- Dave Morales is a smart guy.

He works incredibly hard and he's got the moment where we're very anti-incumbent.

There's an opening there.

- If you jump in and you're part of Super Tuesday, it makes you part of the discussion.

It makes you hopefully have sort of a role in that.

- Or do you get lost in the sauce?

- Maybe there's some scenario where Ken Block as a chronic kind of antagonist can fit in.

- No, he's been around a little bit.

He's got a little bit of name recognition.

He can be a spoiler.

(bright music) - Welcome in to this episode of "Lively."

I'm Jim Hummel.

We're joined this week by attorney and former Democratic Party chairman, Bill Lynch and Boston Globe columnist Dan McGowan.

The race for governor got a lot more interesting as Ken Block, a regular panelist here on "Lively" said he is exploring a race as an independent, something he first did in a four-way race back in 2010.

The big question, does he have a path to victory?

Dan, we've been talking off camera about this for a week.

We both covered his race back in 2010.

Things have changed a lot in the last 16 years.

- Yeah, that was the first race I covered, that and the Providence Mayors race back in 2010.

And your race for Congress actually.

- You guys are a lot older than I thought you were.

- He doesn't wanna remember his race for Congress.

- That was back when there was a dress code on this program.

- Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, he's keeping it up with the tie, but that was a race, Lincoln Chafee, Frank Caprio, John Robataille.

And anew Ken Block.

- And a new Ken Block who, you know, we were, we you said we were talking offline.

I mean, he kind of came across as the smartest guy in the room, you know, as the moderate party candidate.

And he showed what the smartest guy in the room typically gets, about 5% of the vote in the governor's race.

You know, got a little stronger in 2014 as the Republican candidate against Allan Fung, but came up pretty short.

Pretty significant loss.

And then he's been sort of out of the picture now.

He certainly in his case, I think thinks that, look, I've been, you know, an antagonist in government.

I've done all these things, but I always think when people run for office, the worst kind of candidate is the first time they ever run because they think more people know them than they do.

But the second worst candidate is the former person who thinks, you know, a decade ago, I ran for governor, everybody knows who I am.

I think Ken Block's gonna have a lot of work to do to remind people outside of "Lively" viewers who he is.

- Look, I'm not gonna sit here and say he can't win because we've got a clown who's the President of the United States.

So I think anybody can win under the right circumstances.

I don't think Ken frankly will prevail.

But I think to Dan's point, you know, he's been around a little bit.

He's got a little bit of name recognition.

He can be a spoiler.

I think that's probably more likely what his role will be.

But I don't think he's, you know, his chances of being elected governor are pretty slim in my opinion.

But he can make a lot of noise.

And I think one thing that he's already been doing, he's been a pretty significant critic.

If you follow what's happening, I mean, that's issue number one of the present governors.

So if he's gonna get out early, even though he's not gonna be in a primary and try to, you know, get his some type of campaign going and get some publicity with guys like Dan, it seems like it's gonna be a constant critique of, you know, the present governor, which, you know, most people that I've been talking to seem to think that that helps Helena Foulkes and hurts Governor McKee more than anything.

- And it makes it very difficult.

If Helena Foulkes is the Democratic nominee, if she can beat Governor McKee in the primary, I don't see any path that Ken Block could potentially have.

Look, if Dan McKee escapes and somehow he wins a primary, but his poll numbers look relatively similar to where they are now, you know, relatively unpopular governor.

Maybe there's some scenario where Ken Block, you know, as a chronic kind of antagonist can fit in.

The problem for him is that there's gonna be a Republican candidate and there's that Republican candidate no matter who they are, Aaron Guckian seems to be the favorite, is gonna get a big chunk of the vote.

- Just because he has an R next to his name.

- All of those votes are Ken Block votes, you know, if he was the Republican candidate.

- I remember during that campaign I did long form video interviews with G to the four, Robataille, Caprio, Ken Block and Linc Chafee.

And what Linc told me was Chafee was that it's really hard to run as an independent because you don't have that party infrastructure.

And he mentioned the party chairman, he said a lot of times the party chairman will go to bat for you in a way that you can't, and you had to do that for candidates over the years that it kind of went to you and you did some of the PR.

So Ken does his own, but I also wonder with Helena Foulkes, the mistake she made four years ago was she didn't get out of the blocks quick enough.

She's in a primary, we're five, six months out.

Are you surprised she's not up on the air yet and at least reintroducing herself to the population?

- No, not really, although I think she'll start pretty shortly, but I think the difference is that she almost without question, I think started too late the last time she ran.

Whether or not another two weeks would've actually made the difference, obviously, we'll never know.

But I think lesson learned, number one, and she's addressed that by being out personally campaigning everywhere.

For months now.

So she may not be up on the air, so to speak, but unlike the last time where she just sort of started her campaign and then went from there forward-- - She goes to all the meetings, Democratic party.

- She's been to an opening of an envelope, you know, at this point for several months.

So I think that's a different scenario.

The only thing I'll say about the independent situation, I think it's part of what goes into it, Ken Block's a very analytical, you know, guy.

When I was the chairman, you know, which goes back to 98, I think it was, the registered voters, you know, in Rhode Island were, you know, the Republicans have always had 11, 12% consistently for as long as I can remember.

And the Democratic Party back then had 60%, 61%, and the balance were unaffiliated or independents, 30% somewhere in there.

And now, yeah, interestingly enough, over time that's completely flipped.

So that now the identified Democrats, now that's not to say, you know, some of these independents and unaffiliateds are not leaning Democrat, but the registered Democrats are now going from 61% to 31% and the independents or unaffiliateds have flipped and are now in the 60s.

So it does, you know, make it a little bit more interesting as to where those people are.

- We have to attribute that to Chairman Lynch, no longer the chairman.

- All the Democrats have gone.

- I'm not coming back.

- They're not gonna dust you off.

I find it kind of amusing that Governor McKee seems to be really perturbed by this, you know, I'm a sitting governor and I'm being primaried.

And that's, you know, it's never happened.

Didn't Myrth York take on Bruce Sundlun back in the day?

- I mean, that's kind of the response you get from any sitting Democrat or Republican for that matter.

- Nobody likes a primary.

- Well, I mean, that's sort of happens to some extent.

I guess you see it all over the country now with, and even, and you know, you've got, I'm not gonna speak for the Republican party, and there are many primaries now that Republicans are facing across the country based on where they stand with MAGA and Trump and all of these issues.

So there was a time when it was, I think, pretty unusual that you'd be challenged from someone within your own party.

That was always a big hangup for Joe Shicachi.

You know, the speaker-- - He was waiting for the governor-- - They just was never comfortable with running against the sitting Democrat.

So, you know, times changed.

I mean, that's just the bottom line.

Things are not the same as they were, you know, 30, 40 years ago.

And all bets are off.

- I think the interesting thing with Ken is he said, look, it looks like he's running, but he said he's gotta do some polling and he wants to see how much money he can raise until, you know, they have until June.

Clearly, he could pull out.

But I think that's an interesting strategy to say.

It goes back to what you said, am I as well known, am I having as much of an impact as I think I am?

- Well, and the trick with polling though, you know this, I mean, how many candidates have you talked to over the years?

A poll will tell you anything you wanna believe.

- If you're writing the check.

- You're writing the check.

And if you see, boy, 50% of people haven't made a decision in the governor's race.

There's my opening.

Well, that doesn't necessarily mean that those 50% are gonna vote for you.

So I think it's smart.

I do think I should say Ken Block's a very intelligent guy.

I think he does know how to read a poll.

I think he will make, you know, an educated decision.

But he clearly wants to do this and so you gotta, you know, figure he'll probably be in the race.

- Okay, and he had to get the sign off from his wife.

Very important.

He said, I texted him and I he said I was waiting for approval.

I said, from your wife?

Absolutely.

So, smart man.

Should Rhode Island voters become part of Super Tuesday in the next presidential primary cycle?

That proposal and a slew of other surrounding voting are being considered at the State House this session.

Bill, let's start with you.

It's been earlier, it's been later.

And now the proposal is we want to be right in there with everybody else to be consequential.

- Yeah, you know, this has been an ongoing discussion in Rhode Island and every other state, even back when I was the chair and going to national meetings, there's always been this kind of wrestling about where you wanna fit in and you wanna play a role in the process.

And so as a smaller state, it's always a little bit challenging for us to do that.

If you jump in and you're part of Super Tuesday, it makes you part of the discussion, it makes you hopefully have sort of a role in that.

- Or do you get lost in the sauce?

- Well, no, but the issue is if you're not in that group, then does anybody care?

Is the process basically over by that point.

And then you have this primary that nobody really pays any attention to.

It's always about trying to get some type of traction in the discussion.

And it's challenging for Rhode Island, you know, we don't have a ton of delegates and so it makes it a little bit more difficult.

I was interested because, you know, with respect to our primaries, you know, back when I was the chair, I actually put together a memo and submitted it to the legislature to look at whether or not Rhode Island should consider moving our primary out of September and into, you know, sometime in the late spring.

It didn't really meet with a huge degree of success.

- And you know why?

Because you have sitting legislators if they're being primaried, who don't want to be sitting in a building while their opponent is out campaigning.

It's as simple as that.

- Yeah.

- But I agree with you.

I think we should definitely move it.

- Oh, I completely agree.

But I love the idea just as strictly selfishly as a journalist, it would be great to be part of Super Tuesday.

We were, you know, somehow we claim being part of the mix or whatever you saw, I mean, think back to 2016, right?

Rhode Island voted for Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton, but the race was over by the time, you know, that happened.

So Rhode Island made a statement to some degree, but it wasn't really a factor.

It was almost adding in, you know, sort of a, just a slap at Hillary Clinton.

You know, it would be nice to be a little bit part of, I think you would get more presidential visits.

You still, they're doing the math too.

They wouldn't, you know, live in Rhode Island by any means.

But they would have to pay a little closer attention to us, I think.

- I think in a state, one of the issues always was that the legislature has a different opinion about when our primary should be than people running for higher offices.

- Why?

- You know?

Well, we have a history in Rhode Island where you have these primaries for governor.

You can go back to the days of Joe Walsh and you know, which was a long time ago.

And you have a primary in September and there's, you know, there's hard feelings that develop during a hard fought primary.

And then in a matter of a few weeks, you want all those people that you were fighting with to go out and vote for you.

And let's be honest, a lot of them are either angry, they stay home 'cause their candidate didn't win, or they haven't had time to really decompress and sort of, you know, let the dust settle and they go out and vote for in many cases the Republican who was running.

And we've had some losses in November, I think as a consequence of that.

- It's a short period.

I think it's the shortest in the country.

You have eight weeks basically to lock and load again, maybe raise some more money.

To me, in my mind, it's too tight a window between primary day.

- It clearly is too tight a window.

I think to that point, you know, the thing is we're blinded by kind of the most recent things that have happened.

And so, you know, very recently you haven't seen very strong Republican candidates for governor and so it becomes less of a factor.

But to your point, I mean, when you were the chairman, right, how many times, you have a brutal Democratic primary and then, you know, the Republican on the other side has a far less brutal primary and looks like the upstanding citizen.

Republicans for a long time put up pretty good candidates too, that helped.

- The one thing we started doing back, you know, when I was the chair is we would get literally the morning after the primary-- - He'd meet over at the old Unity.

- Lemme tell you, there were some times when it would not be easy getting the candidates who didn't win in the primary to come to a meeting the next morning.

- I always thought it was disingenuous to be beating them up and then say, and this is the guy we should elect.

Just don't say anything.

But it was your job to get everybody on board.

- Yeah, and to Dan's point, the reason was you only have a few weeks to get that done, you know, if you had six months or even four or five months.

Okay, you know, you can take a break, let everybody catch their breath, raise some money, and let people calm down.

But when you're coming out of a September primary and looking at a November election, it's on top of you like that.

- There was one of those rare Republican primaries when John Don Carcieri ran against Jim Bennett.

And you had a primary on the Democratic side too.

The Secretary of State Amore has said for the next cycle, we really need to get primary day in, at least in August if you're not gonna move it to May because they physically just don't have enough time with the mail-in ballots and everything else.

That seems to make sense.

And also because so many people are not voting actually on election day now, I did early voting, I love early voting.

Some people like the history of going on Election Day, the mail ballots, I dunno what the percentage is now, but it's smaller than you would think of people actually going on the day.

- I think in '22, the last governor's race about, I think 25% of people voted early in some fashion.

I'm a little bit old school.

I like going to get the sticker and go see the people.

It's fun.

- And when your son becomes old enough, we took our kids to their elementary school to say, hey, this is where you vote and this is why I'm doing it.

- This is Rhode Island, he's gonna vote next year.

- That's right, you'll get him registered.

So you never heard anything about doing a May or April or May primary?

They just didn't want to hear it?

- I got some consideration, but there was resistance at the State House, which not surprisingly, because of that very reason, you know, they're up there, you know, slogging through the calendar and as you know, in May gets very busy at the State House.

You're dealing with a lot of big issues and you know, they didn't want to take away from doing their job in the spring and be out campaigning when they're supposed to be at the State House.

- Especially in the last, especially if you think about it, you know, before the most recent times, you were debating tough, gay marriage, abortion type bills.

Those are tough things.

- They're staying up all night.

- There's another race that really is kind of the undercard.

- Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you, but the only issue people will have, and I think Greg's intention is good, which is to try to get out of September.

- Greg Amore.

- But the problem is that, you know, and the pushback always was to me was well in August, particularly the end of August, people are getting on vacation.

Last time to get away with their kids, returning some of their kids to college and it gets lost in the shuffle.

That's the struggle with doing it in July or August.

- Dan, you keep your eye on Providence as a mayoral race.

You know, Brett Smiley, it's hard to believe that it's been for almost four years since he got elected.

David Morales is putting up a spirited fight.

It goes to your point about polls that you said earlier, he had a poll that showed him in pretty good position.

Now we don't know all the cross tabs and everything else, but has he given Brett Smiley a race?

- Yeah, I think, look, David Morales is a very serious candidate, you know, and it's not typical for really any incumbent but the Providence Mayor to have a credible challenger.

David Morales is a smart guy.

He works incredibly hard and he's got the moment where we're very anti incumbent and he's seen as the Zohran Mamdani, the mayor of New York, or you know, he's got that sort of left push.

Do I think he is in the lead as his poll suggested?

I think that's highly doubtful.

But you know, Mayor Smiley remember four years ago, 60% of the voters in Providence voted against him.

Voted for somebody else.

There's an opening there, being the incumbent mayor, you get a lot of people on the staff, you got a lot of ability to win.

He's got a 10 to one financial advantage.

- 1.2 million to 89,000.

- He's in a pretty good space.

But there's gonna be no other real progressive on the ballot this year.

There's a lot of energy behind David Morales.

I would not count him out though I still think it's probably Mayor Smiley's a loose favorite.

- I think in most cases the incumbent, you know, has an advantage.

But I think to Dan's point, I think that's a race that's gonna be very interesting to watch and be close.

You know, I don't know how it's gonna come out.

Obviously it's too early, I think to say.

- But does he have Ken Block odds or is it better?

- I think it's a contested race.

You know, there's a very significant progressive group right on the Providence City Council.

There are issues, rent control and other issues that David has been able to carve out some space between himself and Mayor Smiley.

I don't think the money's gonna be the issue.

Clearly Smiley has an advantage with respect to the money.

But everybody, you know, as Dan just said, everybody now likes to look at the Mamdani race, you know, Manmdani, I don't know, a year out was at 3% in the polls.

- And now he's sitting in the corner office.

- Now he's the mayor.

So I think anybody that counts Morales out of that race is making a big mistake.

- You can understand conceptually why, and we've had people on this show talk about rent control and what the problems that is.

If you're really having a hard time in Providence, you really don't care about all those theoretical discussions about how it might affect developers.

So to me, that's a selling point.

And I'm sure Morales knows that, is that the battle now is the City Council has voted and what it's gotta go to the mayor?

- It'll get one more vote.

- Will it sustain the veto is the question.

- And the mayor is gonna veto and that's gonna play right into the energy behind the progressives and David Morales because the mayor likely is not gonna be overridden on that.

But that's gonna get everybody wound up again.

It gives him another reason to be kind of excited.

And here's what it does.

If you're Brett Smiley, you know, you ran this race and you kind of, your brand I'm a moderate progressive, I'm a reasonable guy.

Well, you know, all the people behind him.

It's not all the people, but you're looking at guys like say former Mayor Joe Palino behind you.

If I'm David Morales, I love that image.

The big real estate guy, the downtown developer.

I'm with the people of Providence.

That's a good, you know, message to have.

And I think, I agree, I think he's got a very good chance to be competitive.

Does he get over the top or is this a, you know, four years from now?

Maybe he's the mayor?

You know, I think that's open to discussion.

- No, I think Providence still, you know, you know, there's campaigning has changed, right?

The internet has changed everything everywhere you go.

Politics is no different.

But one of the things about Providence is turnout.

Right?

And you can still effectuate a strong campaign if you have enough people that are energized and will work on turnout.

Because in Providence, there's always an issue with the east side because people vote in big numbers from the east side of Providence.

- That's who put Jorge Lorza over the top.

- They had a little buyer's regret later, but that's a whole, that was key to the race.

But the challenge for somebody like Morales is to of course see if you can cut into the east side, but also can you energize and get out people to vote in other districts that are likely, you know, probably more favorable to you?

And so far, he has a pretty energetic campaign.

You know, we'll see, there's a long way to go.

- A very energetic campaign.

I agree, I think one of the things that, that is a challenge in Providence is you look at other parts of the city.

'Cause you're right, the east side of Providence generally decides the race 'cause there's so many votes.

In other parts of the city where there are kinda lower information voters, that's where incumbency plays such a major role.

If you're in the high rises in the city, the mayor of Providence has such an advantage to be there.

- Because because you're scheduling events.

- You're doing everything there.

And so there's just a lot of votes that come, whether people know it or not, who to vote for or not.

They're gonna listen to their reps, they're gonna listen to their senators.

And that's where incumbency works.

- In the last couple of minutes, you had a great column this week about Justice Joe.

- Yeah.

- Joe Shekarchi.

It's a big deal about becoming a Supreme Court Justice.

I thought it was very interesting.

Peter Narone said he's absolutely qualified.

I don't know, I like Joe.

I've seen him do land use stuff, whether he's Supreme Court Justice material, but it goes back to how the process has gone back to what it was 30 years ago.

To me, the judicial nominating committee, if they're saying that now, you know he's gonna wind up on the list.

So talk about what you wrote in your column and how you think the optics are now.

- Yeah, I mean I think the optics are what they are and I think Speaker Shekarchi if he decides to go through with this is gonna face legitimate criticism about elected officials jumping from, you know, the office to the bench.

Erin Lynch Prata faced this just a couple of years ago.

It is what it is.

I think where I kind of looked at this was if he's gonna go through with it, if he's going to do it, make the announcement today.

Don't drag this into where it looks like you're trading an endorsement for the state Democratic party, or you're trading the budget for a judge.

- 'Cause he's involved and then McKee ultimately had, the governor has to decide what's going on.

What are the optics on this in your mind?

- So my daughter has a saying, haters are gonna hate.

Right?

And that's just the way it goes.

- So I think somebody may have written a song about that too.

- So, you know, look it, Joe Shekarchi would be an absolutely fantastic judge, whether it's on the Supreme Court or anywhere else.

He's, as a lawyer, brilliant, has the perfect, you know, way about him.

Demeanor, and I don't know, it's not the same as it was.

I was, I hate to say it, I'm old enough to have been around-- - The grand committee.

- When we had, well, when we had the old system and it's not the same.

You know, people somehow think you're gonna completely remove politics from everything that happens in life, which is unrealistic.

Second of all, I don't think if you run for office and dedicate yourself to serving the community, you should be unable or cut out of consideration for a judgeship.

I mean, it just doesn't make sense to me.

We've had some of the best you'd ever want to hear about and they've come out of legislative or elected positions.

Going back to Judge Weisberger, look at Joe Montebono, you know, the former Senate president who just got appointed the new presiding justice in the Superior Court.

There was criticism where Joe came out of, and if you ask anybody who practices law, they'll say he's been unbelievable, talented.

Perfect judge.

So I just, you know, people like to complain and moan about everything in the judicial nominating process.

- That's why we have this show Bill.

What are we doing here?

But your point is timing.

You're gonna do it or not do it now and I talked about this a couple weeks ago on "Lively," is he losing the chamber at all?

Because people are thinking his second in command, Chris Blazejewski, everybody thought he was gonna run for governor that got put on hold.

Now they're talking about he's gonna leave.

What's happening in the House day to day?

- Well that's why they call it-- - The House of Ambition.

Right, yeah.

- I mean, I think, look, Joe, Speaker Shekarchi is a popular guy in the chamber.

There's a reason why half that chamber thought he was gonna run for governor.

Right?

I think he's fine.

I don't think there's gonna be a lot of maneuvering behind the scenes, the transition appears pretty likely to be Chris Blazejewski.

And so I don't worry so much about that for him.

- Just get it done.

- Get it done.

And I think he has said to people privately, I think that if he decides to do this, he'll announce that he's stepping down.

So if he says, I'm applying for this judgeship, it will coincide with, I'm gonna step down as a speaker and potentially resign as a state representative.

That's probably the right move.

I think it's a terrible idea or a terrible look to do it in June when he could do it right now.

- Quickly.

- I would just say that the process just started, right?

There was no opening until I think a day or two ago.

- When Justice Goldberg stepped down.

- You know, I think he'll follow the process.

- All right, let's do outrageous and/or kudos, Dan, let's begin with you this week.

- Yeah, I was gonna use Joe Shekarchi as my, the outrageous the process around-- - You know on "Lively" you gotta come through with that.

- I will say it's a little bit more of a, of I suppose a kudos.

But we're taping on a Thursday, it's local news day and this is a big kind of movement across the country to, you know, to celebrate and to support local news.

We're a part of it obviously, and you're a major part of it Jim, you know, one of the great things about Rhode Island is actually we have a pretty robust local news ecosystem.

I think that's a great story to tell.

People don't quite realize it, but there's some research the Rhode Island Foundation put together that shows 68% of Rhode Islanders are a little bit concerned about, you know, whether or not their views are represented in local media.

We have to do a better job of that.

- All right, Chairman, you get the last minute.

- I'm gonna give a kudo to somebody you'd never expect, Donald Trump.

finally fired Pam Bondi.

- There you go.

- Fired Christine Noem.

Hopefully he's not gonna stop there.

Pete Hegseth should be next and eventually the circle's tightening and you know, eventually President Trump is gonna be brought to answer for his behavior, his war crimes, et cetera.

So I think we're starting to move in the right direction.

- Do you think there's a chance the Senate gets flipped in November?

- I didn't, six months ago.

I do now.

I still don't think it's a for born conclusion by any stretch of the imagination, but it's no longer outside of the possibility, I think.

- All right, Bill and Dan, thank you so much.

It is a quick half hour and thank you for joining us.

Be sure and check us out on Facebook, X, Instagram, and on the Ocean State Media YouTube channel.

We'll see you next time right here on "Lively."

(bright music) - [Narrator] "Lively" is generously supported in part by John Hazen White's Lookout.