Around New England

Former MA Gov. Bill Weld To Challenge Trump For GOP 2020 Presidential Nomination

February 15, 2019

Former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld announced today in New Hampshire that he is starting an exploratory committee “to challenge” President Donald Trump in next year’s primaries for the 2020 GOP presidential nomination.

Weld, who served in MA from 1990 to 1997 as a Republican, ran as the vice presidential candidate on the Libertarian Party ticket in 2016 with Gary Johnson. 

According to the Boston Herald, Weld made his announcement Friday morning at the “Politics & Eggs” breakfast in Bedford, NH. The Herald said that he believes President Trump is “is simply too unstable to carry out the duties” of the presidency. The Herald adds that Weld said President Trump pursues courses that work toward the “promotion of himself rather than toward the good of our country.”

The Herald also reports that Weld stated “many Republicans [who support Trump] exhibit all the symptoms of Stockholm Syndrome, of identifying with their captor.” Weld also claimed “we have wasted an enormous amount of time by humoring this president, indulging him in his narcissism and his compulsive, irrational behaviors,” the Herald writes. 

After leaving the Massachusetts governor’s office in 1997, Weld moved to New York where he sought that state’s governor’s office in 2006. The NY State GOP endorsed John Faso, a former US Congressman, instead. Faso went on to lose his gubernatorial bid to Democrat Eliot Spitzer, who would later resign in disgrace in 2008 after he was alleged to have fraternized with prostitutes.

Despite having endorsed Libertarian candidates in the 2018 election cycle, Weld changed his party affiliation to Republican in January 2019.