Former Cranston mayor Allan Fung is running for the state representative seat his wife once held

CRANSTON, R.I. — Former Cranston mayor Allan W. Fung has left the Republican Party and is running as an independent for the state House of Representatives seat that his wife once held.

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As the candidate declaration period drew to a close Wednesday, Fung announced he will seek the House District 15 seat now occupied by Representative Christopher G. Paplauskas, a Cranston Republican. Colleen Marie Crudele, a Democrat, also has declared for that seat.

Fung’s wife, Barbara Ann Fenton-Fung, had represented House District 15 until she waged an unsuccessful challenge to Cranston Mayor Kenneth J. Hopkins in 2024.

In 2022, Fung attracted national attention when he campaigned as a Republican for an open 2nd Congressional District seat, which ended up going to Democrat Seth Magaziner.

Fung, 56, has been one of the highest-profile Republicans in Rhode Island in recent years, but he left the GOP and filed to become an unaffiliated voter on May 6, according to state records.

“In the spirit of the Independent Man atop the Rhode Island State House — and in what may be the most Rhode Island move we’ve ever made — my wife and I officially became independents earlier this year,” Fung said in a statementWednesday.

“This wasn’t symbolic,” he said. “It came after years of watching politics become more about protecting insiders and defending political tribes than solving problems.”

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In 2002, Fung was a 32-year-old attorney who approached Cranston’s Democratic machine about running for a seat on the City Council. But party leaders told him to wait his turn, so he joined the GOP and ran anyway — and won.

“For a long time, I was proud to carry the banner of fiscal conservatism, and we still have many friends in the Republican Party today,” Fung said in the statement. “But we reached a point where we believed our loyalty should be to the people we represent, not to a political label.”

Fung said his decision to leave the GOP was driven in part by what he sees happening in Cranston and across Rhode Island.

“Rhode Island doesn’t have a revenue problem — it has a priorities problem,” he said. “We’re spending more money than ever before, yet cities are still fighting for school funding, veterans are still navigating broken systems, our healthcare system is under enormous strain, and families are struggling just to afford the basics.”

Fung served as mayor of Cranston from 2009 to 2021. In 2014, he ran as the Republican candidate for governor, losing to Democrat Gina M. Raimondo in a three-way race. He ran against Raimondo again in 2018, losing 53 percent to 37 percent.

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Fung now works at the Lepizzera & Laprocina law firm in Warwick, R.I.