Rhode Island primary election candidates cast their votes on Sept. 9
Rhode Island is holding its primary elections on Sept. 9, 2026.
- Ken Block is running for governor of Rhode Island for a third time as an independent candidate.
- Block, a software engineer, claims his technical skills are ideal for fixing the state’s current problems.
- He was previously hired by the Trump campaign to investigate claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election, which he ultimately disproved.
Ken Block was hoping to make a big splash by running the first TV ad of his third try for governor during the NFL season opener between the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks.
But there are no guarantees in sports or politics, and, as luck would have it, Block’s 30-second spot did not actually air until shortly after the game effectively ended in disastrous fashion for the Patriots – and many viewers had already headed off to bed.
It was not the big look-at-me debut Block might have wanted after incumbent Dan McKee’s crushing 63% to 38% loss earlier that night to former CVS executive Helena Foulkes in the Sept. 9 Democratic primary.
Unless a requested recount flips the winner of the GOP primary contest, the race to succeed McKee now pits Democrat Foulkes vs. Republican Aaron Guckian vs. independent Block (and two lesser known independents).
But Block, the 60-year-old software engineer and voter-data expert who was hired by the Trump camp to “prove” President Donald Trump’s “voter fraud” claims about the 2020 election – and ended up writing a book titled “Disproven” – is convinced that this is his year.
“This is my political moment.” Block recently told an audience. “It really is.”
Why now?
Block lists the state’s current crop of problems: The Washington Bridge. A dysfunctional DOT. RI’s botched new $99 million payroll technology system. Woeful education test scores. Padded utility bills. And on down the list.
In the technology area especially, “We have the wrong people sitting across the table from high-paid consultants whose job it is to basically snooker us. And I think we get snookered all the time by our technology vendors. So that’s a small taste of the issues that are out there.”
His pitch to voters: “The skills that I bring to bear here are almost custom built for the problems that we have right here, right now. And I don’t think you’ll find any other candidate anywhere in the country who can say that Time magazine named them a Defender of Democracy.”
Block billed himself as a politician who would govern “without care for reelection.”
“If I do a good job, I’ll get reelected. If I don’t do a good job, send me on my way,” he said.
“But pandering for reelection is not something that I would do,” he added without naming names.
His opener went like this
At a recent meet-the-candidate night at Barrington Books, he made this pitch to voters:
“We have seen special interests exert their authority and derail the good intentions of pretty much every governor that we’ve had for decades,” he said.
“At this point. I am quite different from those other candidates, because I come from outside of the system,” he continued. “I’m not interested in playing any of the insider games. … [and] I’m not looking for endorsements from anybody, because I think endorsements ultimately create a conflict of interest that hinders a governor’s ability to negotiate to the best ability on behalf of the taxpayers.”
Who is Ken Block: The short version
Block was born in West Haven, Connecticut, graduated from Dartmouth College, initially came to Rhode Island in 1991 on a consulting contract with the GTECH Corp. and stayed.
He married his wife, Jennifer, at Rhodes on the Pawtuxet in Cranston in 2000. She is a middle school teacher at the Wheeler School. Their son, Sam, lives in Metro Boston and works for a software development company. Their daughter, Anna, just graduated from college and moved to Boulder, Colorado, to work for a solar energy consulting company.
“Ken is sad that both of his young adult children have left Rhode Island to find job opportunities, and he wants to make the changes necessary to ensure our young adults don’t have to leave to find them,” his campaign manger/spokesman Matt Schweich told The Journal.
Block got 6.5% of the vote in 2010 in his first run for governor as the candidate of the new Moderate Party he founded. When he ran again in 2014 as a Republican, Cranston Mayor Allan Fung beat him, 54.9% to 45.1%, in the GOP primary.
This year, he is running as an independent, as former Republican U.S. Sen. Lincoln Chafee successfully did in 2010 in a crowded governor’s race.
Block has been president for the last 25 years of the Warwick-based Simpatico Software Systems Inc., which his LinkedIn page describes as a company that “provides software consulting services and data mining services to private companies and governmental agencies.”
The company’s website says: “We have helped [uncover] major waste and fraud in the nation’s largest food stamp program for the state of Texas and we identified waste and fraud for the state of Rhode Island in their department of Health and Human Services.”
Asked where else Block’s company has worked, Schweich told The Journal that all of Simpatico’s contracts contain restrictions on what can be said, but “Simpatico has done work on behalf of Texas, Puerto Rico, Illinois and Rhode Island.”
In 2010, Politifact rated as “true” Block’s claim in a TV ad that a system he helped create to detect welfare fraud has saved Texas a significant amount of money. The Block ad said more than $1 billion.
“How did Block’s efforts help save this money?” PolitiFact asked. “He said one technique is ‘data mining,’ in which large amounts of information are analyzed to look for improprieties, such as a small grocery that reports the food sales numbers of a huge supermarket.
“He said sham storefronts were paying food stamp recipients 50 cents on the dollar for their stamps and then billing the state for the full amount when no food was actually sold. Such information helped direct investigators to crooked vendors and recipients.”
What he did in Rhode Island is a bit harder to verify, because the Chafee administration refused to make his full report public.
Here’s what happened: Chafee and his team engaged Block in November 2011, seven months after he publicly offered to work for free, saying he could save the state $100 million to $250 million a year by targeting waste and fraud in Medicaid programs.
Block delivered a report the following January, but the governor and others in his administration said they could not release the full report or comment on it because the information could jeopardize investigations that had begun as a result.
The summary they subsequently released said broadly: Benefits were being given to those who don’t qualify; benefits were being delivered to out-of-state addresses, including in Miami; and 60 prison inmates were receiving and spending food stamps.
2026: What does Block propose?
Some of Block’s 2026 proposals may sound familiar, while others may not:
- Lower utility bills by as much as 25% with what he calls his “Honest Utility Bill Initiative,” which eliminates from utility bills a slew of “taxes, fees, surcharges, and other … unnecessary government charges that have nothing to do with the production and distribution of energy.”
If, after review, he determines the charges have merit, he said he would ask legislators to put them in the state budget, not a utility bill.
- Institute a “One Stay, One Bill” plan for hospitals and other providers to “prohibit them from sending multiple bills to patients for a single hospitalization.”
It is uncertain what a governor can do here, but Block says today’s technology should be able to deliver a “single, comprehensive bill” within 30 days of discharge.
- Tackle education one district at a time
Graduating children without a quality education is graduating them into a “life of disadvantage,” Block said, that trickles down to their children. Fixing those systems, he says, can break the cycle of poverty, but “this isn’t a one size fits all problem.”
For example, Block noted that 24.3% of teachers in Pawtucket were chronically absent in the 2024-2025 school year, while Warwick high schoolers had a chronic absenteeism rate of 29.3% that year, according to the Rhode Island Department of Education.
One of the things he won’t do? Reinstitute truck tolls.
“The truck tolls make no sense,” Block says. “We took more than $100 million out of the trucking industry and our economy, much of which came from Rhode Island businesses, while only a fraction of that money ultimately benefited taxpayers. In fact, most of it went out-of-state to cover the costs of the tolling program itself.”
Flock cameras, public employee pensions and the doctor shortage
On Flock cameras: “When it comes to things like the Flock cameras, and a lot of the social issues, honestly, I think that the government belongs out of our shorts, not in it. And the Flock cameras to me are a governmental intrusion that’s a couple of steps beyond what it should be.”
On pensions: Block said McKee’s proposal to “essentially” undo parts of Gina Raimondo’s 2011 pension reform by letting state workers retire up to five years earlier than they can now would open “ourselves up to the reform taking substantially longer” and opens the door to undoing other parts of the reform. He said while the pension system is “healthier” than it was, it isn’t “fixed” yet, as it’s still under 70% funded.
“We can’t be drawn back into those bad old days. We have to be careful,” Block said.
On Rhode Island’s doctor shortage: Block told his audience at Barrington Books that part of what is needed is a “outside the box” look at “every element of insurance, Medicare, Medicaid and private insurance.
“They [all] under-reimburse. And what that means is the health care providers in this state get less money from Medicaid, from Medicare, from private insurance for the same procedure as Massachusetts providers do.”
He said it wouldn’t be easy, but as governor he would at least try to spur the creation of a “regional” insurance marketplace.
His (small) campaign:
As of his last public report in late July, Block had only $91,000 in his campaign account compared with the millions Foulkes has already raised and spent.
He has a small campaign staff that includes Schweich, a veteran of his 2014 campaign, as his campaign manager; and Michelle Conway, as his campaign coordinator; and he said he is “in the process of adding additional paid staff.”
In addition, he has a number of people “volunteering in substantive roles,” including former state Sen. John Pagliarini Jr., who is assisting with strategy and policy. Ed Valenti is handling the campaign’s media buying, according to Schweich.
On the paid ad front, Block has run digital ads on Facebook and Instagram, including one about the Washington Bridge. On primary day, he aired his first TV ad, paying $8,500 for the NFL spot and $27,000 to air it through the week.
Schweich explains the seemingly late start this way: “Due to Rhode Island’s very late primary election date, independent candidates are at a disadvantage in our state. The media and much of the electorate focus on the Democratic and Republican candidates until the primary is done. The campaign’s strategy is to hold off on advertising until the primary is over.”
Asked why Block believes he would be a better governor than Foulkes, Schweich said: “Helena is compromised. She has secured endorsements from special interests and curried favor with party insiders, making the very same promises that have derailed so many governors in the past.”
“She represents the status quo of Rhode Island politics. In the same way that Gina Raimondo’s promises led to Peter Alviti, we can only imagine what kind of damaging promises Helena will have to keep,” Schweich said.
This was Foulkes’ response when asked on Sept. 10 if she had any concerns about facing Block or Guckian:
“No, I’m really excited. I think it’s important for people to hear all of our perspectives. I think there will be new ideas. I think Rhode Islanders are eager for them. They’re eager for someone who doesn’t just play the inside.”
With reports from Patrick Anderson
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