Fung Concession: ‘I Will Be Back’
Tuesday, November 04, 2014
He fell short this time, but Cranston Mayor Allan Fung isn’t going away.
“Don’t worry, I will be back,” Fung told supporters tonight at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Cranston, where he conceded the Governor’s race to Democrat Gina Raimondo. Fung would have been the first Asian-American Governor of the state. Instead, Raimondo has become its first female chief executive.
“The next Governor of Rhode Island has her work cut out for her on Day One,” an emotional Fung told supporters.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST“It was a good race,” he added.
Polls had shown a tight race heading into the final days of the campaign, a fact reflected in a deluge of out-of-state spending on negative ads against both candidates by so-called super PACs.
With 97 percent of precincts reporting, Raimondo had 40.2 percent of the vote, against 36.4 percent for Fung. Third-party contender Bob Healey outperformed expectations, taking 21.7 percent of the vote statewide. Healey, the former founder of the Cool Moose Party, ran under the Moderate Party banner.
Fung ran up the numbers in Cranston, where he won by a 2-to-1 margin over Raimondo, but failed to make up for losses and razor-thin margin of victory elsewhere. While Fung won key bellwether communities like Johnston and North Providence, Healey cut into its margins in Warwick and small GOP-friendly towns like Scituate, East Greenwich, Foster, and Glocester, where the campaign had hoped to make up for losses to Raimondo in Providence and the East Bay, a senior staffer said.
Fung has two years remaining in his term as Cranston mayor. Tonight, he pledged to continue to work hard for his constituents. Fung also promised to work with Governor-elect Raimondo on the challenges facing the state.
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