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The Boston Globe released a poll just a few weeks ago, showing Republican Allan Fung, leading all hypothetical matchups against his different Democratic opponents and seven points ahead or more. Currently, not a single Republican represents any of the Congressional districts in New England. Fung hopes to change that by becoming Rhode Island’s first Congressional Republican representative since the 1990’s.

I caught up with Allan recently but met him many years back and I was impressed with his dedication to the community and his steadfast commitment to conservative values despite being in a blue state. He actually had a desire to communicate and demonstrated pragmatically how his values worked with blue voters, something surprisingly rare in the conservative movement..

Fung started as the lone Republican on his council in Cranston, but eventually was able to bring in more people who shared his vision and within a few cycles, as mayor, he had a governing majority. After a 12 year term-limited tenure, he left office with a virtually unheard-of 82 percent approval rating.

His wife, Barbara Fenton Fung, ran in 2020 for the state house, and ended up beating the Democratic incumbent speaker of the house, a feat not achieved by a Republican in more than 114 years. This, in a year, when Biden won the state by a bigger margin than Hillary did in 2016.  Barbara also won in a landslide, 60-40, a testament to strong community roots.

With Providence being a less expensive secondary market, there is no doubt that investing in Fung’s race is a wise investment for any conservative donors who want to impact a race and see a strong return on investment.

Here are some key moments from my two recent interviews:

Fung credits his high approval ratings in his blue state and blue city to:

“implementing pension reforms [by] moving out of the defined benefit pension program into a defined contribution, like [401ks] in the private sector. [Also] getting dollars back for retiree health care, getting concessions from unions, making sure that the dollars are [prudently] invested. I took over a city that was on the brink of financial bankruptcy and turned it into one of the best cities to live. These are the same problems that we’re facing as a country right now: overspending which is causing [record] inflation.”

On energy, he says:

“The lack of true energy policy and energy independence is causing the spike in our gasoline and grocery prices [and] the fact that we can’t get baby formula. You sit there wondering, is this Venezuela or the greatest country in the world?”

On his family’s immigrant background:

“I was first-generation born to this country living the American dream. [Now] this country is going the opposite way. I want to turn it around [to] when my parents came here, [with ample] opportunities for the next generation.”

On his work ethic instilled at a young age, he credits it to working in the family’s Chinese restaurant as a child, bussing tables and washing dishes at nine years old:

“Probably violated a few [modern day] child labor laws, but those are the values I carry with me to this day. My parents didn’t want anything from the government. We need to aspire to not asking for handouts. Government should be there to help people that can’t help themselves, giving that hand up, but not be this lifeline.”

On the COVID mandates:

“More mandates coming down impacts not just our individual liberties, but documented learning loss on the next generation. [Kids were] passed onto the next grade when they were fundamentally not ready. [There are also] mental health issues caused by policy makers’ [poor decisions made not] based on data but on what they wanted to impose on all of us. I am a constitutionalist and a liberty person. Past the pandemic, they still want to keep the states of emergency going so they can impose a lot of different mandates [even] when that emergency is gone.”

On law and order and fighting back against Antifa:

“My city is the second largest next to our capital city, which is run by a Progressive mayor. Antifa came into Providence, burned police cars, destroyed and vandalized the Downtown capital city’s mall. The next night, they threatened to come into our city. I stood by our police officers. We even had an Apache helicopter flying overhead to send a strong message. [Thankfully] not a single thing happened in our city. They ended up going up to Massachusetts and burned down a Dunkin Donuts and destroyed a couple businesses.”

On his tactical strategy to win, Fung believes he has the right message to win over traditional left-leaning voting blocs. He is working with the team that brought another successful mayor into Congress, former Miami mayor and now Florida Congressman Carlos Gimenez.

“I plan to be that voice of reason, and make sure that people not just in the Northeast, but all across the country have a strong voice who’s not afraid to tackle issues and advocate for them in the right way. [We will] fight for every single undecided voter, especially those that lean left and are in the middle.”

You can view my full interviews with Allan here and a here.

Marc Ang ([email protected]) is a community organizer in Southern California and the founder of Asian Industry B2B. He focuses on the minority conservative experience. Marc’s book “Minority Retort” will be released in 2022.