TGIF: Ian Donnis’ Rhode Island politics roundup for July 17, 2026

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How unusual is it for the Rhode Island AFL-CIO – a 80,000-member-strong mainstay of local politics – to not endorse an incumbent Democratic governor? So unusual that it took a bit of digging to find out when this last happened. AFL-CIO President Patrick Crowley didn’t know the answer when he spoke with reporters Wednesday evening. Nor did his predecessor, George Nee, when I reached out to him. (See item 2 for the answer.) The point is, the non-endorsement – coming on the heels of the same outcome from the state Democratic Party – is another bad signal for Gov. Dan McKee’s re-election hopes. On the surface, the governor remains unruffled. With a record of winning tight races, McKee has expressed confidence that this latest match will be no different. But he’s lagged significantly behind Helena Foulkes in polling for months. Foulkes has picked up many more endorsements than McKee. When the incumbent gets out-of-town attention, it tends to be for reversing course on charter schools and how he ranks with Republican Larry Rhoden of North Dakota as a top risk for being rejected by his own party. McKee’s campaign is striving to make him empathetic and the governor has steadily increased his media outreach, ending a years-long avoidance of WPRO’s Tara Granahan this week after previous long absences on the precursor to One on One and WPRI’s Newsmakers. McKee’s campaign has also unleashed a flotilla of campaign commercials aiming to disqualify Foulkes, while also sparking backlash for criticizing one of the best-known corporate names in Rhode Island. “The McKee campaign’s latest ad is a misrepresentation of the work we do every day,” CVS Health spokeswoman Amy Thibault said in a recent statement, referring to this spot. With a fundraising advantage, Foulkes’ campaign has the resources to counter. Can McKee’s message sway enough voters, particularly when the tangible experience of being stuck in Washington Bridge traffic is a shared experience for so many Rhode Islanders? With a little more than seven weeks until the conclusion of the Sept. 9 primary, it’s uncertain if anything will change the prevailing dynamic on the Democratic side of the race for governor.

Cranston-based local historian Steve Frias tells TGIF it’s unclear if the RI AFL-CIO has always had a practice of endorsing an incumbent Democratic governor ahead of a primary. Frias is certain, though, that the last sitting Democratic governor to not get the federation’s support before the primary and the general election was Democrat John Notte Jr. in 1962. Frias said Notte won his primary by about eight points, but lost the general election to Republican John Chafee by the ultra-thin margin of 398 votes. (Notte had fired the hard-charging longtime leader of the Rhode Island State Police, Col. Walter E. Stone, and Chafee campaigned as “the man you can trust.” Labor was also ticked off by his backing for night horse racing and how Notte walked away from supporting a state income tax, per the secretary of state’s office.)

House Speaker Chris Blazejewski put down a noteworthy marker early in his tenure as one of Rhode Island’s most powerful elected officials, unveiling his support for the long-stalled idea of creating an office of inspector general. The bold step gave the new speaker a burst of publicity on the side of reform and his stated goal of bolstering confidence in government, even if critics zeroed in on how the General Assembly would be beyond the purview of an IG. Blazejewski maintains that separation of powers precludes an inspector general from overseeing the legislature and that “99.5%” of state spending will be within the IG’s jurisdiction. So does the new speaker plan any new steps to bolster legislative accountability/transparency? During a wide-ranging interview on One on One this week, Blazejewski was asked that question three times. He ultimately responded by citing how meetings of the Joint Committee on Legislative Services, the hiring and spending arm of the General Assembly, are public and how the auditor general (who serves at the pleasure of the legislature) parses its spending.

The process to build the office of inspector general gets under way next week with the first meeting of an advisory commission in room 101 at the Statehouse at 3:30 pm on Tuesday, July 21. The office was created through Article 3 of the current state budget, with the first 10 pages outlining duties, deadlines and other key details. One person who will not seek the job is term-limited Attorney General Peter Neronha. “I am not interested in being IG,” Neronha tells me. “And even if I was, the statute includes a one-year revolving door provision that covers me.” Through his role as AG, Neronha is a member of the five-member advisory commission. It also includes General Treasurer James Diossa, Secretary of State Gregg Amore, Ethics Commission Director Jason Gramitt, and the president of the Association of Inspectors General or a designee.

In the early phase of his speakership, Blazejewski comes across as the same affable guy for those who’ve known him for years – and also someone who is more reserved in answering questions than his loquacious predecessor, Joe Shekarchi. Whether this reflects the Providence Democrat’s transition to the apex of power or a desire to maintain flexibility on policy will take more time to determine. Regardless, Blazejewski’s communication style was on display. Can the state afford to continue increasing spending at the rate that has raised the budget to $15.2 billion? Blazejewski replied during our interview by citing the urgency of responding to President Trump’s budget bill. Does he support Helena Foulkes’ pitch to use the new surtax on income over a million dollars to tackle housing? He was non-committal. Blaz has talked up the political future of his number two, Majority Leader Katherine Kazarian (D-East Providence), so does he hope his legacy will include setting the stage for Rhode Island’s first female House speaker? The Providence Democrat steered clear of a yes or no, summing up his response by saying, “She’s a great colleague and the sky’s the limit for what she can accomplish.”

Superior Court arguments in former Speaker Shekarchi’s revolving-door case are slated for 1 pm Monday, via Eli Sherman. The case is a full Rhode Island since Superior Court Judge Richard Licht faced revolving door questions when Gov. Lincoln Chafee appointed him, then administration director in the Chafee administration, to the bench years ago. Asked if the attempt to go directly from the General Assembly to the Supreme Court damages confidence in government, Speaker Blazejewski told me, “I don’t think so. I can just say that I personally, having worked with Speaker Shekarchi, I just know where his heart is. He’s worked very hard for the state. He cares a lot about a lot of the issues that impact families in Rhode Island. I’ve said that I think personally he would be a great Supreme Court justice.” It was the General Assembly that approved the revolving door law as a response to judicial scandals, so does Blazejewski see a need for lawmakers to clarify who is and is not exempt? “I don’t think there’s a role at this time right now,” he said in part. “It’s playing through the process.”

The Democratic primary fight between Providence Mayor Brett Smiley and challenger David Morales has quickly turned into a must-watch competition. An absence of independent public polling made it hard to parse the race for a time. Now, in the clearest sign that Smiley is concerned about the outlook, his campaign unleashed an ad suggesting that Morales would cause a spike in crime. Smiley’s campaign is also fundraising based on Morales’ supporter Danviel Denvir’s talk of wanting to turn Providence “into a lab for municipal socialism.” “This language should concern everyone who calls Providence home,” Smiley wrote in an email pitch. “The people of Providence are not guinea pigs, and Providence is not some test case for a national movement to prove a point [emphasis in original]. We are a living, breathing city full of people who care deeply about our community and want to see it succeed.” While the mayor’s rap resonates well beyond his supporters, it’s worth remembering that Democratic socialists are winning more elections – and how Bernie Sanders outpaced Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential primary in Rhode Island, a place previously considered a bastion of “Clinton Country.” There’s also more than a bit of myopia in how economics gets discussed in the political blender. Critics tend to ignore, for example, what the conservative American Enterprise Institute identifies as $4 billion a year “subsidizing Stalinist-style domestic sugar production.” There are other examples of how the government and corporations alter Adam Smith’s notion of an unfettered invisible hand, ranging from an antitrust exemption for MLB to billions in taxpayer subsidies for military stuff that doesn’t work.

Independent Ken Block is waiting in the wings to take on whichever Democrat emerges from the primary. Block joined CNN’s Erin Burnett this week to respond to President Trump’s speech about elections and voting. “This is the intrusion of politics into the conduct of our elections,” said Block, who literally wrote the book about the lack of evidence to support Trump’s false claim of a stolen election in 2020. (Here’s my 2023 deep-dive on election deniers in Rhode Island. It revealed how a local state rep was among those attending Mike “My Pillow” Lindell’s summits in Missouri.)

*** LG Sabina Matos won the endorsement of the RI AFL-CIO, unlike the guy who picked her for the job in 2021.

***Grace Voll, most recently comms director in Pawtucket, has joined Statecraft Strategies as a senior communications strategist.

***Learn all about Cumberlandite, the state rock.

All of us Sox fans nonstop groused, of course, about the team’s awful performance through the early months of the season. Did team owner John Henry know that Boston would turn it around, capping the first half of the season with a nine-game winning streak ahead of the All-Star game? That’s too much to expect even from a commodities expert of Henry’s caliber. More mysterious is why Henry, a savior of local journalism, stopped talking to reporters (even if he still pays Dan McGowan’s salary). Jason Schwartz went looking for answers. Excerpt: “Because the Sox have a baseball chief, a CEO, a manager and a chairman speaking. There are plenty of front office voices every day.”