by Alexander Castro, Rhode Island Current
March 2, 2026
Newport City Councilor and former mayor Xaykham “Xay” Khamsyvoravong joined a group of seasoned health care workers for breakfast at the IHOP near the East Providence–Seekonk, Massachusetts, line Monday morning. Over plates of scrambled eggs and tiny bowls of fruit cocktail, the group was to discuss the state of primary care in Rhode Island — an issue that Khamsyvoravong is laying down as the terra firma of his candidacy for lieutenant governor.
“I’ve spent most of my adult life watching the deterioration of many of the systems that we rely upon,” Khamsyvoravong, a 41-year-old director at the firm PFM Financial Advisors LLC, said. “One of those is our health care system.”
Following weeks of media whispers of a potential run, Khamsyvoravong officially embarked on his campaign with a 6 a.m. press announcement. By 10 a.m., he was at IHOP for his first outing as a candidate for one of Rhode Island’s most popular races this election season.
He joins a crowded field with incumbent Lt. Gov. Sabina Matos seeking reelection and other Democratic challenges from Providence City Councilor Sue AnderBois and former state Sen. Cindy Coyne. Whoever wins the September primary will go on to face the lone Republican challenger so far, former state Rep. John Loughlin.
What separates Khamsyvoravong from his competition? For one, his campaign account was the most well-off at the end of last year, with $158,906 in the bank after raising$43,695 in the last quarter of the year. The candidate had just under $3,100 in expenses, mostly for website fees, a November 2025 campaign event at Triggs Golf Course, and fees for ActBlue, a fundraising platform run by the American Democratic Party political action committee.
His end-of-year ledger outpaces Coyne, who had $101,662 in her account at year’s end. Matos had $68,129 in her campaign account, and AnderBois had $66,214, while Loughlin had $17,328.
Khamsyvoravong told Rhode Island Current before his roundtable that his campaign is rooted in an urgency for ensuring that the “state remain[s] workable for working families.”
“There’s a complete lack of urgency on pushing solutions in the state right now that actually help normal working people, and we’ve got to stay laser focused on that,” Khamsyvoravong said, adding that the state consumes “a lot of time studying issues in this state — studying, studying, studying — but not taking enough action.”
A recently concluded legislative study commission on the possibility of establishing a medical school at the University of Rhode Island recommended the state pursue the medical school to address the state’s shortage of primary care doctors — and it also recommended another study commission be created to continue studying primary care in general.
“That frustration is starting to boil over, and people are starting to lose faith and trust in democracy and in the system,” Khamsyvoravong said. “[People] care less about the constraints you’re operating under and more about whether or not you’re able to deliver results.”
For Khamsyvoravong, that system is not an abstraction but something that he said gave him “everything.”
His father escaped Laos as a teenager during the Vietnam War when Communists took control of the bomb-ravaged country, traveling across the Mekong River on a skiff to Thailand, where he lived in a refugee camp for several years before first landing stateside in Minnesota. A church group in the North Star State soon helped him relocate to Rhode Island, where he enjoyed “an incredible amount of opportunity and a legal pathway to citizenship,” the candidate said.
I’ve spent most of my adult life watching the deterioration of many of the systems that we rely upon. One of those is our health care system.
– Xay Khamsyvoravong, candidate for Rhode Island lieutenant governor
Khamsyvoravong’s mother — Dr. Linda Rexford, a Lincoln pediatrician — was at the breakfast event Monday.
Legislative commission recommends backing URI medical school
Khamsyvoravong told the medical professionals at this table that he intends to lay the groundwork for primary care-supporting policies even before his potential occupation of the executive office. This passion was largely spurred by the near-closure of Newport Hospital’s Noreen Stonor Drexel Birthing Center last summer, Khamsyvoravong said.
“The birthing center experience in Newport made clear to me that the health care system needs to get its priorities straight, and that we as public leaders have responsibility to ensure that they hear us,” he said.
He revealed to the table, and to his mother, that he uses her picture in a slideshow he’s given to different chambers or commerce on the difficulties primary care faces. Most of the state’s primary care physicians, he noted, are aging out of the practice. Data from the recent State House commission on primary care noted that about a third of general internists in the state are over age 60, and roughly 26% of providers said they’re looking to retire within the next six years.
Housing and education are Khamsyvoravong’s other two priorities, he said, arguing that the two are inextricably linked.
“One of our largest inhibitions to housing right now is the cost of labor,” he said. “We’re not going to be able to address that if we don’t actually produce the workforce the state needs to physically keep functioning on a day to day basis.”
A job where the person in it make it their own
The lieutenant governor gig comes with a $137,510 annual salary and is prescribed one core duty by the Rhode Island Constitution: replacing the governor if they should “die, remove from the state, refuse to serve; become insane, or be otherwise incapacitated.” The lieutenant governor is also charged with an assortment of smaller responsibilities — 18 in all, according to one review by the National Lieutenant Governors Association — like chairing the Small Business Advisory Council, appointing select members to the Long-term Care Coordinating Council. Up until 2003, when a constitutional amendment created the role of Senate president, the lieutenant governor also presided over the state Senate, until a constitutional amendment
Still, the overall brevity of the office’s typical to-do list has, over the years, produced at least two candidates who promised to abolish the position if elected.
Khamsyvoravong argued for a more proactive stance from “the second-highest bully pulpit in state government.
“Every single one of us has the ability to help make change and to help make things better in our communities,” Khamsyvoravong said. “I think about that every time I sit in church and listen to my rector, who doesn’t have a whole lot of direct authority over me legally. I think about that every time I see somebody volunteer or somebody showing up to a rally.”
The lieutenant governor’s office, he argued, should embody “the importance of consistently carrying a coherent message and the urgency that people need to be seeing.”
Beyond the office’s mandated duties, Rhode Island’s lieutenant governors have typically pursued their policy interests by submitting legislation with the help of willing members of the General Assembly. Incumbent officeholder Matos has made grocery store pricing and regulation a cornerstone of her agenda, while her predecessor and now Gov. Dan McKee focused on youth entrepreneurship.
As for why an Aquidneck Islander chose an IHOP in East Providence for his first campaign event, the reason became apparent when Khamsyvoravong introduced the restaurant’s manager Philip Da Costa to the crowd. Da Costa’s wife, Kristin, is the daughter of restaurant owners Bill and Karen Cardinal, who also own the Middletown IHOP.
“It didn’t come out of nowhere,” Khamsyvoravong said. “The Cardinal family was very involved in Newport when the birthing center was up for closure and reached out and said, ‘What can we do to help?’”
Rhode Island Current is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Rhode Island Current maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janine L. Weisman for questions: info@rhodeislandcurrent.com.