Just days after a new poll showed her locked in a statistical tie with one potential GOP challenger and her approval rating falling to an all-time low of just 37 percent, Democrat Governor Gina Raimondo’s re-election hopes have received yet another blow. Former Democrat Rhode Island Secretary of State Matt Brown announced today that he will enter Rhode Island’s gubernatorial race as an independent, challenging Raimondo from the left.
On his campaign website, Brown frames himself as a Bernie Sanders-style “progressive populist,” pushing a far-left platform aimed to attract liberal Democrat voters to his campaign. And with barely a third of Rhode Islanders giving Raimondo’s job performance positive marks, Brown’s candidacy is certain to cause challenges to her attempts to unify her party. And to make matters worse for Raimondo, her predecessor, Democrat Governor Lincoln Chafee, is still considering challenging her in the Democrat primary.
With rapidly declining approval numbers and a new poll that shows the gubernatorial race as a toss-up, Brown’s campaign only adds to the growing list of problems and headaches for Raimondo, whose path to re-election appears to be growing more difficult every day.
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