Election 2022: Governor’s Race Will Be Like No Other
Tuesday, October 19, 2021
We have seen three before, but we have never seen five.
The Democratic primary has five major candidates running for the nominee for governor in Rhode Island.
Governor Dan McKee, former Secretary of State Matt Brown, General Treasurer Seth Magaziner, Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea, and corporate CEO Helena Foulkes are all now in the race.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST“I think [Foulkes] entry makes it easier for every candidate, in that when there are more candidates in the race, your ‘win’ number goes down — you can win with a smaller proportion of the vote,” said Professor Jennifer Lawless, chair of the Political Science Department at the University of Virginia.
Foulkes launched last week with a slick campaign video, but then struggled to answer questions about her corporate compensation of $29.5 million in her CEO role at Hudson's Bay Company and her corresponding campaign Tweet that she is for "equality for all."
She made 1,000 times the pay of frontline retail workers in the company.
Will Candidates Run Micro-Targeted Campaigns?
In the 2018 Democratic gubernatorial primary, Brown won 33.5% of the vote against then-Governor Gina Raimondo, and if he received those 39,518 votes again, he would be likely to win the primary -- if all five candidates stay in the race.
“And what that means is that over the course of the next few months, my bet is that each of these campaigns will be identifying as many reliable voters as they can and then working to make sure that they turn out,” adds Lawless.
“It no longer becomes one of these situations where you've got to win 40 or 50 percent of the vote to be victorious in this primary — you have to win 20 plus one probably, you know assuming the way that the other candidates are raising money [and getting] votes,” said Lawless.
Female Factor
This may be the first time in decades that two prominent women faced off in a Democratic primary since 1994, when then-State Senator Myrth York and former Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management Director Louise Durfee were candidates.
"The other thing I would note is that I think [this field] probably makes it a little bit easier for a candidate like Seth Magaziner. We know that women are more inclined to have a baseline preference for female candidates — all else equal — and in this case, when all are equal, they have multiple women from whom to choose, which means that they're going to be dividing the vote and that makes it easier for the other candidates in the race," said Lawless.
If Three-Way Races Are Complicated, Five Way Races Are an Unknown
In 1990, the Democrats had a bruising campaign in the Democratic primary. Three high-profile candidates spent a record amount.
Two-time Democratic nominee for governor Bruce Sundlun was locked in a highly contested battle with then-Providence Mayor Joe Paolino and Warwick Frank Flaherty. Sundlun won the primary and went on to be one of RI’s most successful governors.
The primary was three viable and well-funded Democrats-- it was repeated in 1994 and then again, in 2002 when York, now U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, and then-House Finance Committee Chair Tony Pires went head to head. York ultimately was the Democratic nominee following the bruising primary and lost to Republican Don Carcieri. It was her third consecutive loss for governor.
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