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Chafee quietly quits the GOP 01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, September 16, 2007 By Bruce Landis Journal Staff Writer PROVIDENCE — Lincoln D. Chafee, who lost his Senate seat in the wave of anti-Republican sentiment in last November’s election, said yesterday that he has left the party. Chafee said he disaffiliated with the party he had helped lead, and his father had led before him, because the national Republican Party has gone too far away from his stance on too many critical issues, from war to economics to the environment. “It’s not my party any more,” he said. Chafee’s departure...

Former Sen. Lincoln Chafee said he has left the Republican Party because the national GOP has drifted too far from him on critical issues, including the war in Iraq, the economy and the environment. "It's not my party anymore," Chafee, who represented Rhode Island from 1999 until 2007, told The Providence Journal in an article published Saturday. Chafee said he is now an unaffiliated voter after leaving the GOP "in June or July." He said he made the move because "I want my affiliation to accurately reflect my status." Chafee was appointed in 1999 after his father, Sen. John Chafee,...

Chafee no longer a Republican Former Repubican Sen. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, who lost his seat in last year’s Democratic congressional wave, announced that he has left the Republican Party, according to the Providence Journal. “It’s not my party any more,” he said. In his seven-year tenure in the Senate, Chafee frequently split from his party on key legislation. He opposed the war in Iraq, voted with Democrats on estate tax and HMO regulation legislation and refused to support the confirmation of U.N. Ambassador John Bolton. In the past, Chafee had insisted that he would remain in the Republican...

I learned today Former Republican United States Rhode Island Senator Lincoln D.Chafee changed his affiliation to Unaffiliated as a voter in Exeter*, where he is now registered, the change I recall took place on July 10TH. His wife, Stephanie is registered in Providence as a Republican*. The Senator is a former Exeter resident and Warwick Mayor and City Councilman. What is amazing is the media has NOT picked this up yet and it happened several weeks ago! Ironically former Cranston Mayor Steve Laffey still maintains his GOP interest and was at the South County Republican Breakfast were I learned this...

Rhode Island is my second home, and since I was born and raised there, I follow the politics and happenings in the state. The name, Chafee, is a revered one there, as the Senator’s father served honorably and well in the military during World War II and as governor and senator from that state. “Lincoln Chafee's family tree includes Sen. Henry Lippitt, who served from 1911 to 1917, and Harvard University's notable legal scholar, the late Zechariah Chaffee. (The family uses several spellings of the Chafee name). His father, John, served three terms as Rhode Island governor and more than...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. - Two days after losing a bid for a second term, Sen. Lincoln Chafee (news, bio, voting record) said he was unsure whether he would remain a Republican. Chafee lost to Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse in a race seen as a referendum on President Bush and the GOP. On Thursday, he was asked whether he would stick with the Republican Party or become an independent or Democrat. "I haven't made any decisions. I just haven't even thought about where my place is," Chafee said at a news conference. When pressed on whether his comments indicated he might leave the...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. --Two days after losing a bid for a second term in an election seen as a referendum on President Bush and the Republican Party, Sen. Lincoln Chafee said he was unsure whether he'd remain a Republican. "I haven't made any decisions. I just haven't even thought about where my place is," Chafee said at a news conference when asked whether he would stick with the Republican Party or switch to be an independent or Democrat. When asked if his comments meant he thought he might not belong in the Republican Party, he replied: "That's fair." Chafee, 53, is...

By The Associated Press, By The Associated Press | November 6, 2006 THE RACE: U.S. Senate, Rhode Island THE NUMBERS: Sheldon Whitehouse (D): 48 percent Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R): 45 percent USA TODAY/Gallup Poll, 880 registered voters interviewed by phone from Nov. 1-3, sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points. OF INTEREST: Recent polls indicate Chafee tightening the race. The same poll a month ago showed Whitehouse leading Chafee by 11 points, 50-39 percent. A poll out Sunday by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research poll for McClatchy Newspapers-MSNBC showed Chafee leading 46-45, with a margin of error of plus...

Three-time Democratic gubernatorial candidate Myrth York has endorsed Republican incumbent Senator Lincoln Chafee's bid for reelection. Declaring that she places greater value on the character of the candidate than on party, she says Chafee most closely represents her values on issues ranging from opposition to the war in Iraq to the environment to personal freedoms.

If Sen. Lincoln Chafee wins re-election in Rhode Island on Tuesday - and a new McClatchy Newspapers-MSNBC poll indicates he might - it will be because he is one of the most rebellious Republicans in Congress. Although Chafee had been trailing Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse in previous polls, the latest McClatchy poll showed him with 46 percent support, compared to 45 percent for Whitehouse. About 9 percent of voters remained undecided. While Chafee's slim lead was within the poll's margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points, it was the first indication in weeks that he might survive the...

Lincoln Chafee, the only Republican U.S. senator to vote against the Iraq war, often breaks ranks with his party to survive in one of the nation's most liberal states. But in two weeks Rhode Island may break ranks with Chafee, ousting one of the most moderate voices in the Republican Party and handing the Democrats one of six key seats needed to seize control of the Senate... Trailing by four to 11 points in recent polls, Chafee is stressing his unique brand of Republicanism - from championing environmental issues to fighting Bush's tax cuts, pressing for direct talks with Iran,...

Is Chafee on the brink? Steve Laffey's campaign aides will be stunned if they lose. Campaign sources say they hit all their target numbers in every targeted precinct etc, assuming a turnout of 50 to 55k voters. These are just targeting predictors, not vote counts, so anything can happen, but everything has gone as planned for their turnout operation. The Secretary of State reports that precincts across the state ran out of the more than 20K Unaffiliation forms they distributed. That suggests a least three possibilities: 1. Independents and Democrats voted for Chafee and then re-established their independent credentials 2....

How did our country stray so far from the founding principles of limited government, states' rights, self-reliance and moral integrity? Most Americans blame it on Congress. Americans have little faith in members of Congress, but we keep re-electing our own congressman and senators, often with little or no serious thought on the matter. In 1994, after 40 years in the political wilderness, Republicans assumed control of Congress with the promise that they would get back to those founding principles. A few tried. Fewer are still trying, but we are torpedoing their efforts. Even if we are alert enough to know...

September 13, 2006 How Chafee Won Late last Thursday, Sen. Elizabeth Dole hurried up to Sen. Lincoln Chafee on the floor of the Senate and put her foot down. You might lose this race, she told him, if you don’t put your best ads back up. Chafee, gun-shy about the negative ads he knew Dole was referring to, relented, as he’s done innumerable times in the year and a half since it became clear that he’d face a primary challenge. The next night, Rhode Island television viewers were once again treated to the sounds of Cranston Mayor Steve Laffey joking...

Moderate Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, his political career at risk from a more conservative challenger, led in early returns Tuesday in a contest that could be crucial in the larger fight for control of Congress. With 3 percent of precincts reporting, Chafee had 2,735 votes, or 55 percent, to Cranston Mayor Steve Laffey's 2,241 votes, or 45 percent. The last big day of primaries before the November elections also brought intriguing Democratic contests for Senate in Maryland and a House seat in Minnesota. In all, nine states and the District of Columbia voted, with the other states...

LINCOLN CHAPSTICK TO BLOCK BOLTON. JOHN BOLTON IS JUST WHAT WE NEED AT THE AMERICAN KILLING UN. HE SPEAKS FOR THE PRESIDENT AND THE COUNTRY. IF LINCOLN CHAFEE WANTED TO BE A DEMONCRAT HE SHOULD HAVE RUN AS ONE. NO ONE LIKES TO HIRE A MAID WHO TURNS OUT TO BE A BUTLER. CHAFEE IS DANGEROUS AND IS ONE OF 8 TURNCOATS TO VOTE TO BURN THE FLAG 40 DAYS BEFORE 911 SJR7. 40 WERE DEMONCRATS SO LET HIM RUN WITH THE PARTY OF DEATH. I WOULD RATHER VOTE FOR AN UNPREDICTABLE DEMONCRAT THEN A BABY KILLING, FLAG BURNER OF...

Chafee delays vote on Bolton nomination By ANNE PLUMMER FLAHERTY, Associated Press Writer (Published: September 7, 2006) WASHINGTON (AP) - Sen. Lincoln Chafee has pulled the plug on a push by his fellow Republicans to confirm John Bolton as U.N. ambassador, saying he had more questions that needed to be answered. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee was expected to vote along party lines during a committee meeting Thursday to approve Bolton. But the panel postponed the vote after Chafee, R-R.I., expressed doubt. "Sen. Chafee said he still had questions that were not answered," said the senator's spokesman, Stephen Hourahan. Chafee...

72 Hour Program Activated In RI.... Democrats were right in 2004: the Republicans have adopted a draft. It only applies, however, to party workers employed by state victory committees in the east of the Mississippi. For many it will be worse than boot camp. They are to be sent to Rhode Island to try to rescue Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee’s re-election campaign in the September 12th primary. Workers start arriving Friday and will be charged with sorting out the mess that Washington operatives believe is the Chafee campaign. First task may be to get Republican voters to forget Chafee’s erratic...

PROVIDENCE, R.I.--If Lincoln Chafee has one thing going for him in his upcoming primary, it's fear--and don't think this perennial thorn in the GOP's side doesn't know it. In a recent debate against his more conservative primary challenger, he made the choice clear to voters: "Who can win in November?" Rhode Island's few Republicans have been thinking of little else ever since Steve Laffey, the pork-busting mayor of Cranston, challenged the Senate's most liberal Republican to a showdown. The duel has forced upon them one of the more noteworthy choices in this year's election. Do they renominate Mr. Chafee, whose...

There is yet another reason to send Lincoln Chafee into retirement this year. In light of the recent attacks on Israel it is important to point out a little known fact about Senator Chafee. Aside from being the only Republican to oppose Bush's reelection, the Iraq war, and the nomination of Justice Alito, Chafee also holds the distinction of being the only Republican Senator who is pro Palestinian. The Providence Journal reported several months ago that Israel has become a divisive issue between the pro Palestinian Chafee and the ardently pro Israel challenger Steve Laffey. In regard to Chaffe they...

national Republican political committee that supports Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee yesterday filed a Federal Election Commission complaint against the senator's Republican primary opponent, Stephen P. Laffey, accusing the two-term Cranston mayor of using taxpayer money to advance his Senate campaign. The National Republican Senatorial Committee, a group of Republican senators chaired by Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina, claims that a letter from Laffey sent to Cranston residents last month with their tax bills was "a promotional campaign mailing at city taxpayer expense," according to a statement from the NRSC. A campaign spokeswoman for Laffey called the complaint "ridiculous and frivolous."

Next week is a big one for Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island: He must decide whether he's going to run for re-election as a Republican or as an independent. The deadline is 4 pm on Wednesday — almost exactly a week from right now. If Chafee doesn't believe he can win the GOP primary against challenger Steven Laffey, he may decide to forgo the whole thing and create a three-way race between himself, Laffey, and presumptive Democratic nominee Sheldon Whitehouse. This would create an interesting dilemma for Elizabeth Dole and the NRSC, which has already pumped a lot of...

The latest Rasmussen Reports election poll of the race for the U.S. Senate in Rhode Island shows Senator Lincoln Chafee (R) still neck-and-neck with former Attorney General Sheldon Whitehouse (D), nominally besting him by 44% to 42%. In late April, Chafee could only boast a mere three-point edge.

The Marriage Amendment and Chafee in Rhode Island Yesterday the Senate defeated by a vote of 49-48 a motion for cloture on the Marriage Amendment that would define marriage as only between a man and a woman. That motion for cloture needed 60 votes to pass, following which the Amendment would have gone on to a debate and vote in the Senate again, where it would then need a vote count of 67 in the affirmative to send it on to the states for ratification. All of the Left and the media, and many on the right, decry the vote...

The conservative Club for Growth has released highlights of a poll that shows Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee in a statistical dead heat with his Republican primary challenger, Stephen P. Laffey. The Washington-based group, which has endorsed Laffey, said its survey of 300 very likely Republican primary voters showed that Chafee would get 45.7 of the vote if the election ``were held today'' and Laffey, the mayor of Cranston, would get 44.3 percent

Sen. Chafee's Wife Tries to Save Re-Election Campaign by Ivy J. SellersPosted Apr 21, 2006Rhode Island Sen. Lincoln Chafee's re-election odds are looking so bleak his wife Stephanie has sent a letter asking friends registered as Democrats to switch their party affiliations to Republican or Independent in order to support him in the Republican primary. Chafee, who has continually voted with Democrats on key issues, has been the subject of attack from his first days in office as he refuses to support initiatives important to his GOP constituents.

From the Steve Laffey for U.S. Senate campaign: Dear All, Please read the following--it is truly outrageous. Below you will find a letter Stephanie Chafee (Lincoln Chafee's wife) emailed to registered Democrats URGING them to disaffiliate and register as Independents or Republicans so that they can vote for Senator Chafee in the Republican primary on September 12th. Included are the attachments Mrs. Chafee sent along with her email instructing voters HOW and WHERE to disaffiliate. This is a blatant attempt by the Chafee campaign to HIJACK the Republican primary, and further proof that Senator Chafee does not represent even moderate...

EXETER, R.I. -- Lincoln Chafee was cleaning a horse stall on his well-manicured farm one recent early morning, describing his latest encounter with hostile home-state Republicans. The GOP senator had appeared the previous night before the Scituate Republican Town Committee to seek the endorsement of the small but influential group. In his halting, soft-spoken way, Chafee defended his opposition to the war in Iraq, domestic wiretapping and the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. as the principled positions of an old-school conservative. Chafee, 53, once could count on voters in Rhode Island to tolerate his maverick ways,...

...Does a woman who accepts America's money to build democracy deserve 16 years in prison? Only to a brutal dictator. But that doesn't excuse Congress, NOW and Jimmy Carter for having nothing to say. ...a politicized court is about to throw Venezuelan democracy campaigner Maria Corina Machado into prison for "treason." Her so-called crime: Accepting a $54,000 grant from U.S. Congress' National Endowment for Democracy. ...all she and three others did was inform citizens about their supposed rights under Chavez's own 1999 constitution. For Chavez, that was a crime.. his prosecutor handed the one-man judge and jury his demand for...

Describing his 1976 challenge to incumbent Republican President Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan wrote, "It was time to scale back the size of the federal government, reduce taxes and government intrusion in our lives, balance the budget, and return to the people the freedoms usurped from them by the bureaucrats." Reagan helped define the mission of the Republican Party. By re-establishing limited government as the central principle of the GOP, he laid the groundwork for the political revolution that bears his name. Almost 30 years later, the Republican Party is at a similar defining moment. Once again, challengers to certain Republican...

RUSH: Try this headline in the Boston Globe today: "GOP Embracing its Maverick." I said, "Oh, is the GOP getting friendlier with McCain?" Then the subhead says, "Tough Race Makes Chafee an Asset." You know, this Specter experience is a mistake. Why do you keep repeating history here? "Senator Lincoln Chafee hopped out of the driver's seat of his beige Toyota Prius..." I was really hooked after that line. "Senator Lincoln Chafee hopped out of the driver's seat of his beige Toyota Prius, a car with a dent on the side and 'I am electric' blazoned across the back window,...

The NRSC quickly waded into US Senator Linc Chafee's 2006 re-election race. The party organization is already running harsh TV spots in the state attacking investment banker and Cranston Mayor Steve Laffey, Chafee's conservative GOP primary opponent. The commercials try to tie Laffey to the unpopular oil industry and high gas prices, blasting Laffey for having previously run "a company selling oil industry stocks on Wall Street. Profiting from offshore oil drilling. The oil companies made a fortune. Steve Laffey made a fortune."

WARWICK -- On a dead-end street pinched between T.F. Green Airport and the Amtrak rail line, U.S. Sen. Lincoln Chafee squints into the sun as he looks over a field of overgrown grass and rusting trucks, the kind of fenced-off wasteland where mobsters might dump a body in a movie. Chafee has eyed this lot, where a chemical company once stood, since he was mayor of Warwick, and his father, the late U.S. Sen. John Chafee, squeezed the first drip of federal money to clean up the land and make plans for a new train station.

A group of Republicans statewide has organized a committee to encourage Cranston Mayor Stephen P. Laffey to challenge Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee in 2006. There are 85 names on a letter given to Laffey yesterday, including 2000 gubernatorial candidate James Bennett, Cranston state Representatives Carol Mumford and James F. Davey, East Providence Mayor Joseph Larisa and members of city and town councils, party members and business people. Former Cranston Republican City Committee Chairman Gary Vierra said that he and others -- mostly members of the Cranston GOP -- were behind the effort, which was launched two weeks ago. Vierra said...

former Rep. Toomey (R-Pa.) said he had spoken in recent weeks with Laffey about running against centrist Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.)

How often do you read a statement from a politician and think, “That speaks for me”? That seldom, huh? Anyway, I felt this way when reading an excerpt from a letter sent by Sen. Mitch McConnell to the Louisville Courier-Journal: “Why is it that whenever a Democrat speaks before a religious audience, he is ‘reaching out,’ but when a Republican does it, he is ‘divisive’? . . . I can recall many instances of Democrats visiting churches over the years, not just to speak on a policy matter but even to outright plea for votes. Either I’ve missed the angry...

The John Bolton nomination would have already gone through if not for the actions of Republican Senators Lincoln Chafee and Chuck Hagel. The Democratic Party has conducted itself in a shameful manner with regard to its scrutiny of John Bolton. This, of course, hardly comes as a surprise given the Democrats propensity for obstructing President Bush’s judicial nominees, or conduct with respect to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. These days the Democrats are more of a high school clique than a loyal opposition. However, in the case of John Bolton, Democrats would not have been able to take their shenanigans...

Democrats trying to sink the nomination of John Bolton as United Nations ambassador scored a big victory yesterday, when Sen. George Voinovich, an Ohio Republican who sits on the Foreign Relations Committee, declared himself unready to back the nominee. The Dems' efforts to beat Bolton on ideological grounds--that he's too pro-American and has "disdain" for the U.N.--having failed, they turned to that old standby, the politics of personal destruction. Voinovich's concern for the Golden Rule is certainly touching, but does it apply to air traffic controllers? What prompts the question is an incident that occurred in 1995, when he was...

After announcing several months ago that he intended to challenge pro-abortion Rhode Island Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee, Rep. Jim Langevin, a pro-life Democrat, decided last month against making the run - despite the fact that he was a favorite to win. Langevin says he became pro-life after a life-altering experience. When he was sixteen years old, he was wounded by a gunshot and has been in a wheelchair ever since. He says now that the episode forced him to appreciate "how precious life is." So what prompted Langevin to abandon his Chafee challenge? Influential Democrats, upset over his pro-life stand,...

Washington D.C. Newport Providence (202) 224-2921 (401) 845-0700 (401) 453-5294 Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island is under enormous political pressure from the White House and right-wing organizations to cast the deciding vote in favor of the nomination of John Bolton to serve as the United States’ Ambassador to the United Nations. I don’t believe that, in his heart, Senator Chafee thinks we should have a U.N. ambassador who once said “if the U.N. secretary building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference.” Bolton’s nomination is another example of the Bush Administration’s determination...

Bolton in Chafee’s hands. What is a sophisticated position on the United Nations? As the old saw goes, I’m glad you asked that question. I say that having served in the U.N. as a Public Member of the U.S. delegation, and written a book on the U.N. One feels the special pangs of John Bolton right now, up for ambassador to the U.N. Poor John, he was once derisory at the U.N.’s expense, using very amusing language to bounce off the bureaucratic density of the organization. His barb was to the effect that if you lopped off the top ten...

Democrat John Kerry is targeting his Senate colleague, Republican Lincoln Chafee - in a new Internet advertising campaign. Kerry's urging Chafee to vote against the nomination of John Bolton as US ambassador to the United Nations. The unusual strike against a fellow member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee comes as the two men and the rest of the committee are questioning Bolton during a hearing today on the nomination. In the ad, Kerry says Rhode Island needs a senator who will always vote with the interest of the people of Rhode Island in mind - even when it means...

Fading into the background Let us pause a moment to recall that Congress busies itself with matters other than Terri Schiavo's feeding tube. Some of them, in fact, affect quite a lot of people. One vote you might have missed last week said a lot about what the next couple of years will be like on Capitol Hill. The vote involved the fundamental question of how Congress balances tax cuts against spending. During the Senate's annual budget debate, which sets guidelines for the year's spending bills, some senators pushed a measure to require that any new tax cuts be...

WASHINGTON - President Bush's top environmental priority — giving power plants, factories and refineries more time to reduce their air pollution — suffered a major setback Wednesday as a Republican-controlled committee rejected it in the Senate. The Environment and Public Works Committee deadlocked on a 9-9 vote on Bush's "clear skies" bill, a name that Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., described as "akin to calling Frankenstein Tom Cruise." The tie vote came after weeks of fruitless negotiation to get a bare majority required to recommend the bill to the full Senate. The committee vote doesn't preclude GOP leaders from scheduling the...

Lavegin Would Face Primary With liberal Secretary Of State Matt Brown if he runs; possible Democrat candidates to succeed him include Lieutenant Governor Charles Fogarty, ex-Rep. Robert Weygand, while Republicans are coalescing around Warwick Mayor Scott Avedisian.

Brown is the first of several possible challengers to Sen. Chafee in the 2006 race to make his candidacy official.

July 27, 2004 Pg. 1 Senators Satisfied With Their 'No' Vote On Iraq ‘We were all firmly convinced we’d done the right thing’ By Lauren Shepherd By 1 a.m. that Friday morning, almost every senator had left the Capitol for home. Three Democrats, though, were still on the Senate floor, waiting for the final vote count on a resolution that would allow President Bush to launch a pre-emptive strike on Saddam Hussein and Iraq. Sens. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.) — had voted against the resolution along with 18 other Democrats, one independent and one...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, a moderate often at odds with GOP conservatives, disclosed Wednesday that the leader of Senate Democrats sounded him out about switching parties in the aftermath of President Bush's re-election. Chafee said he rebuffed the offer from Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada in a follow-up phone conversation the same day, adding that Reid offered "no deal or anything like that" as an incentive to cross the political aisle. "We had a brief conversation, just hello," Chafee said in an interview. He publicly flirted with leaving the GOP in the days before...

Chafee, Rhode Island, wrote in George H. Bush and says he might switch parties!!!

One day after the Supreme Court sealed the 2000 election for George W. Bush, his running mate, Dick Cheney, went to the Capitol for a private lunch with five moderate Republican senators. The agenda he laid out that day in December 2000 stunned Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, sending Mr. Chafee on a painful journey of political conscience that, he said in an interview last week, has culminated with his decision not to vote for Mr. Bush in November. "I literally was close to falling off my chair," Mr. Chafee said, recounting the vice president's proposals for steep tax...