The Weakest Linc
Currie, Duncan
The Weakest Line Why are the Republicans going out of their way to keep a liberal in the Senate? by DUNCAN CURRIE LINCOLN CHAFEE, easily the Senate's most liberal Republican, didn't vote for...
...As long as they're qualified, they should be approved," he says...
...Just last week, he was the only Republican to vote against Samuel Alito's confirmation to the Supreme Court...
...Lincoln Chafee is often "the only Republican," or one of very few...
...Chafee's pickle over Alito captures the broader bind he finds himself in: The positions that will help him in the general election—such as rejecting Bush's judicial nominees—will hurt him in the more conservative GOP primary...
...Before that, Laffey must win the primary, despite a pro-Chafee blitzkrieg by the national GOP establishment...
...Citing Center for Responsive Politics research, the NRSC also notes that, while living in Tennessee, Laffey donated money to Rep...
...After he fired the crossing guards and sought to privatize their jobs, the union took him to court...
...Instead, he lodged a "symbolic protest" by casting a write-in ballot for former president George H.W...
...Reagan had the air-traffic controllers," Laffey brags, "I have the crossing guards...
...Chafee also backed the president on CAFTA and bankruptcy reform...
...He's now "trying to sell a bill of goods" by posing as a Reagan Republican...
...These ads question Laffey's conservative credentials, even though, by almost any measure, the mayor stands well to Chafee's right...
...Laffey would just get swamped...
...Laffey is a boat-rocker, Chafee a boat-steadier...
...He went on to defy the public-sector unions...
...Talk about an odd couple...
...Laffey wears this as a badge of honor, and points out that he won reelection in 2004 by a landslide...
...Laffey has increased spending and raised taxes every year he's been in office," argues Ronayne...
...by DUNCAN CURRIE LINCOLN CHAFEE, easily the Senate's most liberal Republican, didn't vote for George W. Bush in 2004...
...Bush...
...Jesse Jackson Jr...
...Laffey won...
...Chafee's "nay" on Alito piqued his conservative detractors...
...In October, Chafee compared his relationship with the White House to "a mutual nonaggression pact...
...While Laffey claims the support of "Reagan Democrats," Chafee is a throwback to the Rockefeller Republicans against whom Reagan rebelled...
...Rhode Island was the most pro-Gore state in 2000, giving him 61 percent of the vote, and second only to Massachusetts in its support for Kerry in 2004, at 59 percent of the vote...
...That statement is as preposterous as it is telling...
...As Hourahan put it, "If we lose that seat, it'll be gone forever...
...Whoever wins the primary will face a strong Democrat in the general—probably either secretary of state Matt Brown or former attorney general Sheldon White-house...
...Republicans and Democrats alike seem to agree that Chafee is the only Republican who can keep the seat...
...Small wonder he's now persona non grata with organized labor...
...Chafee Is A Rubber Stamp For National Republicans," blared a recent DSCC press release...
...Laffey is blustery, Chafee soft-spoken...
...Laffey, who identifies himself as pro-life, blasts Chafee's "litmus test" approach to judicial nominees...
...He is the son of the late governor-turned-senator John Chafee, and, to boot, he married into the Danforth family fortune...
...Nevertheless, in his bid for reelection this year, Chafee has so far enjoyed the robust support of the White House, the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the Rhode Island state GOP, and leading Senate conservatives— despite the presence on the primary ballot of a right-of-center alternative, Cranston mayor Stephen Laffey...
...If I need their help occasionally, I'm going to have to help them...
...Chafee's 'aye' vote for an equally conservative Chief Justice whose name ends in a consonant...
...Unions still exercise prodigious sway in Rhode Island in the general election...
...Chafee's challenger himself concurs...
...Laffey raised taxes and restored the city's bond rating to investment grade status "in less than two years...
...You tend to be supportive as you come into the [election] cycle," he told the AP in December 2004...
...We think Chafee is the only Republican who can keep the seat...
...He was the only Senate Republican to vote against the Iraq war resolution, and one of three to oppose a ban on partial-birth abortion...
...The primary is in September, which leaves plenty of time for Ocean State Republicans to either forget, or stew about, the Ali-to spat—and to compare Chafee with his plucky opponent...
...So Chafee must walk a fine line this year vis-à-vis Bush and the Republicans...
...And according to Dan Ronayne, the NRSC has already spent upwards of $200,000 on anti-Laffey TV ads in Rhode Island...
...Given the pervasive skepticism about Laffey's chances in a general election, his confidence can be disarming...
...Chafee's press secretary, Stephen Hourahan, points out that, until the Alito vote, his boss had consistently supported Bush's judicial nominees, even fiery conservatives such as Janice Rogers Brown...
...cipal tax cuts, in May 2001 and May 2003 (the other was John McCain...
...He returned to his hometown at the peak of his business earning potential and won the mayor's race in a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans three to one...
...But where Laffey is a former Wall Street whiz and self-made millionaire who never tires of discussing his upby-the-bootstraps life story, Chafee comes from one of the "Five Families" that used to dominate Rhode Island politics...
...As the mayor tells it, the 39 crossing guards in town were earning the equivalent of $129 an hour with health insurance, while typically working one hour a day...
...The arrangement, buried deep in the police budget, "summed up . . . what had gone wrong in Rhode Island," a state known for powerful unions and for corruption...
...He touts his rise from hard-scrabble Cranston to Harvard Business School to Paine Webber to the presidency of a $500-million brokerage firm in Memphis...
...The only thing Laffey and Chafee have in common is bulging bank accounts...
...Laffey then talks up his record of "taking on special interests and winning...
...and to the Democratic opponents of Senator Frist and former GOP senator Fred Thompson...
...But, at root, what explains the NRSC's opposition to Laffey is Chafee's perceived electability in one of the bluest of states...
...Cranston, Rhode Island's third-largest city, had the worst bond rating in the country when he took office...
...It has targeted Chafee as vulnerable...
...But I'm not going to sacrifice my principles either...
...From there the contrasts only multiply...
...Senate majority whip Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, a leading conservative, has appeared at a Chafee fundraiser, as have White House chief of staff Andrew Card and commerce secretary Carlos Gutierrez, while Majority Leader Bill Frist's PAC has pumped gobs of money in Chafee's war chest...
...Chafee's beef with the younger Bush...
...The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee thinks otherwise...
...Says Ronayne, "Chafee would be a heavy favorite" against either Brown or Whitehouse...
...For Republicans, it comes down to the fear that Laffey will win the primary but lose in November...
...The more I think about it, the more important it seems to me that Steve Laffey beat him," wrote National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru...
...Laffey is a populist, Chafee a patrician...
...The Wall Street Journal played up the ethnic angle, noting that "Rhode Island has a higher proportion of Italian-Americans than any other state, and a vote against Judge Alito may not go over well, especially coming on the heels of Mr...
...Iraq ("a very, very costly quagmire"), tax cuts, the environment, gay marriage, abortion, the deficit—Rhode Island's junior senator opposed the president's "far-right-wing" policies on all of them...
...Still, his antiunion image may dog his hopes of reaching the Senate...
...Laffey is garrulous, Chafee reserved...
...My phone's been ringing off the hook," Laffey told me last Wednesday, with calls "from Italian Americans" angry over Chafee's vote against Alito...
...In a statement explaining his vote, Chafee wrote, "I am a pro-choice, pro-environment, pro-Bill of Rights Republican" and thus could not vote for Bush's appointee...
...He was one of two Senate Republicans to vote against both of President Bush's prinDuncan Currie is a reporter at THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...Explains NRSC spokesman Dan Ron-ayne, "You're talking about probably the second most liberal state in the country...
Vol. 11 • February 2006 • No. 21
