Rivals in the state's top race, McKee and Kalus scrap over 'Paw-tucket' and seagulls

The Ashley Kalus campaign Tuesday learned what hundreds of visiting minor league baseball announcers found out the hard way over the years: It's pronounced "P'tuckit."

The Republican nominee for governor re-edited her latest television ad attacking Gov. Dan McKee after the spot's narrator used a pronunciation of Pawtucket that's long marked out-of-towners.

But the change only stoked the rising animosity between the two candidates, and before the day was over McKee would call Kalus a "seagull," "crapping all over the state" and she would call him a misogynist.

"$60 million for 'Paw-tucket' soccer stadium," the original ad voiceover said in reference to the Tidewater Landing stadium that McKee cast the tie-breaking vote to finance this summer.

How do you pronounce Pawtucket?

Google lists the correct phonetic pronunciation of Pawtucket as "puh-tuh-kuht." Another way to describe the name of Rhode Island's fourth largest city is that it starts with a "P" and rhymes with "bucket."

Before the Pawtucket Red Sox moved to Worcester, announcers from visiting teams would frequently invoke the ire of locals, and the internet, when they did a home run call for "Paw-tucket."

By 1 p.m. a new version of Kalus' ad had been uploaded with a new Rhode Island-friendly pronunciation.

As small as the Pawtucket gaffe seems, it was ill-timed for Kalus, who has been answering questions this week about her voter registration and tax status after moving to Rhode Island last year from Florida and previously Illinois. 

McKee accuses Kalus of carpetbagging.

“If it wasn’t obvious before, it is now – Ashley Kalus is not a Rhode Islander and does not know Rhode Island," McKee spokesperson Alana O'Hare said. "But that’s not surprising, since she just moved here while still claiming tax exemptions in Illinois, and until recently was registered to vote in Florida. Now, in her latest attempt to mischaracterize Governor McKee in an attack ad, her campaign butchered the pronunciation of the state’s fourth-largest city."

Previous campaign ads attacked

The Pawtucket episode fits in a deep tradition of campaign commercials attacked for geographic faux-pas or betraying a lack of local knowledge

Four years ago, a Gina Raimondo ad attacking then-Cranston Mayor Allan Fung for rising crime in that city showed footage shot in the Silver Lake section of Providence.

Four years before that, Fung was in the spotlight for filming an ad saying Rhode Island is "open for business" in an Ohio diner.

The positive for Kalus, if there is one, is it puts a little more attention on the ad, which accuses McKee of being a "career politician," the "worst governor in the country" and "corrupt from the start, selling access to the highest bidder."

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Asked about the Pawtucket flub, Kalus campaign spokesman Matt Hanrahan pointed out that a McKee ad attacking primary opponents Helena Foulkes and Nellie Gorbea mistakenly ran after he had already won the primary.

"Dan McKee sent out an ad a day after the primary attacking Helena and Nellie and it was up for almost an entire day," Hanrahan said. "Our campaign corrected a minor pronunciation mistake in five minutes. Mistakes happen, but we acted quickly."

Hanrahan said he did not know if Kalus had personally approved the faulty Pawtucket ad.

But Tuesday's war of words between the two candidates didn't end with television ads or Pawtucket.

At an unrelated event, McKee responded to a question from a Boston Globe reporter about Kalus by describing her as a "seagull manager."

"You know what seagull management is? Well you fly over and you crap over everyone you fly over," McKee said. "And that's what she is, crapping all over the state of Rhode Island."

In response, Hanrahan described McKee calling Kalus a seagull "misogynistic" and linked it to his frosty relationships with Raimondo, former Health Director Dr. Nicole Alexander-Scott and Foulkes.

" ... Everyone remembers primary night when he refused to take a concession call from Helena, telling his staff to hang up on her," Hanrahan wrote in an email. "Dan McKee obviously has a problem with strong women. If he had a record to champion – he would – but instead he resorts to name calling."

panderson@providencejournal.com

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On Twitter: @PatrickAnderso_

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This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: 'Paw-tucket' and seagulls the latest campaign fodder for McKee, Kalus