Matt Shinners
In 2014, Allan Fung and Ken Block competed for the Republican nomination for governor of Rhode Island. Fung, then the mayor of Cranston, beat Block by 10 points in the primary before losing the general election to Democrat Gina Raimondo.
Twelve years later, both men are back on the ballot. They’re running for different offices. They’re running with different messaging. And, this time, they’re running under a different label: Independent.
This will be Ken Block’s third bid for governor. Allan Fung, a two-time Republican nominee for governor and the party's 2022 candidate for Congress, announced last month that he has left the Republican Party and is running as an independent for a state House seat in District 15.
Their parallel departures from the Republican Party are the most visible examples of a broader shift in the Ocean State, where 21 independent candidates have filed to run for state office this year in a state where a majority of registered voters no longer affiliate with either major party.
The Voters Left First
The candidates are following the electorate. 51.3% of the state's registered voters are now unaffiliated, making them a straight majority in the state. Rhode Island consistently ranks among the states with the highest share of unaffiliated voters in the country, and one of the few where independents make up over 50% of the electorate.
Other states that fit that description? Massachusetts, Colorado, and Alaska.
That registration picture sits uneasily next to the state's political reality. Democrats dominate the General Assembly, hold every statewide office, and haven't lost a statewide election to a Republican since 2006. The result is a state where most voters have formally opted out of the party system while the party system continues to decide nearly everything.
This year, 11 independents have declared for the state legislature and another 10 for statewide general offices, though nine of them are in the governor’s race alone. It's not a record; 39 independent legislative candidates filed in 2022.
But the profile of who is running has changed.
Block's Third Act
Ken Block has spent his career running against the two-party system from different angles. In 2010, he founded the Moderate Party and ran for governor under its banner, finishing fourth with 6.5% of the vote.
The winner of that cycle? Lincoln Chafee, running as an independent (see more on that below).
In 2014, he tried the major-party route and lost the Republican primary to Fung. Now, the Barrington software engineer has settled on the label that arguably fit him all along.
"My flavor of politics doesn't align well with either political party," Block said in an interview with the Rhode Island Current.
"Political parties by definition imply a healthy dose of partisanship—I am a problem solver, a manager, and the problems that Rhode Island suffers from aren't problems that partisanship can address."
Interestingly, his company was hired by Pres. Trump’s campaign to look into allegations of voter fraud in 2020. After not finding any, he wrote a book about the experience.
Block's campaign calls out what he calls a crisis of competence, or, alternatively, the cost of incompetence. He highlights two stories of RI governance: the abrupt closure of the westbound Washington Bridge, which he has hammered relentlessly—including on billboards along Route 195—and a state payroll debacle that may have exposed employee Social Security numbers.
The strategic logic of Block's independent run is straightforward. The governor's race is dominated by a high-profile Democratic primary rematch between incumbent Gov. Dan McKee and former CVS executive Helena Foulkes, while the Republican field—Aaron Guckian, Elaine Pelino, and Robert Raimondo—is competing for a nomination that hasn't produced a statewide winner in two decades.
In a state where the Republican brand is arguably a heavier liability than no brand at all, running unaffiliated lets Block skip a September primary and spend the summer talking directly to the general electorate.
Fung's Break
Allan Fung's independent turn is, in some ways, the more surprising of the two. Fung was for years one of the Rhode Island GOP's biggest success stories: a popular mayor of the state's second-largest city, twice the party's nominee for governor, and its 2022 candidate in the 2nd Congressional District race.
Now, he’s running as an independent for House District 15—a seat with deep personal resonance. His wife, Barbara Ann Fenton-Fung, represented the district for two terms, and it contains Cranston, the city of which he served as mayor. The seat is currently held by Republican Chris Paplauskas, who won his first term in 2024 by 22 votes. (Seriously, people, vote!)
The Chafee and Healey Precedents
Rhode Island independents have something most of their counterparts nationally lack: proof of concept.
In 2010, Lincoln Chafee, a former Republican US senator, won the governorship as an independent (in the election where Block received over 6% of the vote as a third-party candidate). Chafee remains the state's first and only independent governor, though he later joined the Democratic Party while in office.
Four years later, Robert Healey demonstrated a different kind of viability. Running as the Moderate Party's nominee in the same 2014 race where Fung and Block fought for the GOP nomination, Healey captured 21.4% of the vote, finishing third behind Raimondo and Fung while famously reporting that he spent just $35 on his entire campaign.
Healey's showing remains one of the most cost-efficient results in modern American electoral history and evidence that a meaningful share of Rhode Island's electorate will vote outside the two parties when given a credible reason.
The July 17 Test
Before any independent gets to test those theories in November, they have to survive Rhode Island's ballot access gauntlet. Independent candidates must gather validated signatures from registered voters—1,000 for governor, as few as 50 for a state House seat—without the party infrastructure that helps major-party candidates navigate the process.
Block has hired four signature circulators and describes the sprint bluntly: "It's a do-or-die type thing. You either deliver the signatures or you're out."
History suggests attrition is coming. Of the 39 independent legislative candidates who filed in 2022, only 21 made the ballot, according to reporting by the Rhode Island Current. The Rhode Island Department of State expects to finish certifying signatures and confirming ballot placement by Friday, July 17. That’ll be the first time to see if Rhode Island might repeat its history of electing independent candidates to high office.