Born to Run: An Exclusive Look at RI’s 2022 Governor’s Race

And They’re Off: Who’s Running So Far

Dan McKee, Democrat

Courtesy of candidate or Facebook.

On March 2, Dan McKee became the state’s luckiest lieutenant governor since John O. Pastore. Governor Gina Raimondo resigned to become the United States Secretary of Commerce, and McKee won a seventeen-month audition for the job. Pastore had only been lieutenant governor for a year when Governor Howard McGrath resigned to become President Harry Truman’s Solicitor General. Pastore won a full term as governor in 1946. This month, McKee will announce his intention to repeat history.

McKee, seventy, has deep roots in municipal government, serving two terms on the Cumberland Town Council and six as mayor. He was elected lieutenant governor in 2014. A long-time small business owner, McKee was an officer of McKee Brothers, his family’s home heating oil delivery business, and ran the Woonsocket Health and Racquetball Club for several years. A graduate of Assumption College and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, McKee founded the state’s first Mayoral Academy public charter school, Blackstone Valley Prep.

As governor, McKee has continued his support for charter schools and picked up the reins of Rhode Island’s vaccination drive, which saw the state’s adult rate shoot to second in the nation. In October, McKee released a fifty-five-page 2030 plan to strengthen the entire public sector: from all levels of public education to housing, climate change, the health care system, small business development, transportation and infrastructure.

“I have a strong record,” he says. “Certainly, I was tested under fire. No governor ever has had to answer the call as we had to answer the call. We came in during the worst health and economic crisis in the state and, to date, the outcomes have been extraordinary. No one has the experience I have with the economy and the housing crisis, which will have a strong record by the time the election cycle comes. Anytime you go from a position of weakness to a position of strength, it’s a matter of leadership.”

But his administration’s early days saw significant controversy. In August, his chief of staff, Tony Silva, departed amid an independent state investigation into a permit he obtained to develop wetlands in Cumberland and revelations that he held multiple jobs while working as chief of staff. Around the same time, McKee was accused of cronyism after the state awarded a $5 million education contract using federal pandemic aid dollars to the newly minted consulting firm ILO, with ties to a McKee ally and administration insiders. The contract, to help re-open public schools during the pandemic, was significantly higher than the other, more experienced bidder — and hardly any schools needed or used ILO, whose real mission is to build more mayoral academies.

“He had the greatest timing, when the vaccines are going into people’s arms and the economy coming back, but he’s has had a real bumpy ride lately,” says Boston Globe political reporter Edward Fitzpatrick. “The honeymoon’s over for him.”

Lives In: Cumberland
Did You Know? As lieutenant governor, McKee had a distant relationship with then-governor Gina Raimondo and reportedly had capitol police officers deliver letters to her office, one flight up the stairs.

Matt Brown, Democrat

Courtesy of candidate or Facebook.

Matt Brown was once a fast-rising star in state Democratic circles. A successful five-year stint with City Year Providence, the state’s Americorps public service program, helped launch Brown, then thirty-two, into the Secretary of State’s office in 2002. A Yale-educated lawyer, he was praised as a visionary for his accomplishments there: creating a computerized central voter registration database, a Motor Voter electronic voter registration system, a Civics 101 program for high school students, and public access to lobbyists’ financial reports.

His assent abruptly halted in March 2006. During the Democratic primary for an open United States Senate seat, opponents accused Brown of side-stepping campaign finance laws by getting maxed-out individual donors to contribute $30,000 to the Hawaii, Maine and Massachusetts state Democratic party organizations, which, in turn, donated $25,000 to Brown’s campaign. The Federal Election Commission ruled that there was no wrongdoing and Brown returned the money. Eventually, he dropped out.

He left Rhode Island for a decade, co-founding Global Zero, a nonprofit dedicated to the elimination of nuclear weapons. In 2018, Brown stepped back into the state political arena, challenging Governor Gina Raimondo in the primary. His entrance featured an incendiary confrontation at the Democratic State Convention, where he sought and then withdrew his bid for the party’s endorsement. Brown attacked Raimondo for taking money from special interests at the expense of average citizens’ needs. She easily won re-election in a three-way primary with 57 percent of the vote.

“My whole life our government has been run by the same corrupt political establishment,” Brown says. “They have looked out for themselves. They’ve looked out for the corporations. They’ve looked out for the wealthy, but they’ve left everybody else behind, and it’s caused a lot of harm.”

This time, Brown, fifty-two, is running as the head of a progressive posse with Senator Cynthia Mendes as his lieutenant governor running mate and as many as fifty General Assembly and local candidates affiliated with the Rhode Island Political Cooperative, an organization that provides campaign support to progressive aspirants. With a platform of environmental protection, affordable housing, a fair economy, quality education and health care for all, Brown wants to form a new government.

“We want to build a Rhode Island that works for everyone, so everyone can see a doctor, and everyone can find a good school for their kid, and everyone can earn a living wage,” he says. “And there’s no one person who can do that alone. We need a lot of people to work together. It’s a real movement.”

Lives In: Providence
Did You Know? As a political organizer in 2000, Brown reportedly drove a Volvo with bumper stickers promoting Attorney General Sheldon Whitehouse’s 1998 campaign, City Year and the independence of Northern Ireland.