Providence Mayor + RI Governor Races Heat Up

Rhode Island Politics Spotlight: Providence Mayoral Race & Governor's Race Analysis

In this episode, we explore the key developments shaping Rhode Island’s political landscape — from the contentious Providence mayoral race to the emerging significance of independent candidate Ken Block in the governor’s race. Understand how recent polling, election strategies, and voter sentiment are setting the stage for a transformative election cycle.

Key topics

• The recent veto of rent stabilization in Providence and its implications on the mayoral primary
• The political strategies and coalitions around housing policies in the Providence mayoral race
• Ken Block’s polling results and his potential impact on the Rhode Island gubernatorial race
• How outsider candidates are shifting voter focus and the broader appetite for change
• The importance of undecided voters and campaign adaptation in the coming months

Timestamps

• (0:01) Overview of Rhode Island’s major political races and their significance
• (0:25) Providence mayoral race: Mayor Smiley’s veto on rent stabilization and its political repercussions
• (1:02) The housing crisis in Providence and the supply-side economic approach
• (2:03) The political positioning of rent control proposals and city council dynamics
• (3:25) The upcoming Providence mayoral primary and its impact on the 2024 elections
• (4:23) The divide: short-term rent control versus long-term housing solutions
• (5:21) David Morales’ rally and the populist sentiment in Providence
• (6:35) Immediate housing needs versus long-term planning — balancing demand and supply
• (8:39) The Rhode Island governor’s race heats up with outsider Ken Block’s entry
• (9:17) Ken Block’s historical political background and recent polling data
• (11:09) Pollster insights: Ken Block’s "runway" to potential victory
• (12:29) The significance of Ken Block’s credibility and voter awareness
• (14:14) Broader appetite for political change across the country and in Rhode Island
• (16:11) The current landscape: the lack of leftist candidates and the rise of outsiders
• (17:54) How polling impacts campaign strategies and voter psychology
• (19:15) The influence of undecided voters and campaign ground game
• (20:42) The importance of shifting campaign focus from negativity to substantive issues
• (22:31) Summarizing the current state: Ken Block as a serious contender and the changing political tone
• (23:55) Closing thoughts on Rhode Island’s political season and upcoming electoral shifts

Resources & Links

• Brian Wynn - Pollster Insights
• Ken Block Campaign
• Providence Mayor’s Veto on Rent Stabilization (Channel 12)
• Dan McGowan - Boston Globe Columnist

Connect with Bill Bartholomew:

• Twitter
• LinkedIn

http://www.navigantcu.org

Transcript

Bill Bartholomew 0:00

All right, there are two major political races in Rhode Island this year, and this was a big week for both of them. First of all, the governor's race. We'll get to that in just a moment. New polling data, but we're going to start with a Providence mayoral race and a major decision that took place over the last week that is the really the front and center issue when it comes to this mayoral primary between incumbent Brett Smiley and David Morales. Morales is coming at Smiley from the left, but also from a populist type of level. And the issue at hand this week, rent stabilization. If you've been following along on the podcast or just in general, you probably know that this rent stabilization proposal in the city of Providence has been back and forth on a, let's call it a communications level. You've just been hearing about it as various aspects of the concept and eventual proposals started to come to fruition. Well, last week the city council voted to implement that rent stabilization program. They passed it, but not with a veto-proof majority. Mayor Brett Smiley vetoed that immediately. Here's what the mayor said, courtesy of Channel 12. Here's what Mayor Smiley said just uh, I believe just moments after he vetoed that legislation. This is the mayor right here, again, courtesy of channel 12.

Speaker 1 1:45

I find um those those feelings and the testimony that we heard, the the feedback that I've heard at community meetings of my own to be entirely valid. Um but what I tried to um share with the community and and stay focused on is the the truth that rent control is not going to lower anyone's rent.

Speaker 3 2:03

All right, so that that right there is the central thesis for when it comes to the smiley approach to rent stabilization, rent control, anything. It's supply side. It's that we have a housing crisis in the United States, we have a housing crisis in the state of Rhode Island, we have a major housing crisis in the city of Providence. And we in as a major part of that housing crisis, no doubt, rent increases have been extraordinary. I mean, there are people who are facing well in excess of 10% year-over-year rent increases in the city right now. There's a huge supply shortage. So the mayor taking the standpoint on a basic level, supply side economics. We want to encourage as much development as possible. If we allow for as much development as possible to create supply, the demand will be filled by the people who need housing and will be able to move forward without, in their argument, burdening taxpayers contemporarily or into the future. So that is the principal argument there. Now, look, this is a veto-proof majority. Um that the I'm sorry, that this is a veto-proof scenario that Smiley has in his favor. In other words, the council can't override it. And I've been speaking with counselors on background, off record. Look, this is a scenario where this rent stabilization proposal as it was constituted when it was voted in. It was at the end of the day extraordinarily unlikely that it was ever going to get to a point where it would come to law. There was hardly any indication anywhere that the mayor was going to budge on this, nor any indication that any of the counselors who voted against this were going to move. So, what does that mean? That means this is at the end of the day teeing up the Democrat primary for mayor in Providence. Now, you can make the argument all day, every day that there are bigger issues that face the city of Providence. That's a valid argument to make. At the same time, affordability and housing, no doubt, are going to be at minimum right below or tied for the most important issue. The political aspect of this is so important to pay attention to. It's not just about what seems to be coalitions that have formed in the different camps, the supply side camp that Mayor Smiley seems to chief, or the, hey, we need rent control and perhaps a more what Keynesian type of approach where the government's going to develop housing in tandem with a rent stabilization rent control package. Somewhere in the middle is where this is likely going to land. And because this package of legislation was introduced and came to a vote so quickly, it's hard to imagine that there was really adequate time for any type of actual negotiation that would get this thing to go through, period. Not only from a veto-proof standpoint, but perhaps even to win over the mayor himself, and from a legal standpoint, to be legally uh sound in the event of any litigation that would come if this thing went through. It doesn't seem like we got there. What it does seem like, though, is the politics have been set up quite well when it comes to this mayoral primary between Morales and Smiley. Morales held a rally today uh on the steps of City Hall. And here's a clip of that from his ex.

Speaker 2 5:29

Today we stand here knowing that the fight is not over. As the council prepares to take on a vote to override the mayor's veto, we're calling on Councilwoman Joanne Ryan, on Councilman John Gonsals, on Councilman Oscar Vargas, Anna Vargas, and Pedro Espinol to switch their votes and to vote yes to override the mayor's veto. This is a matter of whether our neighbors from Silver Lake to Smith Hill back to the east side can continue calling Providence home. And we are here to say that our neighbors deserve to continue calling Providence home. We deserve an affordable city, we deserve a Providence for all.

Speaker 3 6:45

You're thinking, no, this is not a panacea, but it's something that we can do right now that can really have a legitimate impact. When you're talking more on the supply side side of the issue, which is the smiley uh approach, and some of the counselors that you just heard David Morales named right there, that is a longer-term vision of how to solve the very same problem. The question that really exists right now when it comes to the city of Providence and renters in particular, but not only renters, but also homeowners to a certain extent, is if you go for a longer-term type of solution, do you lose a chunk of your population because they cannot wait? They simply cannot wait. Simultaneously, you have to ask the question: if you build new housing, who fills that housing? Is it your existing population, or are you going to have the pandemic era style import of people from outside of Providence, outside of Rhode Island? Again, not to sound xenophobic or crazy, but that impacts the housing market dramatically. People moving from Boston, people moving from New York, people moving from wherever to Providence, if you're building new housing and it's designed, you renovate the Superman building and you make it attractive to somebody from outside of here because they can work remotely and now live in downtown Providence. What does that do? Does that do anything to address the problem at hand? Well, of course it doesn't. Of course it doesn't. That's the mayor's race. We're going to have this issue in depth starting on Wednesday. We'll have Boston Globe reporter, a Boston Globe columnist, I should say. Excuse me, Dan McGowan in studio for a one-on-one interview. We'll be talking about this and beyond this issue, the Providence Mayor's race. And we'll we'll certainly hear from the candidates. We'll certainly hear from the mayor, we'll certainly hear from the counselors. We're going to break this one down for you in depth. So stay tuned for that uh coverage as it continues. Okay, the other big election in Rhode Island obviously is the governor's race. Okay. And the big story over the last couple of weeks, if you want to call it that, I think it's a big story, and I think you uh would agree if you follow Rhode Island politics with any level of scrutiny, is the entrance of independent gubernatorial candidate Ken Block. Block ran for governor in 2010, founded the Moderate Party, right? Then he ran again in 2014, lost in the Republican primary to Alan Fung, came close there, eight-point uh defeat in that primary. Remember, Alan Fung at that point in time a very competitive uh candidate in a lot of ways. Okay. In a lot of ways, Alan Fung in 2014, a competitive upstart candidate. So Block has shown that he is able to build some kind of coalition uh to get statewide credibility. He showed that 12 years ago. But then he went away from elected politics. He became sort of a commentator and a watchdog and did a lot of work on the Washington Bridge. So his name was still in the WPRO, Rhode Island PBS type of audience. Uh, but was he a guy that the average everyday person knew? Uh, that was to be seen and will be seen as time moves along. Now that Block is an independent candidate. But here's what happened today. Ken Block's campaign drops a poll that they conducted, and the results are very interesting. I'm gonna give you the two big takeaways because there really are two things that actually matter here when it comes to this poll that Ken Block released today. You're gonna hear all kinds of headlines, all kinds of breakouts, things that are gonna dismiss it, things that are gonna celebrate it. Really, the reality is you've got to look at it from an analysis standpoint of what it really actually means. To that end, I booked the pollster themselves uh and had and had the polster on WPRO. That's Brian Wynne. Brian Wynne. He was on with Dan York. I booked him for uh York today, 997wpro.com. Uh click on Dan York and and Brian Wynn, he's the pollster, who explains how they did this. And here's the press release that they put out uh today to celebrate. And and uh Ken, there's what Brian Wynn says. Ken Blanc doesn't just have a path to winning the November gubernatorial election, he has a runway. He has a runway. Now I can give you a zillion different versions of numbers. Here's the fact that is most important. At the end of the day, the the initial round of questions had the following results. Ken Block, I'm sorry, Governor McKee, in hypothetical matchup A. Governor McKee, if he were to win the Democrat primary, 28%, Ken Block, 20%, Aaron Gakean, the GOP candidate of most likely candidate, 15%. In the hypothetical matchup, if Helena Bonano folks, Helena Bonano folks beats McKee in the Democrat primary, she 33%, Ken Block, 18%, Gakin 16%. Okay, it's a push poll though. So how this works now the pollster is going to ask those who are being uh who are answering a second round of questions, which they now will say favorable things or tell people who Ken Block is. So they say, have you ever heard of Ken Block? No, I haven't. All right. Uh what if I told you Ken Block stood up against corruption on the Washington? I don't know the wording of the question, but that might be one way, or stood up against perceived corruption, whatever, however they frame it. Here's round two, scenario A. Again, scenario A is with McKee wins the primary, the Democrat primary. Here's what they got for you. Scenario A has Ken Block, 31.5%, McKee 21%, Gakin 11%, and uh 36% undecided. Here's scenario B, same idea, pretty similar, in that it's interesting. If Helena Folks wins that primary, all of a sudden she's 27%, Ken Block, 26.6%. Statistical dead heat, Aaron Gakean, 12.5%, and then 34 and change undecided. Folks, what this means is two things. Number one, very simply, Ken Block is a credible candidate for governor. Ken Blo is a credible candidate for governor of Rhode Island and a guy who absolutely must be taken seriously by both of the Democrat campaigns, I suppose the Republican campaign as well, the primary one, and the voter. The voter has to understand uh that while this is a ways off in terms of setting the table for a November election that's going to have a credible independent candidate, the voter has the responsibility to know who Ken Bloch is, what he stands for, and you make that decision whether you like him or not. But you can't ignore him. And there too, four, the media better make sure that this thing is approached to a level of balance. No doubt it will be because Ken Block's entrance to this thing, if nothing else, is exciting. That's number one. Number two, appetite for change. We see a wave of interest across the country in this regard. Look no further than New York City with Mamnadi, right? People want change. The question is, what does that change look like? The change that we've seen has ranged across the ideological spectrum, intra-party or intra-party wise, in general elections, multi-candidate general elections, all of that. So the question for Rhode Islanders, when you take a look at the polling numbers that are offered here by Ken Block and his campaign, what you see is a very clear reality that people want change. And if that change comes in the form of Helena Folks, if that change comes in the form of Ken Block, that may be one or of one or one or two different ways that that change comes together. What it will not come in the form of is a leftist candidate because there's nobody in this primary. The left in Rhode Island could not find one person in a moment where there's never been in elections that we have been engaged in for now well over a decade. I've I mean, going back to my childhood, I don't know if I can make this claim. Certainly in Rhode Island, in recent times, national sentiment, appetite for change, appetite for new ideas. I mean, geez, you've got Helena Folkes and Ken Block as your front runners. You the there's not one person in the state of Rhode Island, and don't tell me Matt Brown or Aaron Reaganberger, anybody, I'm talking a uh somebody who can come in and take advantage of the fact you've got a moment where incumbency is not even remotely. It's never mind, you have the power of incumbency, which is worth X million dollars in races or X percentage points in general elections or whatever in primary elections. It's not even about that. You have a reduction in those areas, the influence of incumbency. And it's not even just the Washington Bridge with McKee. It's a bigger thing. It's a reality. And there's not one person that can come in from a leftist position and run for governor in Rhode Island in this moment, a competitive campaign, they're not in it. So the change that's gonna come, if it's gonna happen in Rhode Island, is either gonna come from Helena Bonano Folks, former CVS executive, or it's gonna come from Ken Block, software and data mining entrepreneur. All right, and at the end of the day, they're two successful individuals. There's balloons going off on my screen for some reason. I don't know what that's about. They didn't ask for that, so if you're seeing the balloons, we apologize. But here's the reality: this is an important moment. Because you've got the two races that are going to drive conversation, drive momentum in this state. Even if you don't vote in Providence Mayor, you know it's it may as well. Providence mayor is like the de facto statewide office, right? You don't vote for it if you live in Jamestown. You can tell people you don't care who wins the election, but the reality is you will be impacted by it. You can't have a conversation about economic development, you can't have a conversation about cultural realities in the state of Rhode Island without having a foundational providence that is in physically good health and spiritually in amazing health. Right now it's neither. And this governor's race is real, okay? It's been so important. I mean, what is definitely true? I tell you the two things that are true, right? Blocks for real, people want change. That's what you can take from this poll, okay? The other thing that is definitely true, and I mean you you've got to look at it from an honest standpoint, right now, here in Rhode Island, uh, whether it's from the standpoint of the poll or just general sentiment, the the the governor's race, the tech, the methodology, and I've said it over and over again, and I know it may even be old hat at this point, but the reality is you take Dan McKee messaging 101, which is Helena Folks, you know, she worked at CVS, she, you know, had had the the opioids, and uh she's she's a drug dealer out there pushing opioids all over the community. Uh she's untrustworthy in that regard. Then she's gonna come and say Dan McKee's a slob and Dan McKee is uh incompetent. And can you believe the Washington Press should have fired Al Viti? And you know what the reality is at this point in time, Rhode Islanders just don't care at all and have zero interest. So when you introduce Ken Block into the equation, I don't know what it actually does when you really look at the the realistic takeaways, right? The realistic takeaways right now. This can, if you go around and you ask every person in the state who has could actually vote, are you gonna vote Block McKee, folks, or Kakin? Just give them those names, doesn't matter, primary, this, that, the other. I I don't know what the takeaway is. But what it does do is it changes the psychology of this race. Because it affirms that it is about outsider versus insider, and it affirms that Rhode Islanders are definitely interested in the outsider in terms of the polls. Now, here's the last piece of this whole thing. Undecided continue to make up what 30, 40 percent of those polled. There's a huge amount of ground gain that can be deployed where votes can be collected by anybody in this race. Anybody in this race has that opportunity. And that's where the race is gonna break. It's not gonna be okay, barring scandal, barring unforeseen insanity. You're not gonna have a situation here where you've got a Helena Folkes voter saying, you know what, I'm gonna move over to McKee. Or, you know what, I heard I met Ken Block at the uh, you know, at the farmer's market or something, and he sold me. Okay, a couple of dozen people, a couple of thousand people, maybe in a general, probably not. It's about the undecided voter. And the reason why the undecided voter is undecided is because either they have seen the menu and they said, I'll go hungry, or they have not seen the menu. And when you have a governor's race that is based on thus far, throwing you know, barbs back and forth, third-party external campaigns sending messages that don't even that aren't written in anything even close to the candidate's voice in some cases. And and and candidates going on talk radio and not knowing the issue of the day, and and that's the conversation, and not substantive policy ideas, but the future of Rhode Island, period, end of discussion, but also actually not end the discussion, how about the presence? The present. That's where this thing needs to shift. And with this block intro, that's my con I I make the assertion that the governor's race changes now. I make the assertion that the attitude changes. Because now if you're McKee or folks, you've got to be looking in multiple directions. You've got to be looking, you your criticisms, your strategies are no longer exact the same. Now, that's not to say you turn your attention equally to Ken Block and if you're folks or McKee. You heard Mike Rea, former Raimundo spokesperson, communications director, Half-Street Group, on the show last week talking about this in detail. If you're what you do, what do you do if you're these people? The people in the room making a decision about how do you respond to something when you got Ken Block? Do you respond to him at all or not? But this poll at least shows even the initial result. You want to forget about the push, the second round of questions, fine. And and block and and the campaign, Block's campaign, they're going to push the second round where he's the front runner. Fine. That's politics. I'm looking at it again. McKee 28, block 20, Gakin 15. And then folks 33, block 18, Aaron at 16. I mean, that tells you everything you need to know. It's only two things. Blocks competitive. What's up with the balloons here on the screen? If you're watching this on video, there's balloons going off. We've got to figure out how to disable that. It's like a Zoom call, you got the stupid decorations, the hand goes up. If I move my hand a certain way, I'm moving my hands like a maniac here. A balloons popping off. All do you got to know from this poll? Blocks competitive. People want change. The question is: how do all these candidates position themselves to those undecided voters? That's what is going to play out. The table is set, and that's political season for this year in terms of a launch. Now, there's a lot of other interesting races, and we'll certainly be talking about them, but you got two big ones. And this is this is kind of a big shift if there ever was one.