- I am the most centrist person you're gonna meet, I'm the least ideological person you're going to meet.

And someone with those two main character traits don't really slot into either political party.

Voters across the state are open to alternative choices, they're not happy with the choices that they have generally, and nobody is inevitable.

- Welcome to "One-on-One."

I'm Ian Donnis.

Two-time candidate for Governor, Ken Block is taking another shot at Rhode Island's top job.

This time he's running as an Independent, focusing on a call for a more competent state government.

Considering problems like the Washington Bridge, Block's message might resonate with voters, most of whom are independents.

But polls suggests that he faces an uphill fight against Democrat Helena Foulkes.

So how does Ken Block plan to become Rhode Island's next Governor, and why should voters support him?

(gentle music) Independent Candidate for Governor, Ken Block, welcome back to "One-on-One."

- Thank you for having me, Ian.

- Give me 30 seconds on why you wanna be Rhode Island's next Governor.

- Yeah, I decided to jump into this race, because after spectating things for a decade, I realized that the problems we have haven't been getting better, in fact, in many ways, they've been getting worse, and I didn't hear any of the candidates really providing the answers that I know Rhode Islanders need, and that's really why I'm here, I don't wanna ride around in the SUV, I'm not doing this for a resume stuffer.

I'm a problem-solver and I see that Rhode Island has a lot of problems to solve.

- The economy and affordability are a top issue for most voters.

When it comes to that, how would you be different from Democrat Helena Foulkes and expected Republican candidate, Aaron Guckian?

- Yeah, well, my first answer to our economic challenges has nothing to do with the economy, it has to do with education.

In too many of our urban school districts, too many of our students struggle, and they graduate with skills that oftentimes aren't even high school-level.

We are a poor state, a third of our population is on Medicaid, a third of our state budget is Medicaid, and it's really hard to have an economy that's revved up when we spend so much money effectively trying to remediate the impact that undereducation can have on so many people, so ... - As you say, education is crucial to the economy, but we've heard talk for decades about the need to improve this, and not a whole lot has been changed.

What would you do if elected Governor to do something about that?

- Yeah, I think what we've seen is we've seen a lot of governors run away from it.

I'm gonna run right into it.

Yes, we have talked about it forever, this was something I talked about in 2010.

It hasn't been fixed, and I think we have a moral imperative to fix it, because we are negatively impacting way too many people.

It's a solvable problem.

That's the thing.

Other blue states have solved educational problems like we do, we don't have to look to red states, we don't have to look anywhere, some of our neighboring states have fixed it.

We just have to pick those models, and apply them to each district individually, because they have different problems, but we can make steps to solve our educational problems and improve our outcomes, we have to have the political courage to do it.

- Healthcare is another big challenge in Rhode Island.

You say you can improve the situation regarding healthcare, while lowering costs.

How would you do that?

- Well, so the big one for the companies that provide health insurance to their employees and for individuals who find themselves in the unhappy place of needing to buy their own health insurance, where I am at, the quote for myself, my wife, my 24-year-old son and my 22-year-old daughter was $44,000 a year.

$44,000 a year.

That's more money per month than most people in this state come anywhere close to spending on mortgages, for example, right?

So it's unaffordable, and part of the problem is we're too small.

The number of people that we insure in our state is a small percentage of people relative to the risk that we have to spread around.

Let's say, we have 200,000 people buying insurance, if a small number of people have really expensive problems, our rates go higher.

If we were in a regional health insurance marketplace, which I'd like to propose with all the New England states, and we created, and this won't be easy to do, but if we created a pooled health insurance marketplace, we might have eight million without Massachusetts, we could have 14 to 15 million with Massachusetts people in there, we can spread the risk around, and the costs should come down.

I'm thinking way outside the box, I'm thinking way outside our borders to solve some of the really bad problems that we have at this point.

- Can you mention how many Rhode Islanders rely on Medicaid, the insurance program predominantly for poor people?

About 30,000 Rhode Islanders are expected to lose Medicaid coverage due to changes from the Trump administration.

If you're elected governor, what steps would you take to shore up insurance coverage or healthcare for those people?

- Yeah.

And let me just start by saying, that may not be the only place that we see federal cuts.

Many people have expressed to me their concern about the federal government cutting back other funding sources, as well.

So it's something that we're going to have to live with, it's something that my administration is going to have to handle, and one of the best ways to begin preparing for it is to look at how we're spending money now, and identify places where we're not spending money, where it has the impact that we need it to be having.

We have a $15 billion budget, five billion on Medicaid, let's just focus on Medicaid.

I don't know when the last time was, we just did a careful look to make sure that every program that we are sponsoring with Medicaid is having the intended outcome that the people receiving whatever is happening are happy with it, that the providers are happy with it.

And where we can identify programs that maybe should have been defunded some time ago, we should consider it, so that we can put that money to use on other things.

So within the five billion, and I don't know when the last time was, that as a government that we've looked at it, and we need to look at it.

We need to look at all of our spending.

We are a poor state.

How much higher can we go beyond a $15 billion budget?

I argue that we're probably more or less at our capacity without making our affordability problem, which everybody understands is one of the biggest problems we have in this state, we can't make it worse, because of the cost of government.

We have to make sure that we can control it as much as possible.

- Speaking of spending, you point out how the state spends a lot on computer systems that are often troubled, or don't work the way they're supposed to.

You're a technology guy.

How would that be different if you were governor?

How would you improve that?

- Yeah.

Thank you.

That's the easiest question, I'll probably get the whole campaign.

This is my career.

I build complicated computer systems, I do it for private industry, we have done it for state governments.

I've seen state governments manage very complex systems, like the ones that we struggle with successfully.

It can be done, and the reason that we struggle is really quite simple, we are not a good project management state.

We don't have the right people in the right jobs with the right skills to A, negotiate the contracts, to manage the contracts, and to make sure that technically we are reviewing the software as it's delivered to us, and ultimately, it goes live, we have to make sure that it works correctly.

We don't do any of that right right now.

To do it, in my estimate right now, we need about a $3 million budget every year to hire the staff necessary to take care of this problem, and make sure that we procure and manage these difficult and very expensive projects successfully, and it's worth it, because we've invested close to a billion dollars in UHIP, we invested $100 million in a state payroll system, and both of those computer systems to this day are in very tough shape, which is a shocking thing when you think about how much money we spent on it.

- You're saying the problem is lack of capacity in state government to really screen and vet this stuff properly, right?

- In my opinion, and from what I've learned so far, it's almost wholly missing.

- Speaking of state spending, we've seen how the budget for the State Department of Transportation has about doubled in recent years.

The Washington Bridge was a huge factor for why Democrat Helena Foulkes defeated Incumbent Governor Dan McKee by such a large spread in the primary.

You talk about bringing accountability and competence to DOT.

Sounds good.

How would you do it?

- Do you think I can fire Peter Alviti?

- Well, he's gone.

- I know.

- He's gone now.

- I know.

So look, that's one missed opportunity for accountability, but on a higher level, or actually I should say a lower level, within the management at the DOT, we haven't had the accountability we need yet, we haven't had the explanation for how the DOT missed this crucially important problem, where the bridge had decayed to the point where it was deadly.

It didn't kill anybody, but it was ready to.

If you remember, when we shut the bridge down, they wouldn't even let an ambulance go across it.

I mean, that's stunning that we went from full load to nothing at all.

So we have to be explained from the DOT why did we not maintain that bridge correctly, 'cause we didn't, the drains were growing life.

They were growing weeds, and one drain I think had a tree growing out of it, so it had to have been clogged for quite a long time.

Why are we not maintaining correctly?

Do we have this problem in other places in our road and bridge inventory?

And then how is it that the mess of the procurements that we've had, nothing that the DOT has done with this bridge that I can see, from managing it to decay, and then the crazily bad procurement that we've had so far, and everyone looks at it, and wonders what's happening, we don't seem to have, there's not a lot of urgency here to fix this, and this bridge is having a heavy impact on everything we do.

- But as far as performing DOT, how would you do that?

- Well, I think you have to start with accountability through the management layers.

And I'm not going to say "I'm gonna fire every manager who's there right now," but I'm gonna talk to them very carefully, and we're gonna understand where it went wrong, and where we need to make changes, we will make them, because the agency failed at its mission, and I see that as a failure of management more than anything else.

And as I talk to the employees at DOT, a lot of them reach out to me over the years, I understand more and more, this isn't a problem with the guys who wear the neon on the roads.

This is absolutely, number one, a managerial problem, and the answer is to make managerial changes wherever you have to, to fix it.

- Ken, you're an Independent.

If you were to win election as Governor, you'd face probably a lot of opposition, if not resistance from the Democrat-controlled General Assembly.

How would you be able to pursue your program as Governor if you win?

- My job as Governor is to work with absolutely every stakeholder in whatever issue is that we're handling, and where we have to get budget items, or we need laws passed, that's obviously the General Assembly is the major stakeholder.

My job is to communicate.

My job is to make the case.

I'm going to do things very differently than ... I can't remember the last Governor who held a weekly Press Conference.

I will hold a weekly Press Conference.

We're gonna talk about what we did the past week, what's upcoming the next week, and most importantly, I'm gonna set the table for the things that matter to everybody in this state, and where I need the General Assembly's support, I will privately make the ask, and hopefully we can work it out.

When I go ask for the $3 million to staff the technology group that I think we need to make sure we don't mess up these projects anymore, I don't expect to have to horse trade for it, right?

And we know everyone likes to horse trade in the General Assembly, but I'm not gonna give up judges to get the $3 million that we need to protect billions of dollars of taxpayer assets.

So the conversation hopefully will be, "Yep, you're right, we have to do it.

Here it is."

And if it isn't, I'm gonna start talking about it in my press conferences, I am an effective user of the bully pulpit, I have used it outside of government to get governmental things done that were really difficult, like eliminating the master lever in this state.

That was a demonstration, an excellent demonstration of how to use the bully pulpit to achieve a political purpose.

I will use the bully pulpit every day and every week to the media and to everybody in this state, making the case for, and helping to justify, push, cajole, or worse, whoever I need, wherever the roadblock is, I'm gonna use the bully pulpit to ultimately run it over.

- When you announced your campaign for Governor earlier this year, you told me that you plan to raise $1 million, and to add to that with another $1 million in state matching funds.

Your most recent campaign finance report shows a balance of $91,000.

Yes, the bully pulpit is not without value, but are you gonna have enough money to get your message out, particularly against a well-financed candidate, like Helena Foulkes?

- Yeah, I'm comfortable that I will have enough money to get my message out.

My message is getting out, we've started the advertising, the advertising has hit pretty well so far, and I do believe that Rhode Islanders across the political spectrum are looking for answers that their party candidates aren't offering.

This is a really unique election in a great many ways.

A lot of voters, and I think the bridge is partly to blame for this.

I think the bridge broke politics in this state, and it has convinced voters that party affiliation does not necessarily mean answers to the problems that we have.

We've had many problems that have festered for a long time, and the party candidates haven't fixed it, and I think voters are pretty fed up with it at this point, and they're looking for options, and I am the option that appeals to both sides of the political spectrum.

- This is your third run for governor.

Your first was as a moderate, your second as a Republican.

Why not run as a Republican this time around?

- Yeah, simple.

I've been looking for a political home, and I hadn't found it until I decided to run as an Independent.

Very difficult to practice politics in the middle from either party.

So the party system doesn't work for me.

I am the most centrist person you're gonna meet, I'm the least ideological person you're going to meet, and someone with those two main character traits don't really slot into either political party.

It's a problem that a lot of people have, at this point.

The parties are getting more extreme that you have to compromise your views more and more to win a primary, and for sure, without a primary here, I am positioned perfectly to appeal to voters on both sides of the political spectrum, and I have support across the political spectrum.

This is what makes me such ... This is what gives me the chance to truly win this race, and to help the people of the state with the problems, solving the problems that they have seen gone unsolved for way too long.

- President Trump got just under 42% of the vote statewide in Rhode Island in 2024, you wrote a book disproving Trump's conspiracy theory about a stolen election in 2020.

How is that gonna affect your ability to draw support from Republican and Conservative-leaning Independent voters?

- Yeah.

There are many Conservative voters who already have told me that they're backing me, and it has nothing to do with federal issues at all.

They're looking at me as a statewide answer to statewide problems, which is what I am.

I'm not engaging in federal issues.

That's not the job that I'm interviewing for.

I am bringing the answers that Rhode Islanders need answers to.

They're solving the problems that Rhode Islanders haven't had answered in a long time, I'm doing it from the political middle, and enough voters are willing to abandon partisanship, and looking for the problem-solving instead that they're coming to me.

- Speaking more broadly and not just about Rhode Island, are you concerned about federal interference in elections this November?

- It has been a concern, and we know that there have been different efforts to try to intervene.

The Constitution is crystal clear that the conduct of elections is to be determined by the states, unless Congress makes a legal change.

The executive branch has no constitutional power to interject itself into elections, and the Supreme Court just verified that, validated that just the other day, just last night by rejecting the post offices' attempt to interject itself into the conduct of our elections.

- Ken, you're a technology guy, I've got to ask you about the raging debate about artificial intelligence.

There was an incident recently called "Hugging Face," where automated scripts from OpenAI, one of the big companies, hacked into another company, and it's caused a lot of concern about consequences down the road.

Do you agree with Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont that there should be a ban on the creation of superintelligence machines that would exceed the intelligence of humans?

- So I'm unfamiliar with that particular ban.

I do think we'd have to be smart about it, and there needs to be federal regulatory oversight of artificial intelligence, it has the ability to be transformative, it has the ability to be ridiculously dangerous, the industry has recognized that, and it makes me a little concerned that now they're worried about literally killer AI applications, and that actually terrifies me a little bit for the industry to reach that point.

I really wonder what's happened, right?

So yeah.

- What should that regulation look like?

- I don't know, and I'm not running for Congress, so I haven't given it the thought necessary, but I would imagine that there needs to be, and I don't know how you would program this, but you would have to make sure that the models have programmed in limits beyond which we're not gonna allow them to quote unquote "evolve," for lack of a better thing.

We don't want them to become sentient.

We don't want them to acquire access to things where they're not supposed to go, making sure that there are boundaries to where they can wander, and a great many other things are critically important, however, we can regulate US AI efforts, we cannot regulate AI efforts that happen everywhere else in the world, so we better be prepared, because if there is a way for AI to become a weapon of mass destruction, we had better be on it, and be ready for it, just in case.

- What's the biggest personal challenge you've overcome in your life?

- Uh ... That's a great question.

Give me another second just to sort of think about this.

Well, one of the challenges, I don't know if I could classify it as the greatest one.

I have to think about that more than I've given to right now.

I would say that one of the big challenges that I've had was making sure that as I did my professional work, that I made sure that I had the family time necessary to be the father that my children both needed.

And for anybody who works, and you understand that when you're busy during the day, it's also easy to become busy at night, as well, and finding the time necessary to be the father that my parents needed, that my children needed to be, and there's no weird psychological thing in that statement there, sorry.

But to be the father to my children, to be the husband to my wife, that was really important to do, and that was hammered home when I ran for Governor in 2010.

I was losing the balance, and I was able to reacquire the balance.

- Here's a little more of a more straightforward question.

Do you support the ongoing use of flock automated license plate readers in Rhode Island?

- I do not.

And I believe that government intrusion into our private lives should be minimized as much as possible.

I dislike the flock cameras, simply because they can be misused for a lot of different ways.

If we're going to have them, they should be strongly regulated by our state, other states have regulated flock cameras, and we should do the same thing.

- To bring it back to a central question facing your campaign, Ken, we saw polling before the primary suggesting you faced a more challenging matchup against Helena Foulkes than you would have against Dan McKee, we've heard you describe yourself as a "Problem-solver," you're not shy, you're gonna get out there, and make your pitch to voters, but what is your strategy for overcoming the advantages Helena Foulkes has as a Democratic candidate?

- So what's really interesting, yes, she has monetary advantages.

She has been campaigning for six years, for sure, but she also has disadvantages.

The WPRI Poll showed that after spending close to $6 million, I think this year, only 37% of voters favorably viewed her, and less than half in her own political party.

And what this shows me and tells me is that not only Democrats, but voters across the state are open to alternative choices, they're not happy with the choices that they have generally, and nobody is inevitable.

Nobody is inevitable, and I look forward to continuing what I'm doing right now, which is showing voters how I think, how I'm different than all the other candidates, and I'm asking them a simple question.

"If you want things fixed and they haven't been fixed for a long time, shouldn't you consider voting differently?"

- You had founded the Moderate Party about almost 20 years ago to try and bring people to the center, you later walked away from that approach, but in this interview, you still call yourself "The most centrist guy running."

We've seen American politics continually grow more polarized.

Do you have any hope for a move back toward the center in the future, and what would it take to bring that about?

- Yeah, I think the move is happening to some extent, right?

I created the Moderate Party in 2010, because I thought the level of partisanship there was extraordinary, and those were the good old days, compared to where they are now.

I think that voters across the country who are not at the extremes of their ideology are realizing that things might have gone a bit too far.

And in this circumstance, in this state, which is the only thing that I'm caring about at this point, we have extraordinary problems, they haven't been fixed, and voters are looking for an answer, and the answer needs to come probably from not doing things the same way we always have.

- We've heard you describe how Rhode Island faces a lot of challenges that have been festering for a long time.

Is there a governor in recent history that you can point to as an example of someone who made more of an impact on some of the state's leading challenges?

- Well, I mean, I'm gonna go back to Governor Sundlun, and I'm not comparing myself to Governor Sundlun.

I don't think anybody can really compare, but he came into office, and faced an unexpected, extraordinary crisis with our credit unions, and a lot of Rhode Islanders, for those who weren't here, or forgotten, the credit union crisis tied up a great many people's assets, there was a whole scandal that went on underneath it, and the bottom line was he had to shut down all the credit unions.

He shut them all down, and he had to take extraordinary steps in action, and he navigated all that, and he came out the other end.

We have problems here that aren't a surprise, and the impact of some of these problems are way bigger than what the credit union crisis was all about.

And I've said this before, but I'm gonna say it again, because it merits saying, "I'm not going to run away from these problems, because I am compromised.

I'm not gonna have deals with whatever special interest is out there that has made it difficult for other governors to tackle these hard problems."

We have a joint responsibility, let's use education as the biggest problem we have, I'm not saying it's the biggest, let's just use this as the example.

We must solve this problem, and everybody involved in education, from the teachers, the administration, the students, the parents write the governor's office.

Everybody needs to step to the table, and cooperatively figure out what we're going to do, and we have to do it, we don't have a choice.

So I'm bringing that perspective to this moment in time.

If you want action on these problems, you're not gonna get it from the typical candidates who make all the deals, compromise their ability to be effective, and ultimately, lack the courage necessary to bring people together, and drive them to fix the problems that we have.

- Independent candidate for Governor, Ken Block, thank you so much for joining us.

- Pleasure, Ian.

Thank you.

- Thanks for watching "One-on-One."

I'm Ian Donnis.

You can find all of our past interviews on the "Ocean State Media" YouTube channel.

You can also listen to "One-on-One" wherever you get your podcast, and if you love Rhode Island politics, sign up to receive my free TGIF column in your inbox every Friday at oceanstatemedia.org/TGIF.

We'll see you next week.

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