Ashley Kalus Wins Rhode Island GOP Gubernatorial Primary

Businessperson Ashley Kalus has won the GOP gubernatorial primary Tuesday night in Rhode Island, Decision Desk HQ projects.

She will face incumbent Democrat Gov. Dan McKee in the November general midterm election. McKee won a hard-fought Democrat primary, holding off Helena Foulkes and Nellie Gorbea in a hotly contested race.

Kalus resoundingly defeated Jonathan Riccitelli, who made an unsuccessful bid for lieutenant governor in 2018 as an independent. Kalus, a political newcomer who moved to Rhode Island last year from Illinois, said she is ready to "take on whichever insider or career politician emerges from the Democratic primary."

The Boston Globe reported Friday that Riccitelli had been arrested dozens of times since 2000 under a different name. The Globe said the criminal charges ranged from obstructing police officers to assault and were lodged against someone named Jonathan Tefft, according to court records.

Riccitelli told the newspaper he could not remember how many times he had been arrested and denied that all of the charges were his, but acknowledged his mother was married to someone whose last name was Tefft and people might have called him Jonathan Tefft at some point. The Department of Corrections confirmed Monday that a person named Jonathan Tefft, who goes by Jonathan J. Tefft-Riccitelli, had been in and out of state prison from 2000 to 2011.

McKee was facing a tough challenge from the secretary of state in the Democrat primary as he seeks his first full term in office after taking over when two-term Gov. Gina Raimondo was tapped as President Joe Biden's U.S. commerce secretary.

McKee avoided becoming the first sitting governor to lose a primary since 2018, when Gov. Jeff Colyer in Kansas narrowly lost the Republican nomination to Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who went on to lose the general election to Democrat Laura Kelly, the state’s current governor. Like McKee, Colyer took over when the sitting governor resigned for another job.

Voter turnout as the polls closed in Tuesday's primary election appeared about the same as 2018, approaching 20% of the 810,000 residents eligible to vote, according to the secretary of state's office.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.