Raimondo Captures Majority Vote

Photo by Tom Berglund

Christian Martinelli

“I will continue to work my ass off for Cranston, and wherever I am in the state of Rhode Island I will not shut up!” said the now former Republican gubernatorial candidate Allan Fung, as he conceded the Rhode Island governor’s race to incumbent Democrat Gina Raimondo on Tuesday night. ​

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The final results were as predicted. Raimondo ran away with the election, winning 52% of the vote, Fung won 38% of the vote, and independent Joe Trillo won 4%. With Bill Gilbert receiving just under 3%. Luis Daniel Muñoz and Anne Armstrong failed to receive more than 2%.

In 2014 Raimondo won 40% of the vote, Fung won 36% of the vote, and the late Bob Healey 22% of the vote. Many people believed that Independent Joe Trillo was going to steal votes away from Allan Fung, but that did not happen to be the case this year. Instead, the unaffiliated candidate fell far short of what Healey did last election cycle.

Fung received many more votes this time around, just not the ones he needed.

The Democratic Party won big all night in Rhode Island winning at about the 90% mark. Their biggest win of all might’ve been that Raimondo won the gubernatorial race with the majority of the vote. This is a big deal, because last election she was not even close to majority and it shows the majority of people in Rhode Island will be getting their candidate of choice.

This is important and empowers citizens to feel as though their voice does in fact matter.

Both Fung and Raimondo ran very attack based campaigns. The incumbent called Fung, “A Trump fan boy” and said that Cranston is struggling.

Fung had ads criticizing Raimondo’s spending on UHIP and said how money could’ve been used elsewhere.

During the debates, it seemed as though both candidates were more worried about verbally jabbing each other than they were about talking about how they were actually going to fix the state of Rhode Island. Some including myself went as far as to call their behavior “juvenile” and “childish”.

Rhode Island has many issues, and it starts at the top with the government. We need public officials that want to make change, not one who just want to have power.

​A fiery and crying Fung acknowledge Raimondo’s second consecutive Gubernatorial win over him. “Congratulations to Gina because she drove out that vote. It’s not easy to do.”

Raimondo claimed victory by saying, “We’re going to keep going, do more, go faster, and bring the change.” Many Rhode Islanders hope to see more change in her second four-year term than in the first one. 

She received the votes of confidence of almost 200,000 Rhode Islanders. Clearly they think she can do the job effectively.

Four more years for Gina to make a difference, was it the right decision? Time will be the judge of that question.

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