“It is time for patriotic women and men across our great nation to stand and plant a flag.”

Boston, MA (April 15, 2020) Today Governor Bill Weld announced his candidacy to run for President of the United States of America in the Republican Primary.

“Ours is a nation built on courage, resilience, and independence. In these times of great political strife, when both major parties are entrenched in their “win at all cost” battles, the voices of the American people are being ignored and our nation is suffering.

It is time for patriotic men and women across our great nation to stand and plant a flag. It is time to return to the principles of Lincoln – equality, dignity, and opportunity for all. There is no greater cause on earth than to preserve what truly makes America great. I am ready to lead that fight,” said Weld.

In the months ahead Bill Weld will go directly to the American people to talk about their concerns, priorities, and dreams – both for themselves and for their children. He will share his vision of an America that lifts up all people, that unlocks the potential of every student, every small business owner, and every American worker.

A Reagan Republican who was appointed US Attorney by President Ronald Reagan, Bill Weld knows that America can still be that “shining city on a hill.”

Bill Weld believes that we must preserve the democratic institutions of our Republic: the rule of law, a free and open press, and America’s global leadership in maintaining a freer, safer world.

He believes that transparency is the cornerstone of accountability, that freedom dies in darkness, and that government must serve the people, not the politicians.

Bill Weld is uniquely qualified to serve the American people as President. He has an unblemished record of service and leadership. In addition to seven years in the Department of Justice, he served two terms as Governor in Massachusetts, where he was reelected by the largest margin in state history. He cut taxes 21 times, never raised them, balanced the budget, and oversaw six upgrades in the state’s bond rating. He signed landmark welfare reform, established public education standards, and was a trailblazer as an early proponent for LGBT civil rights.

He was ranked the most fiscally conservative Governor in the country by the Cato Institute and the Wall Street Journal.

Governor Weld was born in Smithtown, NY. He is a graduate of Harvard College summa cum laude, studied international economics at University College, Oxford, and received his law degree from Harvard Law School cum laude. Bill is an active member of the Council on Foreign Relations and of the InterAction Council, an organization of former heads of state who meet around the world and issue annual reports on international issues of transcendent importance such as nuclear proliferation, religious sectarianism, and food and water. Bill served by Presidential appointment on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council.

He and his wife, Leslie, live in Canton, MA. Between them, they have eight children and eight grandchildren.

Running in a primary election against a sitting President is, generally speaking, a futile effort. To come up with a plausible primary challenge, you’ve got to think back pretty far, maybe to 1980, when Edward Kennedy challenged President Jimmy Carter for the Democratic nomination—and even then Kennedy failed. But just about everything in the Presidency of Donald Trump has been unprecedented, so we shouldn’t be very surprised to see something unusual in the 2020 campaign. And it looks like Bill Weld is going to run against Donald Trump to become the Republican nominee.

There aren’t many Republicans like Bill Weld in national politics these days. Weld is a lawyer and a former Justice Department official, and he served as governor of Massachusetts for much of the nineteen-nineties. In 2016, he ran as Vice-President on the Libertarian Party ticket. He’s a New England moderate—that is, fiscally conservative and socially liberal. But Weld is not at all moderate in his views on Donald Trump.

Read article

Listen to interview

Donald Trump boasts an approval rating among Republican voters of close to ninety per cent. But the former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld recently announced an exploratory committee to challenge Trump in the primary. It looks like a political suicide mission, but Weld sees a pathway to victory that runs through his neighboring state of New Hampshire, to other blue-leaning states where Republican voters might be open to a different candidate for the nomination. Weld is a type of Republican rarely seen at the national level these days—a New England moderate—and he’s called Trump’s Presidency a “train wreck.” He says that some “billionaires” will back his long-shot bid, and he’s betting that the damage from investigations may end Trump’s charmed political life. Weld criticizes the white-supremacist dog whistles used in Trump’s 2016 campaign, and he calls Republicans in Washington victims of Stockholm syndrome—identifying with the man who captured their party.