RI 2020 Primary Results: State Senate, State Representatives

Neal McNamara
Updated ·2 min read

SOUTH KINGSTOWN, RI — Rhode Island's 2020 September primary features a host of races for seats in the General Assembly, largely the result of a new political organization backing progressives candidates to unseat longtime Democratic incumbents.

The primary has shades of the 2016 election, when state Rep. Moira Walsh defeated incumbent Thomas Palangio. This year, the Rhode Island Political Cooperative emerged to support 27 candidates across the state. The inter-party challenge has attracted attention from big name Democrats like U.S. Sen. Jack Reed, who waded into the primary last week to endorse incumbent state sens. Mark McKenney and Stephen Archambault.

Longtime state Sen. Virginia Sosnowski — a former Republican first elected in 1996 — is facing a primary challenge in South Kingstown's District 37 from Maggie Kain, a former Bernie Sanders volunteer who is running in her first election. In Coventry's District 27 House race, Nicholas Delmenico is trying to unseat Patricia Serpa for the second time after losing to her by 10 points in the 2016 Democratic primary.

There's somewhat of the opposite going on in Narragansett's District 34. Challenger Gina Giramma, a local civics teacher, is looking for a win against Teresa Tanzi, a progressive who unseated longtime incumbent David Caprio in the 2011 primary.

And in District 35, former lawmaker Spencer Dickinson — who ran unsuccessfully in 2018 for Rhode Island governor — is hoping to return to the General Assembly for the third time. He served between 1973 and 1980, and a second stint between 2010 and 2016. Incumbent Kathleen Fogarty beat Dickinson in the 2016 Democratic primary.

Apart from the political matchups, the 2020 primary will be very different from other elections due to the coronavirus pandemic.

On Tuesday night, the state Board of Elections will only release votes tallied at in-person polling locations. But tens of thousands of mail-in ballots may not be counted for several days, leaving some results unresolved.

Patch will be updating the vote totals throughout the night as the election board posts them. Here are the local General Assembly Democratic primary races. Incumbents and candidates backed by RIPC are marked accordingly.

State Senate District 37 (South Kingstown, Block Island)

  • (i) Virginia Sosnowski —

  • Maggie Kain (RIPC) —

State House District 27 (Coventry)

  • (i) Patricia Serpa —

  • Nicholas Delmenico (RIPC) —

State House District 71 (Portsmouth, Little Compton, Tiverton)

  • (i) John Edwards V —

  • Michelle McGaw (RIPC) —

State House District 34 (Narragansett, South Kingstown)

  • (i) Teresa Tanzi —

  • Gina Giramma —

State House District 72 (Portsmouth, Middletown)

  • (i) Terri-Denise Cortvriend —

  • Christopher Semonelli —

State House District 35 (South Kingstown)

  • (i) Kathleen Fogarty —

  • Spencer Dickinson —

This article originally appeared on the Narragansett-South Kingstown Patch