The Return of Lincoln Chafee: Rhode Island Politics For Dummies

Surprisingly, the Rhode Island Senate race could get interesting this year.  Former Senator and Governor Lincoln Chafee has announced that he will “very likely” challenge incumbent Senator Sheldon Whitehouse in the Democratic Primary as he seeks a third term this fall. 

 

Chafee began his career as a Republican, serving as mayor of Warwick, Rhode Island’s second most populous city.  Chafee’s tenure in the Senate began in 1999, following the death of his father, John Chafee.  Chafee voted against confirming Sam Alito to the Supreme Court, the only Senate Republican to do so.  Whitehouse unseated Chafee in 2006, pulling off a narrow victory by racking up a huge margin in Providence.  Had Chafee won, he almost certainly would have pulled a Jim Jeffords and switched his party affiliation to Independent; which would have altered the balance of power in the Senate.  Republicans lost a total of six seats in the 2006 midterm elections, bringing their total down from 55 to 49.  After losing the election, Chafee was asked whether he thought his loss in the election helped the country.  He replied, “to be honest, yes.”  Had Chafee managed to win re-election, the balance of power would have stood at 50-50, with Vice President Dick Cheney casting the tie-breaking vote in favor of the Republicans.  

 

Ann Coulter summed up Chafee’s political positions nicely: “Chafee opposes Bush on taxes, Iraq, abortion and gay marriage.  This man is literally too stupid to know he’s a Democrat…In the last election, Chafee famously refused to vote for Bush, instead writing in Bush’s father.”

 

Shortly after returning to life as a private citizen, Chafee announced his decision to leave the Republican Party.   In 2010, Chafee decided to run for Governor as an Independent.  The 2010 race ended up as a four-way contest between Republican John Robataille, Democrat Frank Caprio, and Moderate Party Candidate Ken Block.  The Moderate Party basically serves as the Rhode Island version of the Libertarian Party. 

 

Although it had routinely found itself as one of the top five most Democratic states in Presidential elections, Rhode Island had not elected a Democratic governor since 1992.  For this reason, many believed that either Caprio or Chafee would emerge victorious.  President Obama ended up supporting Chafee over Caprio.  Caprio, the son of a judge who processes traffic violations on “Caught in Providence,” did not appreciate Obama’s snub, famously saying “He can take his endorsement and really shove it as far as I’m concerned.”

 

Chafee ended up winning the 2010 gubernatorial election with a whopping 36 percent of the vote, only narrowly beating Robataille, who took 34 percent.  Caprio came in a distant third with 22 percent and Block taking 6 percent.  

 

While Chafee called himself an Independent, he governed as an SJW Democrat, insisting on calling the State House Christmas tree a “holiday tree” and signing same-sex marriage into law.  After serving on President Obama’s re-election campaign, Chafee finally announced his intention to join the Democratic Party in 2013 as wondered whether he would run for re-election as a Democrat or Independent.  It turns out that he would not run for re-election at all.  Early polling showed him losing to prospective primary challengers in the Democratic Party and Republican challengers in a general election.

 

With Chafee out of the picture, candidates vying for the Democratic nomination included Providence Mayor Angel Taveras, State Treasurer Gina Raimondo, and Clay Pell, a member of another one of Rhode Island’s political dynasties.  Chafee, along with the powerful education lobby, endorsed Pell, whose grandfather, a Democrat, served with Chafee’s father, a Republican, in the Senate for two decades.  Pell’s late grandfather is the namesake for the bridge connecting Jamestown and Newport and the grants given to many college students across the country.  Showing how much influence Chafee has within the Rhode Island Democratic Party, Pell came in third in the Democratic Primary, losing to Raimondo.  Cranston Mayor Allan Fung won the Republican Primary against 2010 moderate nominee Ken Block, while perennial candidate Robert Healey ran as the Moderate Party’s candidate.      

 

Raimondo ended up winning the 2014 Gubernatorial election with around 40 percent of the vote, with Fung coming in second at 36 percent, and Healey capturing more than 20 percent of the vote.  So, Rhode Island still has not given a Democratic gubernatorial candidate a majority of the popular vote in a quarter century.  

 

I remember when my dad told me that a new Democrat had decided to enter the 2016 Presidential race, where everyone incorrectly predicted that Hillary Clinton would soar to the Democratic nomination the same way that Al Gore did in 2000.  He only gave me one clue: this individual began his political career as a Republican, then switched his affiliation to Independent, and later became a Democrat.  I said “Charlie Crist,” who served as the Republican Governor of Florida before opting out of a second term in order to run for the Senate.  After losing to Marco Rubio in the Republican primary, Crist decided to run for the Senate as an Independent.  Crist tried to run for governor again in 2014 as a Democrat, narrowly losing to incumbent Republican Rick Scott.  For the record, future President Donald Trump had not announced his Presidential run at this time. 

 

To my surprise, my dad was talking about Lincoln Chafee. Not long after my dad and I had this conversation, Chafee appeared on “The O’Reilly Factor.”  When asked by O’Reilly what problems he had with frontrunner Hillary Clinton, Chafee brought up her judgment, specifically referring to her decision to support the Iraq War as well as the controversies surrounding the Clinton Foundation.  Chafee’s 2016 campaign did not last long, he withdrew from the race shortly after the first Democratic debate. 

 

Many thought Chafee would emerge to challenge Raimondo in the 2018 gubernatorial election, running to her left in the Democratic Primary.  Chafee took specific issue with her support for a proposed power plant in Burrillville.  Sandwiched between the most popular and least governors in the United States, Raimondo has lukewarm approval ratings.  Massachusetts’ Republican Governor Charlie Baker enjoys a sky-high approval rating of 71 percent while Connecticut’s Democratic Governor Dan Malloy boasts an abysmal 21 percent approval rating.  Not surprisingly, Malloy has decided to forego running for re-election for a third term.    

 

Rhode Island’s Democratic Party has a bit of a schism.  Believe it or not, all of the “no” votes for the bill legalizing same-sex marriage in the Rhode Island State Senate came from Democrats, not Republicans.  Many socially conservative Democrats still serve in the Rhode Island General Assembly, much to the chagrin of progressive Democrats who want to legalize marijuana, make college tuition free, repeal voter ID laws, and establish single-payer healthcare. 

 

For her part, Raimondo has tried to placate the left wing of her party by stepping on board with free college tuition.  She initially proposed making all recent high school graduates eligible for two years of free tuition at any of the state’s three public universities but the bill she ended up signing only provides two years of free tuition at the Community College of Rhode Island to students who maintain a 2.5 GPA and promise to stay in Rhode Island for two years after graduating, while the other two public institutions still require students to pay tuition for all four years.      

 

Those who thought Chafee would re-enter politics in 2018 had the right idea, they just had the wrong race.  Just because Chafee decided to opt out of running against Raimondo in the Democratic Primary does not mean she will sail to renomination.  Former Secretary of State Matt Brown recently announced his plans to challenge Raimondo after flirting with running as an independent.      

 

So now Chafee wants to go back to Washington.  Chafee has specifically taken issue with Whitehouse’s support for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Democratic Primaries, despite the fact that most Rhode Islanders who voted in the Democratic Primary supported Bernie Sanders.  Chafee’s also mentioned the fact that a recent poll by Roger Williams University showed that only 46 percent of voters said that Whitehouse is doing a “good or excellent job,” 22 percent rated his job performance as “fair”, while 27 percent described his job performance as “poor.” I’m not quite sure how these numbers indicate vulnerability, especially since Chafee himself admitted that “the primary is really the election in Rhode Island.  I learned the hard way losing in 2006 what anchor the ‘R’ was next to my name.”   

 

If Chafee decides to enter the race, I won’t really care who wins the Democratic Party as neither candidate will work to Make America Great Again by funding the border wall, defunding Planned Parenthood, and balancing the budget.  Assuming I still live in Rhode Island on Election Day, I will vote for the Republican Senate candidate even though my vote probably matters very little. 

 

As interesting as Chafee entering the Senate race might seem, it looks like the gubernatorial election will serve as the only competitive statewide or Federal race this year.  Currently, it looks like the 2018 gubernatorial contest may end up as a rematch between Raimondo and Fung.  As always, it looks like one or more third-party candidates will have an impact on the final vote tally. Trump loyalist Joseph Trillo has announced his decision to run as an Independent, referring to both of his prospective opponents as “pansies.”

 

Rhode Islanders in both parties will select which candidates they want to advance to the general election in the statewide primary, which will take place on Tuesday, September 11.  For more information on the dates of primaries in other states, check out the political calendar I have created.