Internal Poll Shows Ken Block Wins Hypothetical Two-Way Race... GOP Guckian DEF not Exiting

Bill Bartholomew talks with independent Rhode Island gubernatorial candidate Ken Block about a newly released poll, the three-way race against Helena Foulkes and Aaron Guckian, and what the numbers suggest about the final stretch. The conversation also digs into fundraising, outside spending, and whether debates and forums can give voters a real contrast between the candidates.

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Bill Bartholomew 0:00

Welcome into Bartholomew Town. It's Bill Bartholomew. Ken Bloch commissioned a poll released earlier this week. One of the takeaways from it, if there was a hypothetical two-way race between Helena Badano folks, the Democratic nominee and Ken Block, Ken, you would win it as of now. Of course, it is a three-way race. Aaron Gukin, the Republican nominee on the radio this morning with Tara Granihan reiterating again that he is not going to get out of the race. Now, you've said, you said on the radio yesterday, you're not actually calling for Gacin to get out. But I mean, basically, that press release and and the poll, it is softly, in my opinion, suggesting that there's a pathway for an alternative if Gakin does get out of the race at minimum. So is that a fair summary?

SPEAKER_01 0:41

Yeah, it's a fair summary. The the the race, there's a couple of key takeaways from the poll. First of all, Aaron has no path to success, zero. Second, if he gets out, uh my path to success in uh beating uh Helena Folkes is crystal clear. Uh I lead by almost six points uh by Aaron just getting out of the race. Uh the other thing that's crystal clear in the findings is that uh I can win the three-way. It's harder, and I have to do a lot of messaging to get there. And I can still uh ultimately, with the right messaging and everything going right, win by about six points in in a three-way. In the process of doing that, uh Aaron's showing will drop from the 19% in the three-way uh that was part of the UNH poll in mine, and he could get down to 15 or even 10%. Uh, and that's without any negative messaging against him. He's not really a factor in the race, uh, other than the fact that that he's occupying and breathing in some oxygen uh that would be helpful to be uh for me to be able to breathe in uh and finish the job of winning and getting in and breaking what has been a cycle of governors who really haven't known what to do to fix things. I don't even know if they really wanted to. Uh we've had an awful lot of governors who've just been status quo. Uh it's been from Chafee to Raimundo to McKee. We can't afford another one. And and uh a lot of voters understand that. Uh Aaron might be surprised and and ultimately devastated uh as it becomes clearer and clearer that he doesn't have a path. I suspect the whatever support he has will begin to bleed off pretty quickly.

Bill Bartholomew 2:31

Aaron Ross Powell Well, I think that'll be one thing that could, if anything's gonna move the needle, it might be like outright endorsements. So have you reached out to the Republican Party and tried to secure the party's endorsement, or are you are there any major Republicans? I don't know who that they would be at this point, really, in Rhode Island, but is there anybody that could step forward from the Republican flank? And maybe not Aaron's gonna, it may not be that Aaron Gouquin gets out of this race, but it may be that there's motivation for Republicans to look towards you. Is that coming in your mind?

SPEAKER_01 3:00

Uh hard to know right now. I think right now uh people are uh absorbing the information. By the way, this is a fundamental shift uh in this entire race. Uh so fundamental that hours after my poll came out, the DGA announced that they were dropping $500,000 into a race that Helena Folks was assuring everybody that she had a lock on it. She clearly doesn't. So uh this is this is fascinating because uh every poll that I've looked at uh showed that uh Helena has a favorability problem. Uh going back to when I got into the race, my initial poll, WPRI's poll just before the primary, uh her statewide favorable number was 37%, and it was just under 50% of Democrats. That is brittle support at best. I see, I saw that. I know that her voters aren't with her to the end. They just aren't. And neither are Aaron's. So uh I have a lot of solid support from all ends of the ideological spectrum, which is exactly what I was hoping to be able to do. It's happening. Voters want a problem solver, neither of them are problem solvers. Uh, and they want things fixed. Uh and as you're probably painfully aware, I can talk forever about how to actually fix things. Uh, and that's a very different thing from the other candidates who have at best superficial understanding about what that what it is that is even possible to do.

Bill Bartholomew 4:37

Aaron Powell I just want to touch on the specifics of Gukin dropping out quickly. The Secretary of State's office last week told me that the ballots are already printed, they're off to military overseas, so on and so forth. So, from that standpoint, you would have to have like an army of people. Uh, Dan York pointed this out yesterday. You'd have to have an army of people possibly at every polling place with a sign that says Aaron Gukin dropped out, he's still on the ballot, you know, vote 10 block, whatever it is.

SPEAKER_01 5:02

There would be So I believe that if if uh if Aaron decided to drop out, the Board of Elections would have to put a piece of paper in every voting booth indicated that that indicating that that had happened.

Bill Bartholomew 5:14

Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 5:15

So we don't need an army of volunteers to do it, the Board of Elections would take care of it.

Bill Bartholomew 5:18

All right, I didn't know that. I'm going to f follow up because that's a that's a critical scenario in terms of just the pragmatic of this. Because people are talking about, look, this is all over the radio. I don't know how many people are going home every night and thinking about this, but in terms of politics, this is uh definitely something people are talking about, and it can be dismissed as unrealistic or possibly something that's forthcoming. But look, it seems like right now there's no world where Aaron Cook Keane's getting out of this race. So what's the pathway? Where if how much time are you focusing right now on trying to make this a two-way race versus operating as if it was a three-way?

SPEAKER_01 5:53

I'm operating as if it's a three-way. I know that an awful lot of people have taken it on their own to communicate with Aaron. Uh, you know, he's he's in an extremely difficult position, and I and I feel for him. Uh, you know, you gear yourself up, you you get into a race, and when it's effectively over, it's sometimes hard to acknowledge the fact that there isn't a path. There is no circumstance in which Aaron Gukin, with no money in the bank effectively, no mu no real ability to raise it at this point. I mean, in the second quarter of this year, he raised $9,000. $9,000 in a whole quarter. How can you be a viable candidate when when that's your fundraising capacity? The answer is you can't. So other people are uh uh on their own. They're reaching out to him and and and they're asking him to get out. I don't know what will what the decision will be. I know that we can win a three-way. The poll indicates that we certainly can, uh, and we will go down that road and do it. Uh and I hope Aaron can uh make a decision that he he can live with in the long run because ending up with 10% of the vote uh could in and of itself be a pretty devastating outcome.

Bill Bartholomew 7:11

You mentioned $500,000 from the Democratic Governors Association coming into Rhode Island on behalf of Helena Bonato folks. Not clear if that's gonna be TV ads. It usually is something like that, maybe mailers. But look, there's other money reportedly, I I I can't say specifically, but I'm I'm hearing as well that there's gonna be additional monies coming in on behalf of the folks that'll probably go to TV. So wouldn't surprise me. So that being the reality, where where do you stand and what's your appeal to Rhode Islanders in terms of fundraising and where do you stand in terms of of being able to compete with that either on air or otherwise?

SPEAKER_01 7:43

Let me take that question first because what's so amazing about the result that we just told everybody about yesterday, that in a head-to-head with myself against Helena Folks, I am six points favored as of right now. She spent six million dollars this year to get to that result. I've spent under $200,000 to get to that result. Am I intimidated by a whole pile of money coming in to support Helena Folks? I'm not. It hasn't worked. I don't think she could spend another six million dollars and change how people perceive her. It's not realistic. So uh is it impressive when you hear that the DGA is coming in? For me, it is telling, right? The DGA doesn't want to be spending a dime in this race in Rhode Island. Because in April of this year, this wasn't even on their radar. They didn't have to target a dime into this race. Now they just dropped a half a million dollars into the race, and that's taking support away from other candidates in other races in other states. So I like the fact that the DGA is coming in. I suspect they're gonna come in negative. And I also know that people's appetites for negative campaigning, this cycle is just about zero. They were nauseated by the debates between folks and McKee, what it devolved to. Uh, none of it was productive. None of it gets at solving the problems that Rhode Islanders have. We have serious problems and we need serious candidates to fix them. And Helena hasn't been that candidate, and Aaron most certainly isn't that candidate. The people want this thing changed, and that's why I feel very comfortable saying with some spending, and I will be doing some spending for sure, I don't have to match her dollar for dollar, million for million. I'm not going to, I'm not going to try. I need to spend a couple of hundred thousand dollars the right way with the right message, and with her brittle level of support, it will be enough. It's already shown that in the poll. I can spend $200,000 to her six. If she spends another three, I can spend another one, but I'll spend more than that for sure to get the job done. I am going to go after this with everything we need to spend to get the job done. I can assure everybody of that. Uh your other question, repeat your the first question again as I answered your second one for you.

Bill Bartholomew 10:11

Well, it just in terms of really it was where you stand from from a fundraising standpoint. I guess the the one quite expanding on that is are you going to put more of your own money into this race and are you expecting any kind of surge from uh obviously there's contributions that are contributional limits, but any sort of I don't know what outside expenditure could exist. You've been endorsed by the forward parties uh fo for by Andrew Yang recently. Um so is there some ecosystem that you're trying to tap into that can compete with, from just a financial standpoint, with what the Helena folks machine looks like right now?

SPEAKER_01 10:44

So I'm aware of another uh a number of uh organizations across the country that exist to support independent candidates. The forward party is one of them. Uh it is uh not allowed for me to understand and coordinate with what their activities are. So I can't tell you specifically what they're doing. Uh it is my hope uh that they will engage in a meaningful way. Uh I do know that Andrew Yang in particular uh likes me a lot on a personal level. Uh they had me to New York for fundraisers, and uh outside of any independent expenditure conversations, they have been very supportive and have made uh themselves available to me for advice and uh a resource center and many different things like that. So uh if it does come in, I I I don't think I can say I would be surprised. Uh, but I have no idea what their plans are uh or what any other uh organization's plans might be uh who supports uh independent candidates in in their races right now.

Bill Bartholomew 11:51

Gotcha. This question I can't take um the this origin this is a Dan York uh question that he he had posed on Aaron. So I'm I I think it's worth repeating though. Do you think that there would have been a lane for you? And do you regret it all not running in uh he he asked the Republican primary, I wonder, just Democrat as well, you think of Andrew Yang running in in the in in the Democratic primary for president. Um is the Republican brand or are either or both brands too tainted? Um and particularly though, the Republican Party, do you think that there could have been a lane where the the old school renowned Republican came back through you?

SPEAKER_01 15:32

I don't think so. I think that uh in primary politics, and we almost saw it for real uh in the Republican primary this time around. Uh look, I had my I had my one and only dose of party primaries. Uh it would be the same problem for me in the Democrat primary as uh it was in my Republican primary. Uh I'm firmly planted in the middle, and primaries don't like centered candidates. They just don't. So uh I'm in the right lane. I'm in fact, I'm in the only lane available for somebody like me. But much more importantly, running as an independent, I have access to voters throughout the ideological spectrum, and my poll shows I have support across the ideological spectrum in a way that no other candidate does. So, and that is partially that's just me, because I'm the least ideological person that many of your listeners will ever meet. Uh, but much more importantly, the the way that I communicate, the policies that I'm after, uh my role as the problem solver here, and the fact that I am the guy who can talk at at it at length in detail about the problems that we all have, uh, I'm unlike any other candidate uh that we've had running for for quite a long time. And uh maybe the last time I ran. So it's a uh I'm unique and I know it. Uh uh, but in this particular moment in this election, where the national politics, politicians on both sides of the aisle are disliked intensely by the majority of the voters. Here, where the bridge broke the political system completely, and we have people looking for answers outside their parties. The number of Republicans who tell me I've voted Republican my whole life, I'm voting for you. I was in North Providence and people were coming up to me, calling me over, walking down the street, recognizing me. I have my voted forever for Democrats, my father voted forever for Democrats. I'm voting for you. I can't vote for her. I hear that over and over and over again. What do you think that is? What do what do people say? What's the follow-up? I have asked, and there it there I haven't really I can't tell you that there's any answer that's consistent when when I asked the question. Uh if I was going to try to paraphrase it down as best I can, most Democratic v uh voters who told me they're not supporting Helena have told me in so many words that they just can't resonate with her. That's that is I know that's an unsatisfactory answer, but there's a lot of different things that sort of all lean in that direction and what I'm told. Uh and that's probably the easiest way for me for me to describe it. It's it's she is unique. She's a she is a wealthy elite. Uh and inside democratic uh politics, that's a hard that's a hard position to be in.

Bill Bartholomew 18:36

Yeah. Yeah, it's gonna be interesting to see what kind of lane she's able to carve out within with within the the the last few weeks of this race, uh, because she's really not out there. Not that she necess she is likely gonna be with TV with these expenditures and who knows what else. Look, there's a couple of debates scheduled. You've agreed and and I appreciate it, and I'm the state appreciates it, uh, and and Mr. Grakeen have agreed to participate in the Bartholomew Town WPRO radio debate. Um I haven't uh heard back from Helena Fokes' people. And you know, it's disappointing because I I I think the state deserves these debates, but um we're gonna do it without with or without Ms. Folkes, and it'll be on WPRO and and and all of that. Um but but when you think about just the when when you're running a campaign based on uh from centrally based on let's let's explore problem solving as best as we can. Debates are a fundamental place to do that.

SPEAKER_01 19:35

So the most the most important thing about debates and by the way, we haven't had a proper debate this year yet. And we've had a bunch of forums. And these forums used to have just in the last cycle, these forums were debates. You would sit on a stage or stand on a stage with the other candidates, you would be presented with the same question, and you would answer it one after the other after the other, and you could compare the answers. I know because I have talked to a a number of these forum organizers why it was done this way. And those who were willing to be forthcoming with me told me that Helena Folk refused to show up if it was actually a debate. She doesn't want to be contrasted with me. I think that it's just that simple. If I wasn't in the race, I think she'd probably show up and debate Erin. Uh, but she's saying absolutely not. Uh uh, and she the these forums, if they want her to come, they have to cave to her rules, uh, which I think is a little bit weak here. Uh if she's unwilling to debate me and she's unwilling to let her ideas be tested against my critiques of them, uh, what kind of governor can she actually be? I don't think a very good one. You got to have some confidence that you you can talk about your plans, you can defend them, and most importantly, you can engage in a difficult conversation. All right. This isn't about name this isn't about name-calling, it isn't about coming up with a slam or any of the stupid things that often happen in pri in in debates. This is about who's got the chops to lead us out of the mess that we're in. And we have a candidate with six million dollars who will not go toe-to-toe with me. Uh, she's gonna avoid it as much as she can. I think it's outrageous and sad, and ultimately it's pretty telling.

Bill Bartholomew 21:34

It's uh do you guys agree to any three-way debates on television channel 10 or 12? Television channel 12.

SPEAKER_01 21:41

So that is happening. And tonight at Roger Williams, it's not a debate in terms of the debate rules. So I don't know what that means. Uh, I guess we'll find out shortly.

Bill Bartholomew 21:52

We also have the the uh the Audubon Society forum coming up, and I don't know anything beyond that that's happening in October. I haven't I don't have too many details, but I'm moderating that, and I don't know what the format is for that. But um, it's just I don't know what I'm doing tomorrow. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:08

Did I reply yes to that?

Bill Bartholomew 22:10

I have no idea. I'm just saying, I'm just looking at it from the standpoint of these forums, which if they're not side-by-side comparisons, they are a different um it's a different animal. And I think I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 22:20

And it's a less it's a lesser way for the voters to understand and compare the candidates, right? And that's isn't that really the problem here? She doesn't want the comparison. She doesn't want to communicate. She won't defend her plans, which in many cases are nothing but but imaginary air, right? Her housing plan is ridiculously wrong. The money that she's counting on isn't is already spent, right? But yet it's the crux of of her 20,000 unit plan. Uh you can't it's very difficult to find any plan that when you look at it with any kind of care, uh there's big holes in it, and it turns out it's mostly talk and it's not a doable thing.

Bill Bartholomew 23:07

And that's what the debate and you know, of course I'm partial to it. Of course I'm I'm involved in this. So I'm sitting here like not, you know, I'm not just an observer here, but I I think that the radio format allows for those, that exact discussion. Hey, wait a second. It's it's here's Helena's plan, here's Ken's plan, here's Aaron's plan for housing. Let's go through it. Let's compare and contrast. Here, let's go back and forth on that and and really flesh it out like it like a boardroom scenario or like a any kind of a uh any kind of huddle. Doesn't matter what you're doing. That's that's how that's how we're gonna arrive at, or at least people who are or listening or watching can arrive at their own decision. So I think we need more of that. Now, in terms of like the prime time debates where it's you've got 30 seconds to answer and it's shouting back and forth and it's an audience of people cheering, that's a different animal too. That's a different test, and those are extremely valuable, and I'm glad they're happening. But I still think, man, I hope I hope she does it. I just think it would be a better day for Rhode Island if Helena Folkes is in that room with us. I just I I genuinely it's not because it's I genuinely think it's better.

SPEAKER_01 24:12

Yeah, uh if she if she isn't and and so you've reached out multiple times and it was the dates that we had originally discussed, right?

Bill Bartholomew 24:19

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:20

So you you didn't get any response like the date doesn't work or anything along those lines?

Bill Bartholomew 24:24

No, I'm sad to say I didn't. I'm sad to say I didn't. Now we're gonna we're gonna have we're gonna follow up again, and then if we don't get anything, we'll set the date and or announce the dates that we'd previously agreed on and and go forward with a a two-way. Um but I just think it's better for Rhode Island. I mean, actually, I know it's better for Rhode Island. If the can't it's WPR, or take Bartholomew Town now, it's WPR. That's a hundred years that signal it's a responsibility. Come on. That's a bigger, that's older and bigger than almost all of us. That that that frequency that serves people. Uh just let's look at it through that lens. So I'm hoping I really hope she shows up.

SPEAKER_01 25:05

Bill, I I I don't like to say this, but it's an extension of what I've seen her do this whole summer. She's avoided the direct comparison with me. And she does she wants to minim she can't not do the TV debates. I think she's gonna try very hard to not do yours.

Bill Bartholomew 25:25

Yeah, I hope we we work it out. Just like I said, it's better for around. All right. Um, what's on what's on tab last last 30 seconds here? What's on tap for you going forward? Obviously, at this point, you know, you're it's kind of it's the home stretch here. So what does that look like for Kimberly?

SPEAKER_01 25:39

It's the home stretch. We're we're readying uh the the commercials that we're gonna put out on TV, social media, et cetera, et cetera. Uh lots of debate prep, lots of, I mean, my day yesterday was uh I left the house at 7.30, got back at 8 at night, and it was pretty much nonstop uh the whole way through. I need to bring a spare shirt with me and a few other things that I've you know have to remember from uh previous times doing it. So uh, you know, there there's there's it's all the way on at this point, and uh I like where it's going. Uh I like the relative weaknesses of both candidates, and uh this is my moment. There's no question that this is my moment. And and you will hear me talking forcefully about what my vision is, what the deficits are of the candidates that I'm up against, uh, and making the case that if we want a different result in this state, we can't keep voting the same way.

Bill Bartholomew 26:35

Ken Block, independent candidate for governor of Rhode Island, home stretch. This is Bartholomewtown.