Allan Fung Hopes to Lead a Moderate ‘Rebirth’ in the GOP Caucus. First He Has to Defy the Odds

Allan Fung stands a chance at becoming the first Republican to represent Rhode Island’s Second Congressional district in nearly 30 years.

Fung — who served as the mayor of Cranston for 12 years — hopes to win over a district, which President Biden won by 13 points in 2020, as the moderate voice he says the Republican Party desperately needs right now. “I am more of a middle-right type person,” Fung told National Review during a recent interview when discussing Axios’s suggestion that he “may be Republicans’ most moderate Candidate for Congress.”

“That’s where I want to help lead this rebirth of Republicans,” he said, adding that moderate Republicans don’t have a “single voice” in the House of Representatives right now. He cited Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine as the only moderate voice in Congress.

Fung’s moderate views seem to be paying off, with both Fox News power rankings’ and the Cook Political Report’s rating the race a toss-up, despite the district covering most of Providence and Cranston, both of which are reliably liberal areas.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D., R.I.) said over the summer that Fung is “a candidate that everybody should take seriously.” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D., Md.) called Fung a “quality opponent” last month. While he suggested Democrat Seth Magaziner will prevail in the race, Hoyer noted that Fung is “pretty popular” and “not an extremist.”

National Republicans have taken notice, dumping more than $1 million into the race. 

A new Boston Globe/Suffolk University survey brought good news for Fung on Tuesday: He led Magaziner 45 percent to 37 percent. Thirteen percent of likely voters were undecided while another 5 percent supported independent William Gilbert.

While the new poll boosted the GOP’s hope that Republicans could pick up the seat, Sean Trende, senior elections analyst at RCP, was a little more skeptical. 

“I’ll believe more when Fung goes over 48/49% or so,” he tweeted in response to the poll.

Representative Jim Langevin (D., R.I.), whose retirement leaves the seat open, won the district by 17 points in 2020.

Fung’s time as mayor from 2009 to 2021 and two unsuccessful runs for governor in 2014 and 2018 have brought him strong name recognition in the area.

During his tenure as mayor, Fung says he learned to work across the aisle to bring commonsense solutions to bear. He hopes to do the same if elected to Congress. He pointed to several moderate Republican governors in New England as “the type of leaders I aspire to be,” including Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker, New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu, and Vermont Governor Phil Scott.

Out on the campaign trail, Fung hears voters repeatedly voice concern about an issue that is top of mind for many American voters this year: the astronomical cost of living across the board, including the high cost of groceries and gasoline.

The Boston Globe/Suffolk University survey found 44 percent of voters in the district cited cost of living as their top issue this election, while 15 percent named abortion. Fung noted that the Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission approved a 47 percent increase in residential electricity bills last month. Rhode Island Energy, the state’s only gas supplier, filed a request last month to raise rates such that a typical residential customer would see his bill increase by 15 percent.

With the cost of heating oil skyrocketing, Fung says he’s hearing from voters that it’s a very dire scenario in which they are struggling to figure out how to make ends meet. “I want to go down there [to Washington, D.C.] to fix a lot of these problems and drive down those inflationary aspects . . . that’s causing this high inflation as well as making sure that we’re energy independent once again,” Fung said.

He said he was inspired to run for Congress as the country finds itself in a situation much like that which the city of Cranston was in when he first became mayor. “When I first became mayor, the city was really in deep financial trouble,” he said, noting the city was experiencing cuts from the state and was facing down one of the worst-funded pension plans in the state. He said his greatest success as mayor was being able to put together a package by “sitting across the aisle, with our police and fire unions, with retirees, and putting together a plan with basically a democratic council to help stabilize that plan, help our taxpayers and move the city forward.”

If elected, Fung would aim to work across the aisle to “stop of the out of control spending” in Washington, to increase the United States’ domestic oil and gas production and become energy independent, and to bring jobs back to the U.S. — adding that he was supportive of the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act, which aims to increase domestic production of computer chips to allow the U.S. to become more competitive against China in the global technology market.

He added that it is “critically important” that the U.S. rehabilitates its infrastructure with an eye toward long-term economic strength. In his district, he has heard about shortages in workers and seen local restaurants having to close down for lunch or several days a week because they can’t find staff. “These are challenges that are real in Rhode Island and everyplace across the country that we have to get a grasp on,” Fung said.

In a cycle where Democrats have hoped to keep abortion front and center, Fung has refused to fit himself neatly into the right-wing box Democrats set up for him. In May, after a leaked draft opinion revealed the Supreme Court was poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, Fung said he was “not running to try to change the laws on abortion.” Asked at the time if he identifies as pro-choice or pro-life, Fung said, “I’m not a labels-type person.”

“I don’t support taxpayer funding of abortion,” Fung told the Rhode Island Report podcast. “I don’t support late-term abortion. I don’t support partial-birth abortion.”

“In Rhode Island, they’ve already spoken about this issue,” Fung said. “And I’m not running to try to change the laws on abortion. What I’m trying to run for in this race is making sure that we change the gas prices, make sure we change grocery prices, make sure we can get a lot of our products back on the store shelves. That’s why I’m running for this seat in Congress.”

Fung’s departure from what has become the norm in the Republican Party has meant his opponent, Magaziner, has had to campaign more against the “extremist” Republican Party in the House than his opponent. “We are all hands on deck at HQ! We are knocking every door, and calling every voter to beat the extremist agenda Allan Fung will enable in Congress. Social Security, Medicare, and choice are all on the ballot this November,” Magaziner, who currently serves as the state treasurer, tweeted recently.

Fung says the secret to his success in the polls in the Biden-favorable district is “just being myself” while he’s out on the campaign trail, knocking on doors and talking to people to let them know where he stands on important issues.

“I want to be a voice for Rhode Islanders and will vote to support them down in Washington, D.C., and that message is not only just resonating because of what they might see on the advertising or what I say, they’ve seen twelve years of how I’ve worked and a lot of the successes that we’d have where we took a city that was struggling and made it into one of the best cities to live in America,” Fund said. 

He added that he wants to work with Republicans, Democrats, and independents to bring back our country and save our economy.

“I don’t operate on the extremes,” he said. “I’ve never done that in twelve years as mayor of our state’s second-largest city. People know that and that’s what I’m going to do for them down in Washington, D.C.”