Patrick Lynch

On July 15, 2010, Lynch announced his exit from the Governors race, and endorsed fellow Democrat Frank Caprio. In his statement, Lynch said: “I did not enter public service to become a footnote in history by injuring my party, resulting in the election of a governor who is not equipped to guide our wonderful State into the future it deserves.”

On May 22, 2009, Lynch announced his candidacy for Governor of Rhode Island in the 2010 gubernatorial election.

On August 6, 2009, Lynch was warned by the State Board of Elections that he needed to more carefully disclose his campaign spending. At issue was some $9,000 in petty cash transactions that were not properly documented. The State Board of Elections did not fine Lynch whose campaign filed corrected paperwork amidst being confronted with the issue. The complaint was filed by the Rhode Island Republican Party.

Lynch was the second of the only two superdelegates in Rhode Island to publicly endorse Barack Obama in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary on February 9, 2008. The first being Congressman Patrick J. Kennedy on January 28, 2008. Ultimately, Barack Obama lost the Rhode Island Democratic primary on March 4, 2008 to Hillary Clinton.

DuPont Co. settled out of court in June 2005, agreeing to pay $12 million to the Children’s Health Forum. The agency agreed to use the money for lead paint abatement efforts and education campaigns. Lynch has since been criticized for accepting $4,250 in contributions from DuPont lawyers and lobbyists, and his opponent in the 2006 elections filed a complaint with the Rhode Island Ethics Commission. Lynch has denied that the donations were related to the lawsuit, and a lawyer for DuPont who accounted (with his wife) for $2,500 of the donations called the complaint “rubbish.”

Lynch has hung a plaque in his office with a quote from Spider-Man, “With great power comes great responsibility.” Lynch said he got the inspiration for the plaque from his son, who said it before his inauguration in 2003.

One of Lynch’s first responsibilities as attorney general was to oversee the criminal investigation of the February 20, 2003, Station nightclub fire in West Warwick. With 100 deaths and many more injuries, the fire was the fourth-deadliest nightclub fire in U.S. history and the second-deadliest fire ever in Rhode Island, trailing only the USS Bennington fire that claimed 103 lives in the 1950s. The criminal investigation led to the sentencing of Daniel Biechele, the tour manager of the band whose pyrotechnics started the fire, and also resulted in no-contest pleas by the two co-owners of the nightclub.

Lynch formally announced his candidacy in March 2002 after incumbent Sheldon Whitehouse announced he would run for governor. Lynch was a well connected member of the Democratic Party – his father was a former Mayor of Pawtucket, Rhode Island and his brother was serving as Chairman of the R.I. Democratic Party. Lynch faced J. William Harsch, a former director of the R.I. Department of Environmental Management, who ran as an independent but had the endorsement of the state Republican Party. Lynch won the election with 62 percent of the vote.

After returning to the United States, Lynch earned a J.D. from Suffolk University Law School in 1992. He then worked for two years as a clerk for Presiding Superior Court Joseph Rodgers, Jr., and then joined the R.I. attorney general’s office in 1994. Lynch was eventually named lead prosecutor of the state’s Organized Crime Unit. In 1999, Lynch joined Rhode Island law firm Tillinghast Licht Perkins Smith & Cohen, where he worked until being elected attorney general.

He graduated from Brown University with a B.S. in Economics and Political Science in 1987 and took graduate courses at Queen’s University of Belfast while playing professional basketball in Northern Ireland and taking part in a program called Sports Corps, modeled after the Peace Corps.

Patrick C. Lynch (born February 4, 1965, Providence, Rhode Island) is an American lawyer who served as Rhode Island’s Attorney General. He has overseen the investigation and prosecution of the second-deadliest fire in Rhode Island history and also successfully sued former lead paint manufacturers for cleanup costs associated with their old products. He easily won reelection in 2006.