For all the unusual drama of Lincoln Chafee and Stephen P. Laffey’s GOP Senate primary gunfight, it was politics as usual — negative advertising, the power of incumbency, and the national GOP’s muscular get-out-the-vote machine — that helped Chafee to score what many considered an unexpectedly decisive win.The constancy of the conventional wisdom proved prevalent elsewhere in the primary, as a low-spending candidate with huge name recognition, former National Guard major-general Reginald Centracchio, crushed Kerry King, his lesser-known Republican rival for lieutenant governor. Although first-time candidate Jennifer Lawless made a solid challenge to US Representative James R. Langevin, the three-term incumbent won with relative ease. And Ralph Mollis, a Democratic Party favorite with a strong base, cruised past affluent outsider Guillaume de Ramel, aided by how thousands of Democrats had crossed over to vote in the GOP Senate primary.
When it comes to November, though, there remains plenty of uncertainty concerning the outcome of Rhode Island’s two leading political races —— for US Senate, and for a Harrah’s Entertainment-Narragansett Indian casino, not to mention the gubernatorial contest hovering in the background. Here’s a look at the defining question in each of these high-stakes campaigns.
Can Lincoln Chafee overcome the antipathy toward President Bush in Rhode Island?
Naturally, Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse, who has spent a good part of this year pounding GOP control of Washington, can’t wait to answer this query, since it dovetails with his main message. “This is the single largest central issue through the race,” Whitehouse says. “You have a Republican Senate that rolls over for the [Bush] administration and does its bidding . . . The Senate race in Rhode Island has the potential to be the swing race that puts the Senate under Democratic leadership and allows it to check the excesses of the Bush administration.”
Asked about Chafee’s maverick streak, Whitehouse asserts that the senator votes the Republican line far more consistently in non-election years, effectively canceling many of Jack Reed’s votes, and backs dubious choices, such as Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma (who once called global warming “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people”), to become chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.
The counter-argument from Chafee, who made a display in 2004 of revealing how he was going to vote for George H.W. Bush, rather than the current president, is that Rhode Island benefits from bipartisan representation in its Congressional delegation. As his campaign manager, Ian Lang, puts it, “Senator Chafee’s ability, thoughtful approach, and willingness to bring people together, and to put the good of the people and of the nation ahead of partisan politics, is what’s going to drive this election.”
Lang notes how Chafee’s votes against tax cuts and the war — a move backed by many Dem¬ocrats — didn’t come during an election year. Describing how Chafee blocked the Bush administration’s attempt to rollback the Clean Air Act, Lang adds, “The reason that the environmental community, including the Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters, has endorsed him is because the senator has stood up again and again to protect the environment.”
