Barrington businessman Ken Block, a long-time critic of state government, announced Thursday he’s running for governor of Rhode Island as an independent.
In making his third run for the state’s top job, Block said he plans a sharp focus on what he calls a worsening lack of competence, as evidenced by problems ranging from the failure of the Washington Bridge to troubles with the state’s $100 million payroll system.
Block, 60, said these issues make life harder in Rhode Island and pose unnecessary added costs for the state.
“And I haven’t seen anyone talking about dealing with this,” he said during an interview. “This is the most important thing on our plate: making our government operate better. And that’s going to be my strongest focus – getting in there, figuring out why we keep making these same kinds of mistakes over and over again, and I want to get them fixed.”
By running as an independent, Block will not compete in the high-stakes September primary. The two best-known Democratic candidates are Gov. Dan McKee and challenger Helena Foulkes. On the GOP side, Aaron Guckian faces lesser-known candidates Elaine Pelino and Robert Raimondo.
“It’s going to be a mercifully short campaign for me,” Block said, “and I look forward to talking with Rhode Islanders about the serious problems that we have in our government, and how I propose dealing with them, and putting us on a better path moving forward.”
Block has not run for office since 2014, when he lost the GOP primary for governor by about 10 percentage points to Cranston Mayor Allan Fung.
That came after Block walked away from a third party he had established, the Moderate Party of Rhode Island, with the idea of bringing more centrism to politics in the state. Block got 6.5% of the vote as the Moderate Party candidate for governor in 2010.
Block runs Simpatico Software, a data analytics company. He was hired by President Trump’s campaign organization after the 2020 election and wrote a book detailing how he was unable to find evidence confirming Trump’s false account of a stolen election. Block also founded Watchdog RI, a nonpartisan research organization.
He said his latest campaign is no vanity exercise.
“You have to work way too hard to run a campaign that isn’t being run to win,” he said. “I’m extremely serious about this. I’m expecting polling that we’re going to have in the field in the not-too-distant future to show that there’s very much a viable path. If that path ends up not being there and if I’m not able to raise the money that’s necessary to be incredibly competitive in this campaign, I won’t continue.”
Block said he believes he needs to raise $1 million in contributions, with another $1 million coming through the state’s public matching funds program, to run a competitive race.
Block said he made up his mind up to run within the last two weeks and sealed the deal by winning his wife’s support during a recent getaway to Puerto Rico.
Independent candidates tend to struggle in statewide elections. Lincoln Chafee won a close race for governor as an independent in 2010, but he was able to draw on his personal wealth..
Block said he’s running as an independent because “the state’s problems that have to be addressed aren’t addressable within a partisan worldview, right? Fixing how our government operates, getting into the Rhode Island DOT and fixing myriad different problems that exist throughout there, these are real-life problems that are managerial in nature, and a party provides no mechanism for dealing with those problems in a productive way.”
Asked about what he sees as the root of competence problems in state government, Block said, “What I suspect is probably correct is that we don’t have the right people in the right jobs. We may not even have the right jobs for some of what we need to be doing. And that is the first order of business upon winning - to understand what’s missing or why this is happening and then working with the General Assembly to rectify those problems as quickly as possible.”
