Rhode Island's "Independent Man"

All over the state you see signs that say, not “Re-elect Chafee,” but “Keep Chafee,” in the way you’d advocate keeping a comfortable armchair, a broken-in pair of shoes, or a beloved pet. It’s a good strategy. Rhode Islanders like things that are familiar, with a history, that been around for a while.

Any other year, this election would be a walk in the park for the liberal Republican (really, can you think of a more appropriate first name for a liberal Republican than ‘Lincoln?’)

Everybody in Rhode Island likes Lincoln Chafee. What’s not to like? He’s a mild-mannered smiling friendly senator, the scion of a popular political family, a proven “brand name” in the smallest state in the nation, where everyone knows everyone else.
Despite his widespread popularity, he’s trailing in the polls 41-45%, running behind Democratic challenger Sheldon Whitehouse a month before the election. And that is clearly because so many Rhode Islanders right now hate George Bush more than they like Linc Chafee.

All over the state you see signs that say, not “Re-elect Chafee,” but “Keep Chafee,” in the way you’d advocate keeping a comfortable armchair, a broken-in pair of shoes, or a beloved pet. It’s a good strategy. Rhode Islanders like things that are familiar, with a history, that been around for a while.

Any other year, this election would be a walk in the park for the liberal Republican (really, can you think of a more appropriate first name for a liberal Republican than ‘Lincoln?’)

But not this year.

Sheldon Whitehouse knows that, and so his campaign isn’t working very hard to convince voters of his credentials or personal superiority over Chafee. (Perhaps a wise decision considering the fact that the two men have remarkably similar blueblood backgrounds – their fathers, one a future senator and the other a future ambassador, roomed together at Yale.)

All Whitehouse seems to be doing is reminding the electorate of the scarlet “R” next to Chafee’s name, the fact that the Democrats have a real shot at a majority in the Senate, and how badly that would hurt the potentially dethroned Republicans and by extension, President Bush and Karl Rove – he almost never mentions Bush without invoking Rove in the same breath.

His campaign slogan takes fully advantage of this situation, harnessing his unique surname for the purpose.

Over and over again his television commercials declare, “Finally, a Whitehouse in Washington you can trust.”

These ads are interspersed with Whitehouse stating, “We need to bring our troops home from Iraq, plain and simple.”

In Rhode Island, Bush’s approval record has plummeted to record lows – having plunged as far as 22 percent – it’s working, even against a nice guy like Chafee.

Over a latte at the Starbucks in the Biltmore Hotel, M. Charles Bakst, veteran political columnist for the Providence Journal, who has been on the scene decades longer than either candidate, tells me that the national media, “are too quick to stereotype Rhode Island as a Democratic state. In fact, the Republicans have had a number of successes here, especially Republicans named Chafee.”

He rattles off John Chafee’s legacy – elected governor of the state in 1962, 64, and 66 and senator in 76, 82, 88, 94. The only election he lost was in 1972, another year when national politics made it hard to be a Republican. Everyone liked him: when he died in 1999, then-President Clinton said “John Chafee proved that politics can be an honorable profession,” and that he had embodied the “decent center.”

The pro-choice, pro-environment, pro-free trade Chafee appeal is so widespread, such a Rhode Island “brand name,” as Bakst puts it, that, Chafee essentially owes his Republican nomination to helpful Democrats.

Under Rhode Island law, registered Republicans or Democrats can swap parties as late as 90 days before the primary. This year, a massive effort took place to convince a critical mass of registered Democrats to switch their party affiliation to Republican, in time to cast a primary vote for Chafee and ensure his victory in the primary over a “real” Republican, the more conservative Stephen Laffey.

In Democrat-heavy RI, that made the difference in Chafee’s squeaker of a primary.

When he looks at the polls, the number that strikes a pundit like Bakst is the 14 % of undecided voters, a surprisingly high number this late in the game.

He clearly not only likes Chafee, but he feels rather sorry for him. We meet as the Foley scandal is rocking the Republican Party, a day in which he wrote in his column of Chafee, “How much more can he be expected to overcome?”

A day earlier, Sen. John McCain flew into town to give the Chafee campaign a boost, probably the only nationally prominent Republican figure who couldn’t cause Chafee significant harm. None of them can really help him.

Independence is the key theme in Chafee’s campaign, appropriate in a state where a statue atop of the State House is hailed as ‘The Independent Man.”

The subtext, of course, is his independence from the Republican Party. His frequently-running counterpoint to Whitehouse’s “Dump Bush, get out of Iraq” message, has him pointing out his “independence,” telling voters that since the right thinks he’s too liberal and the left thinks he too conservative, “that puts me right in the center – with you.”

It’s that moderation, though, that gets him into trouble, which sometimes crosses the line into indecisiveness, which, when contrasted with Whitehouse’s clear partisan statements, looks like wimpiness. Chafee’s Hamlet-like wavering has gotten him into trouble before, most prominently when he debated whether or not to support Alito’s nomination to the Supreme Court (he didn’t) and most recently stalling the nomination of John Bolton as UN ambassador. When, at the McCain event, he had the opportunity to grab headlines by making a bold statement regarding Foley, taking on the Republican leadership to demonstrate how non-partisan he is, he chose to lay low — the best he could do is call for “credible fact-finders.”

Ultimately, it seems Chafee is in the unenviable position of knowing that there is little that he can do personally to guarantee his Senate seat.

No matter how much they like him if most Rhode Islanders truly believe on election day that they can make the difference in sticking it to George Bush and the Republican leadership, they will vote for Whitehouse. Such a Democratic victory won’t be an upset, says Bakst, but it will definitely be a “dislocation” for voters to reject a family that is such a local institution.

He’s certain that “If Chafee loses, most people are going to go around and say ‘Oh, that’s too bad.’ ”

Even the ones who voted against him.