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Former CVS executive Helena Buonanno Foulkes will win Democratic nomination for governor in Rhode Island, after a bitter, high-cost joust that would turn Gov. Dan McKee into the first incumbent governor in the country to lose a primary in eight years,As of 8:50 p.m. McKee had 37.5% of the vote, while Foulkes had 62.5%, with 90.5% of precincts reporting.McKee took the stage at his watch party to concede the race to Foulkes and say he had, by that point, called Foulkes to congratulate her."Look, I'm just going to make it very short and simple," McKee said, "I have called Helena and I congratulate her on victory and promise, as we should, to have a smooth transition, whoever is standing after the November election ... and we'll spend our next few months on making sure that happens for the best interest of the state of Rhode Island.""Look, this is something that I think is difficult to deal with, but we just got to hold the heads high," he said. "And I got my head very high because I know the work that we've done together has been really special. "Check back here for results as they come in.How did we get here?A McKee loss would make him the first sitting governor to lose a primary in Rhode Island since then-Gov. Bruce Sundlun lost to Myrth York in 1994, and the first in the country in eight years.Poll after poll has given Foulkes, a former top executive at the Rhode Island-based CVS pharmacy chain, a double-digit lead in the Democratic primary rematch.Foulkes never really stopped running after her near-miss loss to McKee in 2022 by three percentage points.By Sept. 1, she had spent $5.1 million to his $2.047 million this year alone on TV ads and mailers and all the other necessities of a hard-driving, modern-day campaign.The latest WPRI-TV/Emerson College poll of the race, conducted between Aug. 21 and 22, captured voters' unease about Foulkes' role as president of CVS' pharmacy business during the opioid crisis, which was a central and persistent theme of McKee's campaign against her.But likely primary voters were even more put off by McKee's actions in the aftermath of the emergency Dec. 11, 2023, closure of the westbound span of the Washington Bridge that connects Providence with the East Bay.In March 2024, McKee promised a "day of reckoning for those who are responsible for the position that we're in and the position that the people of the state of Rhode Island are in,": and said "that day is coming and it's coming very soon."A lawsuit followed against 13 bridge contractors and consultants. But no one at the state Department of Transportation was removed from their jobs, including then-Director Peter Alviti, hired by McKee's predecessor, Gina Raimondo, from an arm of the Laborers International Union of North America, even after a leaked "forensic analysis" documented years of ignored warnings and neglect.McKee was also slow to acknowledge the continuing frustrations of drivers. And the DOT's first attempt to nail down a contract for a replacement bridge drew no bidders with penalties for failure to meet an overly optimistic completion date ahead of this year's primary.What comes next?Whoever wins the Democratic primary will face the winner on the Republican side, as well as the slate of Independents – of whom Ken Block is the front runner – on the General Election ballot.Other Independents include Jasjit Gotra, and C. Reynolds.
