Prices as of August 25, 2026, 3:13 p.m. Eastern. Record compiled from 35 dated sources; see the sourced record file for every citation.
Dan McKee had heard enough. Tuesday night, August 18, at Rhode Island College, with WPRI 12's Tim White and Ted Nesi moderating the last televised debate of the Democratic primary for governor, the incumbent turned on Helena Foulkes. "Respect this office. I am the governor of the state of Rhode Island," he said, and then, as WJAR reported it that night, "I am the state of Rhode Island." Foulkes, the former CVS Pharmacy president who lost to him in 2022, cut in: "Governor, stop." Then: "I'm not disparaging the state of Rhode Island. I'm disparaging the governor." RI Current's Nancy Lavin noted she was smiling as she said it.
The same day, the Salve Regina Pell Center released its Embold Research poll of 857 likely voters, taken August 3 through 11: Foulkes 48%, McKee 28%, 22% undecided. His own state party declined to endorse him in June. The state AFL-CIO, which backed him in 2022, passed in July. She has $3.33 million in the bank to his $648,000. Rhode Island votes in three weeks, on a Wednesday.
On Kalshi, where a price in cents is a probability, the contract that pays $1 if Foulkes wins the nomination had buyers at 94.7 cents and sellers at 96.7 on Tuesday afternoon, with the last trade at 96.1. Call it 95.6 in the middle, about a 96% chance, or roughly -2,170 in sportsbook terms. McKee's contract sat at 4.5 cents on the buy side and 6.2 on the sell side, about 5.4: a 5% shot, roughly +1,750. The last sitting Rhode Island governor denied renomination was Bruce Sundlun in 1994, when Myrth York beat him 57.22% to 27.67%, 32 years ago.
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The Board
As of August 25, 2026, 3:13 p.m. Eastern (Kalshi, cents = probability):
| Outcome | Price | Reads as |
|---|---|---|
| Helena Foulkes | 95.6¢ | about 96% (≈-2,170 in sportsbook terms) |
| Dan McKee | 5.4¢ | about 5% (≈+1,750) |
These are midpoints between what buyers offer and what sellers ask, on a small book: about 8,200 contracts have traded on the Foulkes side lifetime, roughly 4,800 are still open, and only about $10 changed hands in the day before the pull. Polymarket, pulled at the same 3:13 p.m. moment, had Foulkes at 95.45 cents and McKee at 3.75, on $41,800 of total volume. In poll terms: at 48 to 28 with 22 undecided, even if McKee won eight of every ten undecided voters he would still finish behind, about 46 to 52. A buyer of the McKee side today is betting that every independent poll since May is off by 20 points.
What the Models Think
We also asked a panel of AI models the same question without showing them the price, only the sourced record below. Six of the panel's eight seats ran this board. Blended together, their middle answer put Foulkes at 88.5%, about seven points below the 95.6-cent market, and the widest gap between any two models was 14 points. Their reasons for holding back: the 22% still undecided, the memory of 2022, when McKee trailed in late polls and won by 3,300 votes, and a September primary electorate in which older voters, his best group in the Pell poll, turn out reliably. One model: "Foulkes leads every poll, most recently 48–28 in the largest independent survey, against an incumbent with 21% favorability whose own state party withheld endorsement two weeks before the primary."
These are model estimates, not predictions. The market has real money behind it; the panel has only the record.
The Bridge That Was Supposed To Reopen Before This Primary
McKee was never elected to the office he says he is. He inherited it on March 2, 2021, when Gina Raimondo left for the Commerce Department, then held it in 2022, beating Foulkes by just over 3,300 votes in the primary and Republican Ashley Kalus by 19 points in November. Of every governor board we track this cycle, his is the only one where the sitting governor is a heavy underdog in his own primary.
The reason has a name. On December 11, 2023, the westbound Washington Bridge, the Interstate 195 span carrying about 90,000 vehicles a day, closed abruptly after the state found a "critical failure of some original bridge components." The replacement was due by August 2026, which The Public's Radio noted at the time meant "before the next statewide primary for governor." Then the request for bids drew zero bidders. Asked for a schedule on July 9, 2024, per The Public's Radio, McKee said: "We're going to know what the timeline is when we get the timeline." On August 19, 2026, WJAR reported the contract at $428 million, about $60 million over the proposal, with completion now fall 2028. Foulkes, at the WPRI debate: "He was desperate to build a bridge by this election."
The other weight on him is a report. On October 29, 2024, Attorney General Peter Neronha and the state police closed a two-year investigation and, as WPRI's Eli Sherman reported, found McKee "personally and directly intervened" and "steered a lucrative, federally-funded state contract" worth about $5 million to the ILO Group. No charges were brought. McKee's response, per WJAR: "The cloud is gone." And of the state's top prosecutor: "I don't trust the attorney general."
"The Governor has not and cannot dispute any fact set forth in either report. The rest is deflection." (Office of Attorney General Peter Neronha, via The Public's Radio, October 31, 2024)
Neronha has since endorsed Foulkes. The scorecard of every election board we track keeps the receipts on prices like these, and the wider 2026 governor map shows how rare they are.
CVS, Trump, And The Party That Would Not Choose
McKee's counterattack is Foulkes's four years running CVS Pharmacy, January 2014 to February 2018. He opened the first debate, on WPRO radio on August 3, with it: "My opponent worked in a boardroom, putting profits over people for her entire career." He has also tied her to CVS's corporate giving to Donald Trump. Her answer, per RI Current: "I've never given a dime to Donald Trump and the governor knows that. It's a whole bunch of lies."
By the third debate the charge was opioids. McKee, on August 18: "They pressured pharmacists to fill prescriptions they shouldn't have… My opponent is a corporate elite person." Foulkes: "We cut off over 600 pill mill doctors… I think it's atrocious the governor is politicizing this issue… He is desperate."
The documented record sits between them. RI Current's Philip Eil fact-checked the opioid attack on July 27: the Justice Department's 2024 lawsuit says CVS "knowingly" filled prescriptions for problem prescribers "despite repeated escalations," and six of the seven doctors it names were active during her tenure. Foulkes is not named individually anywhere in the suit. CVS says it blocked "nearly 600" practitioners on her watch and paid roughly $5 billion in opioid settlements in 2022.
Then the institutions walked. At the state Democratic convention on June 20, the endorsement vote went McKee 81, Foulkes 75, 11 abstaining, short of the 84 he needed, per RI Current. McKee: "It's the people that are going to elect me. It's not a hierarchy of any political machine."
"I don't recall an incumbent governor ever not winning the endorsement, and I've been around a long time." (Analyst Joe Fleming, RI Current, June 20, 2026)
On July 15 the AFL-CIO's executive committee declined to vote at all; president Patrick Crowley, to WPRI's Ted Nesi: "The consensus was we don't have a consensus." The cash gap, per the Boston Globe on August 21, is five to one. The market priced all of it: the bridge, the investigation, the lawsuit fight over CVS, the party that would not choose. On Polymarket, Foulkes moved from about 89 cents to 95.5 over the week that held the August 18 debate and the 48-28 poll, a gain of just over 6 cents; McKee fell about 4, from roughly 8 to 3.75.
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What Moves The Price From Here
- A final independent poll, early September. Several models named the same trigger: a Foulkes lead inside 10 points would pull her price down; another 48-28 pushes it back toward 97.
- The union ground game. On August 20, the first day of early voting, McKee pledged a "Rule of 90" letting public workers retire at 60 when age plus service hits 90; three unions representing 34,000 workers endorsed him within days, per RI Current. Their turnout is the whole case for the 5 cents.
- Who shows up on a Wednesday. Unaffiliated voters can pick a Democratic ballot at the polls, and Emerson's May poll had independents breaking 45 to 13 for Foulkes. McKee drew the top ballot line.
- November is not the question. Polymarket prices a Republican winning the governorship at under 2 cents. The primary is the election.
This one settles on Wednesday, September 9, 2026. It was supposed to be Tuesday the 8th, but Labor Day falls on Monday the 7th and closes the schools and churches that host more than 430 of the state's polling places, so on April 20 McKee signed the bill moving the primary back a day, per the Providence Journal. The governor picked the date. The voters pick the governor.
Hero illustration: OddsShopper, in the house collage style. Dan McKee photo by Kenneth C. Zirkel, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0; Helena Foulkes photo by Digitas Photos, licensed CC BY 2.0; photos cropped, toned, and composited. Prices quoted are live Kalshi market prices as of August 25, 2026, 3:13 p.m. Eastern, and will keep moving until this market settles after the Wednesday, September 9, 2026 vote. Kalshi is a CFTC-regulated event-contract exchange (18+; availability varies by state). OddsShopper covers prediction markets as an independent analyst: any model or panel figures referenced are model estimates, not predictions of fact and not financial advice. This article does not advocate for or against any candidate or party. Trading involves risk; contracts can go to zero.
