- Ted, welcome back, it's good to see you.

The top three leaders at the Rhode Island State House have been in the news recently.

And I wanted to start with Governor Dan McKee.

No surprise, he announced in a video on March 3rd that he is seeking reelection after a lot of speculation.

And I'm curious what you make of the timing.

Did you think it was too early?

Is it spot on?

- Well, it's certainly early, Michelle.

Usually incumbents actually try to wait as long as possible to get out of kind of rose garden mode and start to be in the campaign frame.

But I think the context's probably pretty obvious.

McKee knows there is some speculation, maybe he won't actually run for another term and his team wanted to get something out there early to say, "No, I'm running "and I'm gonna be on the ballot next year."

- And that video came one week after a poll showed that 48% of Rhode Island voters believe the state is heading in the wrong direction.

It was interesting to hear his rather upbeat take when asked about that by one of your colleagues at Channel 12.

Let's take a listen, - Less than half the state of Rhode Island saying we're heading the wrong direction.

That's progress.

What we're doing is you're showing a actual trend right now that more and more people are understanding we're heading in the right direction and less and less people are saying that we're heading in the wrong direction.

- And it's worth noting only 29% of Rhode Island voters believe the state is heading in the right direction.

So less than one third.

- Right, so that's the difficult context, Michelle, that McKee is facing as he kicks off this reelection bid.

You know, if the poll showed half of Rhode Island voters thinking the state was moving in the right direction, we'd probably be having a different conversation.

But the McKee administration has just had a lot of high profile challenges in the last year.

Of course, people think of the Washington Bridge fiasco.

The state is facing budget deficits, once again.

There was that long mess with the pallet shelters finally getting those open for people who are homeless.

And then you have the context politically where former CVS executive Helena Foulkes, as we've discussed before, already has raised almost twice as much money as McKee for next year's race.

She's definitely running.

You have other top Democrats like House Speaker, Joe Shicarchi, Attorney General Peter Rona, Secretary of State, Greg Imorrell at least flirting with the idea of running.

So I think it just shows, McKee knows he has work cut out for him if he wants to run and win this race.

- And let's talk about age.

So "Boston Globe" columnist Stan McGowan, who works in the Rhode Island Bureau, pointed out that if McKee does win, he will be almost 80 by the time that term is up.

We've seen on a national stage, look, age is top of mind for a lot of Americans.

- Yes, absolutely.

- And speaking of which, Senate President, Dominic Ruggiero's health issues have really been a major topic of conversation at the State House.

What is the latest with the Senator's health?

- Well, the context is, I'm sure a lot of viewers remember Senate President Ruggiero is 76.

He revealed about a year ago now that he had been diagnosed with cancer.

He had that very dramatic break with his then majority leader, Ryan Pearson when Pearson privately broached his health and whether he could continue.

The argument last fall by Ruggiero's team when he beat back challengers to his leadership was that he was strengthening then and was gonna be in in much better shape for 2025.

That just really hasn't been the case, Michelle.

He's missed multiple Senate sessions so far.

We learned in late February he was actually, he has been hospitalized with pneumonia.

Obviously his immune system is compromised and then his chief of staff told me he'd be out in a couple of days.

Then it comes out, he's actually gonna be in the hospital until March 12th.

So his aids still continued to say he's getting better, he's strengthening, he's okay to lead.

But the next few weeks, I think are gonna be telling.

- So despite that, you don't foresee any changes with Senate leadership?

At least not for now.

- Not right now.

There's no sign yet, that there's no sign a majority of senators ready to move on to someone else.

But there's a lot of tension around it.

- Okay, let's turn now to house Speaker Joe Shicarchi.

He has really become synonymous with the housing crisis in this state.

In late February, he released his fifth annual package of housing legislation and you spoke with him on that day.

Let's take a listen.

- You get any exhaustion from your caucus, from your reps, who say speaker another round of votes on housing?

Sometimes maybe my mayors, my council members get mad about some of it or anything like that?

- Yes, I get that all the time.

But it's not just limited to housing.

I get that for a lot of issues.

But I will tell you that my housing package, I have 20 reps who wanna sponsor eight bills.

So they, there's a lot of people who want the housing legislation, housing polls very high.

If you do any polling in the state, and I know you're a big student of polling, housing and healthcare.

Healthcare and housing, one in two issues, depending on how you poll are significant.

The single largest housing bond in the history of Rhode Island, $120 million last year passed by over 70% of the vote or close to 70% vote.

Very strong numbers.

It is a need people want to address and representatives that I deal with every day wanna be part of the solution.

- So really full speed ahead for Shicarchi on this?

- Yes, you know, he said this year's bills are maybe more closer to technical fixes in a lot of cases and some of the more dramatic things he did like ADUs before, but he says as long as home prices are still high and apartment rents are still going up so fast, he thinks this is a live issue he needs to continue to deal with.

- People wanna see those prices go down.

- They really do.

It's gonna be difficult.

- Yeah, thank you so much Ted.

- Good to be here.