Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R) Appointed Nov. 1999, 1st term up 2006
Born:	Mar. 26, 1953, Warwick
Home:	Warwick
Education:	Brown U., B.A., 1975
Religion:	Episcopalian
Marital Status:	married (Stephanie)
Elected  Office:	Warwick city council, 1986-92; Warwick mayor, 1992-99.
Professional Career:	Farrier, 1976-83; Cranston Print Works, 1984-85; Rhode Island Forging Steel, 1985-86; Planner, General Dynamics, 1986-90; Exec. dir., Northeast Corridor Initiative, 1990-92.
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Lincoln Chafee, the junior senator from Rhode Island, was appointed to the office in November 1999, a week after the death of his father, Senator John Chafee. He was only the second son appointed to the Senate to succeed his father; the other was Harry Byrd, Jr., in 1965. Lincoln Chafee grew up in Warwick, Rhode Island, on a 20-acre estate; there he developed his love of horses. "The outside of a horse is good for the inside of a man," he likes to say. His father was elected governor when he was eight, and he remembers going to the 1964 Republican National Convention, at 11, and the hostility of the Goldwater supporters there for Rockefeller Republicans. In 1969 John Chafee became Secretary of the Navy; Lincoln Chafee was at Andover, where one of his schoolmates was Jeb Bush. In 1976 John Chafee was elected to the Senate; the year before, Lincoln Chafee graduated from Brown, where he was captain of the wrestling team, and went off to horseshoeing school at Montana State University. For seven years he worked as a farrier at racetracks in the United States and Canada. In 1984 he returned to Rhode Island. In 1985 he was elected to the Rhode Island Constitutional Convention and in 1986 was elected to the city council in Warwick, the state's second largest city. In 1992 he was elected mayor of Warwick, by 335 votes, the first Republican in 32 years. He was reelected three times, and as mayor privatized the solicitor's office, produced an economic development plan for the T.F. Green Airport area and left the city with a $6.6 million surplus. In March 1999, John Chafee announced that he would not seek re-election in 2000; the next day Lincoln Chafee announced he would run for the seat. The older Chafee was a productive legislator who was greatly beloved in Rhode Island, respected as a member of one of Rhode Island's "Five Families," who had volunteered for the Marine Corps and served in combat in World War II and Korea.

John Chafee died in October 1999. After a week of mourning, Governor Lincoln Almond appointed Lincoln Chafee to the Senate. He had not been running strong in the polls against possible Democratic opponents, and some thought he was hurt when in August 1999 he admitted he had used cocaine. In the Senate, he promised to continue in his father's tradition and pursued many of his interests. On one of his first votes he was one of four Republicans to vote against the party's minimum wage bill. In 2000 he voted with Democrats on the estate tax and HMO regulation. But he said he would not switch parties--"I'm named after Abraham Lincoln"--and said that Senate Republican leaders "have been very understanding of my votes." Obviously they understood that only a Republican who often voted with Democrats, and probably only a Chafee, could hold this seat in the nation's most Democratic state.

Certainly he could expect Democratic competition. Senate seats don't come up often in Rhode Island: John Chafee held his for 23 years, Claiborne Pell for 36, John Pastore for 26, Theodore Green for 24--they, plus Jack Reed, were the state's only senators from 1950 to 1999. The first Democrat to announce was 2d District Congressman Robert Weygand, who was not on good terms with machine Democrats. Democrat Patrick Kennedy of the 1st District, busy traversing the country as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, was expected to back state House Speaker John Harwood, but when he didn't run backed former Lieutenant Governor Richard Licht. For five months the two Democrats battered each other with charges and countercharges. Weygand backers pointed out that Licht's wife and children lived in Massachusetts, where she was a state judge; Licht said they lived together on weekends in the Rhode Island resort town of Little Compton. Weygand won the September 12 primary by a 57%-43% margin, but wounds still stung: Not until September 30 did Patrick Kennedy and Senator Jack Reed endorse Weygand.

In the meantime, the Republican Senate campaign committee was running ads praising Chafee for his independence and citing his votes against Republican positions on HMO regulation and prescription drugs. One Chafee ad accused Weygand of "embroidering the truth" in an ad about his Labrador retriever taking the arthritis drug Lodine. Weygand ran negative spots attacking Chafee's record as mayor, linking him with right-wing Republicans, depicting him as a pawn of the pharmaceutical industry. Democrats made much of a $6,000 fund Chafee used as mayor to buy presents for children of city employees and contribute to charity. Chafee actually spent less than Weygand. Chafee won 57%-41%, running 25% ahead of George W. Bush in Rhode Island.

After the election Chafee said he liked the tone of the Bush campaign, but he did not like many of the early Bush policies--the ban on aid to international organizations that provide abortion counseling, support of oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, renunciation of the Kyoto treaty, moves toward abrogation of the ABM treaty, reversal of Bush's little noticed one-sentence commitment to reduce levels of carbon dioxide. Chafee was the first Senate Republican to oppose the Bush tax cut in 2003. He voted with Democrats and John McCain on campaign finance in March 2001. In the spring Democratic Whip Harry Reid approached Chafee and asked if he wanted to switch parties. Chafee said no; as he explained later, "Back in the spring of 2001, it was just this avalanche--we had the tax cuts and were getting out of the missile defense treaty. And I thought, I have to do something. What can I do? But the next step that had to be taken, as you say, I was just constitutionally incapable." But he didn't discourage Jim Jeffords from switching in May. Again and again he broke ranks with Republicans--on the budget and tax cut in May 2001, on HMO regulation in June, on a letter urging Tom Daschle to bring up the defense appropriation first in March 2002, on the Department of Homeland Security in September. With John Breaux and Ben Nelson, he developed a compromise on homeland security in September; Bush refused to accept it. He said in June 2001 he would consider switching parties if Republicans won back a majority in the Senate. But when they gained two seats in and a 51-49 majority in November 2002, he said, "No. I've always said that's an extreme step." Of course a switch in those circumstances would not give the Democrats a majority. He was one of the Republican senators who said Trent Lott had to go in December 2002. "I believe it's time to make a change. I think the process is happening." And he was dismayed by the Bush tax cut and other proposals in January 2003.

On the Environment Committee his father once chaired, he is now chairman of the Superfund Subcommittee. With ranking member Barbara Boxer he has backed the reimposition of the Superfund tax on oil and chemical companies that lapsed in 1995. After MTBE seeped into the water supply in Pascoag in September 2001 he wrote a bill for stronger regulation of underground storage tanks. He is also chairman of the Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs Subcommittee of Foreign Relations. He has generally opposed Bush administration policy in the region. In September 2001 he struggled before voting to authorize military action against the Taliban and expressed fears that it would have grave unintended consequences in the region; in October he said his fears had not been borne out. He fervently opposed military action in Iraq up through March 2003. Some conservatives wanted to keep him out of the chairmanship, but he was third in seniority (because more senior members were denied waivers to stay or get back on the committee) and that entitled him to his choice of subcommittee chairs. But he noted that subcommittees are not very powerful.

Chafee comes up for reelection in 2006. In early 2003 there was speculation about which of Rhode Island's many fractious Democrats would run against him. It focused on newly elected Secretary of State Matt Brown and Attorney General Patrick Lynch and term-limited Lieutenant Governor Charles Fogarty.

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DC Office
141-A RSOB 20510, 202-224-2921; Fax: 202-228-2853; Web site: chafee.senate.gov

State Offices
Newport, 401-845-0700; Providence,401-453-5294.

Committees

• Banking, Housing & Urban Affairs: Financial Institutions; Housing & Transportation; International Trade & Finance.
• Environment & Public Works: Superfund & Waste Management (Chmn.); Transportation & Infrastructure.
• Foreign Relations: European Affairs; International Economic Policy, Export & Trade Promotion; Near Eastern & South Asian Affairs (Chmn.); Western Hemisphere, Peace Corps & Narcotics Affairs.

Group Ratings (More Info)
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	CON	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2002	45	60	50	76	100	50	52	63	53	36	--
2001	65	--	42	50	--	--	49	64	44	--	20

National Journal Ratings (More Info)
	2001 LIB	--	2001 CONS		2002 LIB	--	2002 CONS
Economic	53%	--	47%		53%	--	46%
Social	55%	--	44%		46%	--	52%
Foreign	48%	--	51%		48%	--	49%
For National Journal's complete 2002 Vote Ratings, as well as previous ratings dating back to 1995, please click here.

Key Votes Of The 107th Congress (More Info)
1. Approve Bush Tax Cuts Y 2. Expand Patients' Rights Y 3. Campaign Finance Reform Y 4. Permit ANWR Development N 5. Confirm Ashcroft as AG Y 6. Bar Gays in the Boy Scouts N		7. $ for Hate Crime Prosecution Y  8. Overseas Military Abortions Y  9. Bar Coop. with Intl. Court N 10. Trade Promotion Authority Y 11. Authorize Force in Iraq N 12. Homeland Sec. Dept. Union Y

Election Results (More Info)
	Candidate	Total Votes	Percent	Expenditures
2000 general	Lincoln Chafee (R)	222,588	57%	$2,265,221
	Robert A. Weygand (D)	161,023	41%	$2,297,885
	Other	7,742	2%
2000 primary	Lincoln Chafee (R)	unopposed
1994 general	John H. Chafee (R)	222,856	65%	$2,086,236
	Linda J. Kushner (D)	122,532	35%	$805,867