As Diamond Eye Candidate Report previously noted, IT professional Raymond McKay was the first Republican to declare for the 2024 Rhode Island Senate race. For months, McKay had the Republican primary himself as he seeks to take on incumbent Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, who is running for re-election to a fourth term in office. However, McKay now has company, as a polarizing figure in Rhode Island politics has joined the race; Patricia Morgan, who has served in the Rhode Island House of Representatives for over a decade, declared her campaign earlier this month. Morgan was first elected to the state House in 2010 by a small margin, and continued winning close races to keep her seat. In 2016, she rose to the position of House Minority Leader, and declared she'd run for governor in 2018. However, she lost the primary to former Cranston mayor Allan Fung by a 16-point margin. Disapproving of Fung, Morgan bucked her party by endorsing independent candidate Joe Trullo in the general election, and was removed from her position as Minority Leader only a few hours later. Democrat James Jackson flipped the state House seat that Morgan had left behind to run for governor, but she returned in 2020 and unseated him to return to the legislature. Since then, Morgan has attracted controversy multiple times, including her 2021 tweet claiming that she lost "a black friend" due to critical race theory. Due to Morgan's icy relationship with her party, it's unlikely that the Republican establishment will back her, but she still stands a strong chance of winning the primary. Her campaign website can be found here.

Currently, the attention of Rhode Island politicos is laser-focused on the increasingly crowded 2023 special election to replace U.S. Representative David Cicilline.  However, looking forward to the 2024 U.S. Senate race, incumbent Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse has already confirmed he'll seek a fourth term. He will likely coast to re-election without much issue, but he does have one declared Republican foe, Raymond McKay.

McKay is an IT professional who has previously served as a member of the Rhode Island Republican Party State Central Committee and as president of the Rhode Island chapter of the National Federation of Republican Assemblies. His first campaign for public office was a 1998 state senate campaign in which he polled 26.5% of the vote against Democratic incumbent William Walaska. McKay later ran for U.S. Senate in 2014, though he dropped out before the primary. Someone by the name Raymond McKay ran in Rhode Island's 2018 Senate race as an independent, but it is not clear if this is the same person. In the first quarter of 2023, McKay raised $13,000, spent $6,000, and ended with $7,000 on hand. His campaign website can be found here.