WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — Two news organizations are hosting a presidential candidate forum with Republican Bill Weld at 3 p.m. Saturday, May 11, in White River Junction.
The free public event, sponsored by VTDigger and the Valley News, will be held at the Hartford High School gym, 37 Highland Ave.
A traditional fiscal conservative, Weld, 74, is the only Republican candidate so far to challenge President Donald Trump in the 2020 primary. In extensive interview with David Remnick of The New Yorker, Weld explains that it is incumbent on him, as a party moderate, to challenge Trump.
When he was elected governor of Massachusetts in 1990, Weld was the first Republican to hold the seat in 20 years. Weld won with 50 percent of the vote and was re-elected in 1994 with 71 percent of the vote.
The Wall Street Journal and the Cato Institute ranked Weld as the most fiscally conservative governor in the country. He served as national co-chair of the U.S. Privatization Council and of U.S. Term Limits.
Prior to his tenure as governor, Weld served seven years in President Ronald Reagan’s Justice Department, as assistant U.S. Attorney General in charge of the Criminal Division in Washington, D.C., and as the U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts, where he won 109 convictions in 111 prosecutions of public corruption. Earlier he was a staff member in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he participated in the Watergate impeachment case, and the U.S. Senate.
As governor, Weld led 16 official trade missions to Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe. He is an active member of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, and served for five years as a member of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, by appointment of President George W. Bush.
Weld has traveled extensively throughout Asia, Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, and North and South America. He serves as an associate member of the InterAction Council, an elected group of former heads of state from throughout the world, which convenes periodically to consider and report on issues of paramount global concern, such as nuclear proliferation, religious sectarianism, natural resources, energy, food and water.