Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R) Appointed Nov. 1999, 1st full 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.
DC Office	141-A RSOB20510, 202-224-2921; Fax: 202-228-2853; Web site: chafee.senate.gov
State Offices	Newport, 401-845-0700; Providence, 401-453-5294.
Additional Info
Recent Articles · Offices · Committees · Ratings · Key Votes · Election Results
More On Rhode Island
At A Glance · State Profile Senior Senator · Almanac Home
Recent News Coverage
Search the CongressDaily, Hotline, House Race Hotline, National Journal and Technology Daily archives using the form above:
[an error occurred while processing this directive]

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. Lincoln Chafee grew up in Warwick, Rhode Island, on a 20-acre estate; there he developed his love of horses. 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. 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 was only the second son appointed to the Senate to succeed his father, the other being Harry Byrd, Jr., in 1965. Chafee 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 what was in 2000 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 and the two incumbents were the state's only senators between 1950 and 1999. The first Democrat to announce was 2d District Congressman Robert Weygand, who was not on good terms with machine Democrats. Weygand won a bruising September primary by a 57%-43% margin. 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. 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. Chafee was the first Senate Republican to oppose the Bush tax cut in 2001. In the spring, Democratic Whip Harry Reid approached Chafee and asked if he wanted to switch parties. Chafee said no. 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. 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.

On the Environment committee his father once chaired, he was chairman of the Superfund Subcommittee. His vote helped to defeat the energy bill in November 2003. When the bill came up in committee in February 2005, he said that he might not insist on mandatory carbon dioxide emission caps, but voted against the bill, which prevented it from coming to the floor. Chafee played a key role on the Medicare/prescription drug bill. He voted for the Senate version in June 2003, but said that he was worried about the cost and he opposed the conference committee version. In November he voted against cutting off a filibuster by Edward Kennedy. But the filibuster was cut off and, hours later, he cast a key vote to waive the budget rules. That enabled the legislation to come forward, at which point he voted against it. In December 2004 he looked askance at George W. Bush's call for personal retirement accounts in Social Security. "It's the wrong time, and I regret that we're looking at this in the context of huge deficits."

In January 2003 Chafee became chairman of the Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs Subcommittee of Foreign Relations; he was third in seniority because more senior members were denied waivers to stay or get back on the committee. He has generally opposed Bush administration policy in the region. He was the only Senate Republican to vote against the Iraq war resolution in October 2002 and fervently opposed military action in Iraq up through March 2003. Although he was pleased by progress he saw on a trip to Iraq in October 2003, in April 2004 he said, "The entire Bush administration seems to have missed the lessons of Vietnam, and now we find ourselves mired in a country in which we don't share the ethnicity, the religion or the language of the people." In July 2004 he said America was less secure because of its involvement in Iraq, and after a trip there in December 2004 said conditions were deteriorating. He was one of four senators to vote against the Syria Accountability Act in November 2003. Chafee has consistently called for the United States to put more pressure on Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians and said that it was unrealistic to wait for suicide attacks to end to begin negotiations; he has lamented that the Bush administration has been "disengaged" from the peace process. In January 2005 he was one of three senators to meet with Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez.

In 2003 Chafee said it was "inconceivable" that he would leave the Republican party and he endorsed George W. Bush for reelection. But he declined to be co-chairman of the Bush campaign in Rhode Island and in 2004 withdrew his endorsement. When asked as the Republicans assembled in New York whom he would vote for, he said repeatedly, "I'm a Republican." On Election Day he told reporters he had cast a "symbolic protest" vote for George H. W. Bush and refused to rule out leaving the Republican party. But after Republicans increased their majority in the Senate and Senate Republican leaders assured him he was welcome, he said he would stay in the party, though not necessarily "forever." In December 2004 he said, "You tend to be supportive [of the party] as you come into the [election] cycle. If I need their help occasionally, I'm going to have to help them. But I'm not going to sacrifice my principles either." Conservative leaders did not seem willing to challenge him. In 2004 Stephen Moore of the Club for Growth said it would not support a primary challenger; Americans for Tax Reform's Grover Norquist said, "A Republican from Rhode Island is a gift from the gods and is not to be looked at askance." In early 2005 there was talk that Cranston Mayor Stephen Laffey might oppose him in the primary.

Chafee's cooperative attitude toward other Republicans may have been strengthened by the fact that Rhode Island and national Democrats seemed to be targeting him. His ratings in the polls were not high and one poll showed him trailing 2d District Congressman Jim Langevin. In December 2004, 1st District Congressman Patrick Kennedy said he wouldn't run and urged Langevin to do so. In February 2005 Secretary of State Matt Brown, formerly head of City Year Rhode Island, announced he was running; within a month he had raised $500,000, mostly at out-of-state fundraisers. In March 2005 Langevin said he was not running and said that he was confident that either Kennedy or former Attorney General Sheldon Whitehouse would be the Democratic nominee. Brown, he said, "does not have the experience to be a United States senator" and "I would certainly encourage Matt to get out of the race." At this point Kennedy considered running but decided not to. State AFL-CIO Chairman Frank Montanaro also called on Whitehouse to run, but said his organization might not endorse anyone in the general election because Chafee "has given us some good votes." In April Whitehouse, who spent $500,000 of his own money on his unsuccessful 2002 gubernatorial campaign, announced he was running. He was promptly endorsed by Langevin and Kennedy. Interestingly, Chafee's and Whitehouse's fathers were roommates at Yale in the 1940s.

Committees

• Environment & Public Works: Fisheries, Wildlife & Water (Chmn.); Transportation & Infrastructure.
• Foreign Relations: East Asian & Pacific Affairs; European Affairs; Near Eastern & South Asian Affairs (Chmn.); Western Hemisphere, Peace Corps & Narcotics Affairs.
• Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs: Federal Financial Management, Govt. Information & International Security; Investigations (Permanent); Oversight of Govt. Management, the Federal Workforce & the District of Columbia.

Group Ratings (More Info)
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2004	55	67	57	50	100	49	82	40	63	50	--
2003	65	--	44	79	--	46	57	35	--	--	--

National Journal Ratings (More Info)
	2003 LIB	--	2003 CONS		2004 LIB	--	2004 CONS
Economic	52%	--	47%		52%	--	47%
Social	51%	--	46%		60%	--	39%
Foreign	54%	--	44%		43%	--	54%
For National Journal's complete 2004 Vote Ratings, as well as previous ratings dating back to 1995, please click here.

Key Votes Of The 108th Congress (More Info)
1. Ban Drilling in ANWR Y 2. Approve Bush Tax Cuts N 3. Medicare/Rx Bill N 4. Bar Overtime Pay Regs. Y 5. Energy Bill N 6. Support Roe v. Wade Y		7. Ban Partial-Birth Abortion N  8. Assault Weapons Ban Y  9. Ban Same-Sex Marriage N 10. Ban Bunker-Buster Bomb Y 11. Fund Iraq War Y 12. Restrict Missile Defense N

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