Elaine Pelino, a former NFL cheerleader and publisher pitching herself as the party-line choice, and Aaron Guckian, a former aide to former Gov. Donald Carcieri and a more centrist candidate are locked in a GOP primary that remained too close to call by early Thursday morning.<\/p>\n
The race centered on experience and qualifications as Republicans hope they have found a candidate to win over a historically Democratic-leaning state.<\/p>\n
SENATE REPUBLICAN PUSHES OVERHAUL TO CUT RED TAPE AND SPEED UP AMERICAN ENERGY PROJECTS<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n In the last election, Daniel McKee, the then-Democratic candidate and current governor of Rhode Island, beat out Republican challenger Ashley Kalus in a 57.9% to 38.9% victory.<\/p>\n Among other priorities in her campaign, Pelino promised to champion merit-based hiring<\/a>, support law enforcement, immigration law and school choice.”This is what I\u2019m going to do. I\u2019m learning. Everything is a learning [curve] because I\u2019m not a lifetime politician. I\u2019m here because I love Rhode Island. And I want them to have a great life. I want them to live in a prosperous and safe place. We should get all the illegals out of here,” Pelino said at a candidate forum.<\/a><\/p>\n DEM INCUMBENT BECOMES FIRST SITTING GOVERNOR TO LOSE PRIMARY SINCE 2018<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Before her time in politics, Pelino had a wide range of experience, working as a model, in media and even as a cheerleader for the Houston Oilers, the football team that would eventually become the NFL\u2019s Tennessee Titans. Later, in 2011, she founded Tigress magazine, which published 12 issues.<\/p>\n For his part, Guckian took a far more policy-centric approach, committing to overhaul Rhode Island\u2019s permitting<\/a>, improve service delivery and tighten use of the state\u2019s revenue. He argued that the state\u2019s budget growth had “gone too far.”<\/p>\n “The state budget increased from $9.3 billion in 2019 to more than $14 billion between 2024 and 2026, nearly 50% growth in five years, even as federal COVID relief dollars are expiring,” Guckian said on his campaign website.<\/a><\/p>\n “Rhode Island made a critical mistake. We built permanent commitments on temporary federal money.”<\/p>\n SELF-FUNDED CEO CLAIMS GOP NOMINATION TO CHALLENGE MASSACHUSETTS DEMOCRAT\u2019S SECOND-TERM BID<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Once one of them has secured the primary, Pelino or Guckian will face an uphill battle in the Nov. 3 general election.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Elaine Pelino, a former NFL cheerleader and publisher pitching herself as the party-line choice, and Aaron Guckian, a former aide to former Gov. Donald Carcieri and a more centrist candidate are locked in a GOP primary that remained too close to call by early Thursday morning. The race centered on experience and qualifications as Republicans … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78488\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}