us like you and I and and and McGowan and Ted Nisi and others who kind of pay attention to what's happening on a on a quiet Easter weekend around Rhode Island politics. It gives us something to chat about for a week or two, maybe three. Um but I think after that we're gonna really fall into Dan versus Elena, uh, them arguing their points, them getting into their media spend, them getting into their debate prep, um, and all eyes are really gonna be on that uh first Wednesday in September.

Bill Bartholomew 4:18

Yeah, the the Democrat pro the the primary day here in Rhode Island. It's interesting because Ken said that he's gonna take a little bit of time to really assess this from a fundraising standpoint, an infrastructure standpoint.

Mike Raia 4:29

But he doesn't have it. It's uh we're it's April 6th right now that we're recording this. Even though he's not running in a primary, he's got the the two leading candidates for it, both have sizable war chests, both will be on TV and on radio probably in a matter of weeks, um, and will sustain that to be able to be on there. He doesn't have this time to like sit around and figure out, oh, who's gonna be my campaign manager or who's gonna be this? Like that's the like like the and this again goes to like is this the best use of his time, his talent, his resources, his dollars if he's looking to make a change in Rhode Island? And and who knows, maybe I'm wrong, but I I I can see certainly many, many better ways for for that to uh to to culminate. Um and I do think like if if media is taking him seriously, and and I think that the reporting that we've seen on it already, at least those who cover politics, are taking him seriously enough as a uh a former candidate. Um, but the guy hasn't won anything yet. He's failed twice in his efforts to run. And if he's gonna get this same level of attention by media, um, I think he is owed the same opportunity to field the tough questions that Governor McKee and Helena Folks and even to an extent, and in fairness, Aaron Gookie have had to get. And and and I think first and foremost among some of those would be kind of questions about what does your government look like? And here's a guy who's a he's an independent contractor. He's a a IT consultant who's done very, very well, and he's uh he clearly is able to put very good consulting teams together. But who is he thinking about that would be his transition director? Who would be his DOA director? Who would he talk to to be able to get advice on who his transportation director would be? Um, that if he's to be taken seriously, it can't just be a, oh, he started the reform party, which got five percent of the vote in 2014, and we should take him as seriously as we're taking the other candidates who have institutional backing, the proven ability to be able to raise over a million dollars from thousands of donors across the across the state, um, and those traditional things of of what merit someone to be taken seriously as a candidate. Right.

Bill Bartholomew 6:45

How do the candidates message on Ken Block? The candidates being the governor McKee and and Helena Folkes.

Mike Raia 6:54

If at all. But the I I think that because of the things of competence around the bridge, the the critiques that he's made on social media in the past couple of weeks about the the challenges at DOA with the W-2s and the Rhode Island Umbrella Company and some of those things, I think he immediately presents a little bit more of a headache for Mickey. But if I were advising this campaign, I'd say ignore him. There's no there there's no candidate, no established candidate has an obligation or a responsibility to elevate an opponent, particularly an opponent who is coming into a race more as a gadfly and and with a perception more of trying to play spoiler than a uh than anything else. Um so my advice to them would be have factual responses, be engaging with media when necessary, but you don't need to necessarily tear out three pages of your Oppo book on them and start dropping dimes all over them. He's not gonna upend the Democratic primary in that way. Um you got to win that race, and then if you do, then you can start paying a little bit of attention to him. But I I I really I don't think that he's a factor of any size during the primary season. And I don't think unless he's able to prove otherwise, um that the I I don't I I don't I would not, if I were a candidate, spend exorbitant amount of time creating a Ken Block-specific general election strategy. Um I would create a general election strategy that includes multiple candidates, but I don't think it needs to be centered on one individual personality.

Bill Bartholomew 9:03

Yeah.

Mike Raia 9:03

And likely those strategies would look very different whether if you're Goberton McKee or if you're Helena Folk. Oh, 100%. The I and what I find just like I think in many ways the most head scratching is it's not as though he's jumped like when you look at some of these past races, like like the 2018 Joe Trillo tried to play that part of spoiler. Um and he went after Alan Fung on the right, um, like on the far, far right. But in other years, you've had these type of things where you are trying to give kind of moderate Democrats or this this population that Rhode Island still has of these quote unquote Reagan Democrats or the or the Biden Trump voters a s an alternative to something that might seem further left than where they typically are. When you look at this race, like there's two candidates who are they have a lot that's very different about their style, about their approach, about their general um argument for to the voters of why they should be trusted with four years as governor. But I think it would be a very difficult thing for anybody to paint either Helena Folkes or Dan McKee as the second coming of AOC in Rhode Island, which I find just perplexing that someone who created the moderate party, um, someone who espouses himself as this kind of in the middle common sense guy, there's not really a lane for him to be able to lean into to play that role of spoiler. Yeah. In a way where if we had an Aaron Regenberg running for governor, and if Aaron had won that lieutenant governor's race in 2018 and he were sitting as a an accidental governor right now running for a third term, I think then you have a very different uh conversation about the the need for or the appetite for a kind of centrist white business type kind of stepping into that lane.

Bill Bartholomew 11:03

Yeah. I've been thinking a lot about what this says, this governor's race says about, especially with Ken Block's entrance, it says about the left, if you will, the the left of the Democrat Party right now, that there is nobody that is the obvious person to run for governor. And it seemed like there was this big wave, and there was a big wave in 2020, and there's been different kinds of waves of left success, and in many ways, there's this appetite that we're seeing around the country against incumbents that could maybe that could help Ken Block. But it almost feels like in a Democrat primary, that's the advantage. You go one way with Helena Folks, you go another way with person X, but person X doesn't seem to exist in Rhode Island that can fulfill that leftist role that also is credible.

Mike Raia 11:44

I think governors' races are different. I think if you look across the country, the kinds of candidates for and this is both true with a couple of exceptions maybe on the right, but generally those candidates who come through a primary to be able to run for governor and be able to be palatable in a general election, they're not that partisan. Even if you were to look at someone like a Gavin Newsom, who is very capital D democratic, when you get down to his core policies and you get down to the way that he governed, it was not from any strict ideology or 144-character type methodology, in the way that he was going to put that. And that's just the nature of the job. You need to be a pragmatist. You need to be someone who's able to make deals, who's able to work with multiple interests and not necessarily even partisan interests. You've got to be able to work with labor and with management. You've got to be able to work with an urban constituency and a suburban constituency, regardless of how big or small your state is. So I think when you look at this kind of rise of candidates or or or elected officials or voices like Mundami, like AOC, um, like others in the what that we see as part of the left, uh quote unquote, in the Democratic primary, they're it or in democratic politics, they're in legislative circles, or they're in uh areas where they're representing a smaller geographic region, uh, whether it's a city, whether it's a county, um, because governor really doesn't lend you that opportunity to be able to do it. Because look at the Republicans who are governors like out there. Like they are, with maybe the exception of the Texas governor, maybe the exception of um some of the the Dakota governors, like these are pragmatists. Like, like they need to be able to balance a budget. They need to be able to make sure that their transportation departments are repairing bridges. Um, so they don't have that same luxury of chasing the the latest trending topic on X or the latest kind of Twitter outrage or podcast outrage about something that doesn't actually impact the vast majority of of their constituents, which is why like you look at all of this stuff. I I can't even think of the uh podcaster's name, but there's this big fight going on on X among progressives and among Democrats right now of how much should we pay attention to this podcaster who's supposed to be the Democrats' version of Joe Rogan.

Bill Bartholomew 14:18

Yeah, yeah. I I forget his name.

Mike Raia 14:20

But it's like I'm a pretty plugged-in Democrat that has worked on more than a handful of races. Like voters don't care. And the when it comes to those things that governors seem to pay attention to, there's not as much of an appetite in it. So I think that's why going back to your original question of where is that person that kind of picks up the the the flag of an Aaron Regenberg who lost two straight elections, um, and why hasn't anyone picked it up? And I think it's in part because that's not what voters are looking for in a governor. Yeah. They're not looking for someone to kind of be a a protester in chief or a demonstrator in chief or an activist in chief. They're looking for a CEO of the state.

Bill Bartholomew 15:04

Aaron Ross Powell, yeah. I think the same is gonna be an interesting litmus test for the province mayor race. We see new polls that David Morales is not counting undecided voters and pretty good position. I don't have the poll in front of me, but at the end of the day, how many voters who are pragmatists are gonna move away from Smiley and and to Morales? That's obviously his challenge. Yep. It's a litmus test. We're gonna have to see how that plays out, right?

Mike Raia 15:28

Yeah, no, and I think that that is an interesting race, and and I say this kind of with the the full disclosure, Brett Smiley is a close friend. Um and I do think that Brett will win that race at the end of the day. Um, but I don't think it's gonna be easy, and I don't think it's one that he's taking for granted or the people around him are taking for granted in in any capacity. Um and the what will be interesting with that is um particularly in something like a local race like that, so much of what happened six weeks before the election is what's going to matter in that. I I think that any of the criticism that Mayor Smiley got for the first snowstorm, I think he did a good job in the second one of being able to butcher us against some of it, in part by level setting expectations of the amount of snow that we get, the kind of equipment that is reasonable for a state like Rhode Island or a city like Providence to have. Um but I don't think that a he didn't do a great job in the last snowstorm is the only message that you can win on, or or I don't think that that alone is enough to win on in a primary when it's gonna be 85 degrees outside. Um so I do think like that, like the the the mayor's advantage and the advantage of incumbency, which I think mayor Smiley is very well equipped and and is understands how to use in a way that others in the state might not. That power of incumbency is going to be very important in that race to be able to show the importance of having a mayor focused on the core attributes of the job rather than I want to be kind of leading from the the the the front on on this uh kind of social issue or or or this movement that we're seeing pop up amongst and it's not to say that those things aren't important. And and and I will say too, like I will not be surprised if David Morales is the next mayor of Providence. I don't think it's gonna happen after this election, but I do think that he is going to be uh a second-term Brett Smiley successor.

Bill Bartholomew 17:32

That's an interesting analysis as well, and it's really important to I think put things into that long view. And the 2030 race is I mean, look, John Gonzalez, Providence City Councillor, it's pretty clear from the outside looking in. I I I haven't spoken to anybody about this on the on a direct level, but it seems like he has aligned himself with the mayor, with Mayor Smiley pretty well. So to me, it becomes a question of Morales' playbook right now. Is it even if it's not successful in 2026, he might be learning something about the Smiley brand, the Smiley apparatus, the machine, whoever the disciple, if you will, of Smiley is in 2030 and run that same playbook, but better. So there's a lot to learn from this 2026 campaign, even if it's not a victory.

Mike Raia 21:23

Right. I mean, I also I often think they candidates are made better when they lose a race. I think if you look at like I think Mayor Smiley's actually a great example of it. He didn't technically lose his first race for mayor. He dropped out to be able to back uh Mayor Alorza or or future Mayor Alorza um because of the threat that Buddy Siense posed. But you learn a lot from going through that. And running for office, God, I would never do it. Um, but I've been close enough to people who have. I've worked on those campaigns. It's incredibly lonely. It's you you wake up every day, it it's a nature of self-doubt in in the business model. Um and doing it for the first time, you don't know what questions to ask. You don't know uh what to necessarily expect. And and no one can fully prepare you for it. Um and I do think that that's one where the and and look at the the the thing people talk about Governor McKee being the survivor, he's one of these. Gotta remember, he lost a race in Cumberland. And uh it seems as though some of that he learned from. I think those candidates, and and you look at kind of the the um unartful fall of Speaker Mattyello. This guy never lost a race. He came within a couple of whispers of losing one of the the races he had when he was Speaker of the House, and his lesson from it wasn't, oh my God, I need to go do some things differently, or oh my God, maybe I need to get in better touch with my community. It was I'm invincible, I can do whatever the hell I want. And he got blown out in his next race. So there is something to say of running a race, running it well, but not prevailing, and it making you a stronger candidate uh down in the future. Yeah.

Bill Bartholomew 23:13

Look, uh hard pivot here, but it's also directly related to this race because I think that there's just an under way underwhelming conversation right now about AI in general when it comes to Rhode Island, but also specifically this governor's race. I know that the governor doesn't necessarily need to be, you know, using open claw to facilitate more efficient use of whatever, you know, the Department of Administration. But we need to have a strategy and understand where things are going, data centers and all of that. So that is the hard pit, or that's the pivot, that's sort of the focal point. But it takes us to this New York Times article that you flagged that I also happen to read the headline, forget the AI apocalypse. Memes have already nuked our culture. And look, in essence, I I totally agree with a lot of this article in theory, which is that we're numbed or conditioned to a meme culture that as we assess AI, both the threats and the benefits, we've already been sort of memefied in the way we look at things, so we can be a little bit delusional and detached.

Mike Raia 24:17

Right. I mean, I've seen like this are like this article popped out at me because I recently listened to uh another podcast uh that was kind of critiquing one of the books about culture being dead. Um and the fact that pop that pop music has not changed dramatically. If if I driving in here today listening to 93.3, like I'm hearing um the or uh what's uh 923. Yes, 92.

Bill Bartholomew 24:42

Right downstairs from where we're recording right now, 92 pro FM. Exactly.

Mike Raia 24:45

I was I should have just said pro FM and not screwed up the numbers. Um but listen to it, like it's the same songs that were on the radio when we were in high school. Um and and there's something about this like culture getting stagnated. And I think like going back to like bringing these things together, we were talking about these campaigns. Like when I was in grad school for political communication, like it was not just This idiom or adage of you campaign in pop in in poetry and you govern in prose. Like that was the reality. You really did. Like we would go and like the the you would have the Tale of Two Cities speech that Cuomo gave at the Democratic convention in 88 or 92. You've got the Morning in America style ads that Ronald Reagan was pushing forward. You had Bill Clinton changing culture by going on Arsenio Hall for one of the first times, but then immediately after being able to give the the the man from hope speech. Now it is boiled down to what is going to be able to resonate in those eight seconds? What thing is going to be able to be shared over a text message that someone's going to be able to watch without audio? Going back to the 2020 race, the 2016 race, the 2024 race, I can't really remember a line that sticks out in any sort of way in those campaigns. That that we are still campaigning now in headlines. And I think in many ways, like that that the the memefication has also found its way into governing. And there is kind of this sense, and and governing is designed to be hard. It's not, this isn't just a Lynn Manuel Miranda line of politics is easy, governing is harder. Governing is hard. It is coalition building. It is unsexy. It is intended with checks and balances written into whether it's the federal constitution or state constitutions, to not be something that any one branch is able to ram down anyone's throat. So it gets to a place where you have to compromise, where you have to have all parties a little bit upset with it, where you have to embrace incrementalism to be able to get to large goals. But we're in this era of memefication, but also in this era, and we talked about this when we talked about the snowstorms a couple of months ago, of a culture of instant gratification. So what you end up with are compar our interest groups and organizations and subsets of the population that will essentially say, if you're not 100% with me, you're against me. Even if our goals are aligned, or even if we're close to the same ideology or close to the same priorities, if you don't share every single one of the tenets of my beliefs, we're enemies, or we can't align, or we can't partner on it, which means there's no opportunity for any of that success. And that's really complex. There's probably there is a lot of academic thought and literature that can go into the psychology around all of that, but it's a hell of a lot easier to substitute it with a meme or a clip from Joe Rogan or from Pod Save America that aligns with where people are already thinking.

Bill Bartholomew 28:06

Yeah. I mean, it's the ultimate consequence of brain rot. I mean, there's the the fact that it that the human experience is diminished, it leads to an unwell state, that's for sure, but it's also unwell for democracy. And you're right, we focus a lot on the politics, the elections, the the the and and it it no doubt is far easier than governance. I think that it's the proof is in the pudding. Just take a look at the government shutdown right now, and that's a perfect example.

Mike Raia 28:36

Yeah, and and like politics is easy. It is like it it's cutthroat, it's hard work, but it's black or it's white. Governing is designed to live in the gray. And because we all live in the gray. The work that we do, the the relationships that we have with our families, with our friends, with our neighbors, they all live in the gray because all none of us are so simple that we can boil those things down to black and white. But on an election day, when you have a, do you vote for this person or do you vote for this person, or do you vote for this ideology, or do you vote for that ideology, it is that simple. Um, and I do think that there are basic truths. I think that we've abandoned this area of the the oh both sides can can agree to disagree. I think that we do need to have a general like belief system of, you know what, we're not going to refer to proven dated facts as opinion. We are not going to kind of settle on this sense of like there's a a basic human decency or or basic human rights are not political topics. Those are topics of we all deserve to be able to live in the communities or live in the the the on in the world that we're in. But there is this need for recommend uh uh recognition within this. And I do think that we can do that through language, we can do that through the way that we converse, we can do that through the stories that organizations or leaders and others choose to tell. That the world is a lot grayer than any of us in 2026 want to let it be.

Bill Bartholomew 30:20

Mike Rea, Half Street Group, half streetgroup.com. Inside communications on Bartholomewtown every month. Come for the goods. Thanks for having me on, and thanks for not asking me about Real House Size of Rhode Island. Yeah, we'll save that for another time. Let's let the thing wrap up and then we can do a recap.

Mike Raia 30:34

Fair enough.