The Boston Globe · Editorial Board · September 2, 2026
The Globe endorses Helena Buonanno Foulkes in the Sept. 9 Democratic primary over incumbent Daniel McKee.
It has been a rough few years for Rhode Island Governor Daniel McKee.
Just a year after he won a full term in 2022, the westbound span of a major Providence bridge was abruptly, and permanently, closed. A replacement span is still a year or two away, and traffic jams have become a way of life. The economy, strong in his first years in office, has sputtered, with employment falling and a company with a 103-year history in the state, Hasbro, deciding to move to Massachusetts. Housing costs have remained high, but housing starts are among the lowest in the country.
Not surprisingly, McKee's approval rating has fallen to new lows, with 8 in 10 people saying they disapproved of his performance in a poll released last week. His handling of transportation/infrastructure issues -- read: the closure of the Washington Bridge -- was the most-cited reason for his poor rating.
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McKee's problems do not end there. The state Democratic Party declined to support him in next Wednesday's primary, while at least 13 local Democratic committees, including the one in Providence, have endorsed his opponent -- a remarkable turn of events for a sitting governor. The state AFL-CIO also refused to endorse, after having endorsed him four years ago.
Approval ratings and union and party support are not necessarily the stuff of endorsement decisions. But when so many indicators point in the same direction, it suggests that something is badly amiss at the top of Rhode Island state government.
If McKee were facing a weak candidate in next Wednesday's Democratic primary, this board might be more open to his reelection. But he is not: Helena Buonanno Foulkes, who narrowly lost to McKee in the 2022 primary, is running again, and she presents a more dynamic alternative. As we did in 2022, the Globe editorial board enthusiastically endorses her in the primary.
Foulkes, 62, and McKee, 75, are both pragmatic liberals who have made reducing the cost of living, creating jobs, expanding access to health care, building housing, and improving schools core components of their campaigns. But Foulkes has put forward bolder, fresher ideas.
To create more housing, she would start a $1 billion fund to provide loans and investment capital to developers of both subsidized and market-rate housing. Financed through higher taxes on people with annual incomes of $1 million or more, the fund could stimulate construction of 20,000 new units, her campaign asserts.
She has also pledged to cut regulatory burdens on developers; encourage housing construction on vacant commercial spaces, parking lots, and state land; and make Rhode Island a hub for manufacturing low-cost modular housing.
In K-12 education, she has focused her attention on improving vocational and technical training, proposing a $100 million bond to expand such programs. She has also criticized McKee for signing legislation that places a moratorium on new charter schools and reduces the cap on those schools.
McKee was once a strong ally of the charter school movement, and his decision to sign the bill was widely seen as a bid to win the endorsement of both of the state's teachers unions. In an interview with the editorial board, Foulkes said there are long waiting lists for open charter seats, most of them Black or Hispanic students. "We are ignoring their reality," she said.
Foulkes is a native of Rhode Island who, after graduating from Harvard, returned to the state to work for CVS Pharmacy, the retail division of the state's second-largest private employer, CVS Health. She rose to become president between 2014 and 2018, helping oversee the company's decision to stop selling tobacco products.
But she also presided during the opioid crisis, when CVS pharmacies would come under intense scrutiny for their opioid sales. McKee has made Foulkes's CVS tenure a cornerstone of his campaign, attacking her as lacking government experience and accusing her of putting profits ahead of people by failing to curtail opioid prescriptions faster.
"This is not about the company or the thousands of Rhode Islanders who work there," McKee said in a statement to the editorial board. "This is about the executive who made decisions that hurt our families."
Foulkes contends that as president, she moved to cut off hundreds of "pill-mill" doctors. She also notes that McKee invoked the same criticism in 2022; she argues that revisiting it now underscores a hole at the center of his campaign.
"The governor, from the day I got in the race, has made this all he wants to talk about, because his record isn't so great," she told the editorial board.
Indeed, it seems no more reasonable to hold Foulkes responsible for a national addiction crisis that touched every corner of the American health care system than it is to hold McKee responsible for the closing of a bridge that had clearly been deteriorating for years.
At the same time, Foulkes's business experience might be what Rhode Island needs right now. She shows a better grasp of the challenges companies face in deciding whether to relocate to, expand in, or leave the state. Case in point: She wants to expand bus service from Providence to a growing industrial hub in Quonset.
Foulkes says she has spent much of the past four years listening to Rhode Islanders at school meetings and mass transit hearings, on playgrounds and in kitchens -- and it shows. She can talk about local problems that matter to residents, from broken school fences to inadequate wages to spotty bus service. But she also speaks aspirationally for the entire state.
"I don't really think I'm running against Dan McKee at some level," she told the editorial board. "I feel like I'm running against people's perception that maybe this is just as good as we can ever be ... I'm an optimist, and I don't want people to give up on government."
It's the right sentiment from the right choice for Rhode Island governor.
Editorials represent the views of the Boston Globe Editorial Board. Follow us @GlobeOpinion.