Rhode Island’s Dan McKee became the first sitting governor to lose a primary in nearly a decade, bested not by a more progressive challenger or a more youthful upset but by frustration over a bridge.
McKee lost his Democratic primary to Helena Foulkes, a former longtime executive with Rhode Island-based retail pharmacy CVS, the Associated Press said on Wednesday.
“Tonight, we may have won the Democratic primary for governor, but let me be clear about what happens next: you will have a governor for everyone,” Foulkes said during her victory speech in the state’s capital, Providence. “Because there is so much work that needs to be done, and we need to do this together.”
It is rare for a sitting governor to lose a primary election. It hasn’t happened in Rhode Island since 1994.
In his concession speech, also in Providence, McKee promised to work with Foulkes to ensure she is elected in November.
“This is something that I think is difficult to deal with,” McKee said, “but we just got to hold our heads high.”
Several Democratic incumbents have been toppled this cycle, in a wave of anti-establishment anger that has elevated young and progressive insurgents. But this contest was different.
On the campaign trail, Foulkes criticized McKee’s handling of repair work on Providence’s Washington bridge, a major east-west traffic artery that carries roughly 100,000 vehicles per day. She accused him of bungling those repairs, which have dragged on longer than originally planned.
McKee closed the bridge in December 2023, after inspectors uncovered serious structural problems. By March 2024, officials had concluded that repairing the structure was not feasible and that it would have to be rebuilt. State officials initially estimated that the bridge would be reopened to traffic this year, but the project’s completion date has since been delayed to November 2028.
The primary contest was something of a rematch from four years ago, when Foulkes, who is the niece of former Democratic Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut, came in a close second behind McKee in a five-way contest. McKee went on to easily win the general election in 2022, after having assumed the role from then-governor Gina Raimondo, who stepped down to become Joe Biden’s US commerce secretary in 2021.
Election prognosticators rate the seat as strongly Democratic, and therefore the winner of Wednesday’s primary is seen as having a major advantage in the November general election.
Mckee’s defeat was not the only electoral upset on Wednesday. In Providence, David Morales, a 27-year-old Democratic socialist defeated mayor Brett Smiley in the Democratic primary, ending the incumbent’s bid for a second term. Morales’s campaign was backed by progressive stalwarts, including senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and several labor unions.
