Lincoln Chafee set to enter Democratic presidential field

FORMER R.I. GOV. LINCOLN D. Chafee is expected to formally launch his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination on Wednesday.  / PBN FILE PHOTO/MIKE SKORSKI
FORMER R.I. GOV. LINCOLN D. Chafee is expected to formally launch his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination on Wednesday. / PBN FILE PHOTO/MIKE SKORSKI

Lincoln Chafee, a former Republican-turned-independent who became a Democrat while he was governor of Rhode Island, is expected to formally launch his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination on Wednesday.

Chafee has scheduled an afternoon speech at the George Mason University School of Policy, Government, and International Affairs in Arlington, Va. A staffer with knowledge of the governor’s plans has said he will announce his run during the event.

Chafee, 62, left the governor’s mansion in January and announced in April he had formed an exploratory committee. He has said he would focus a presidential campaign on growing the middle class by raising the minimum wage and supporting social programs such as Head Start. He has also indicated he will target primary frontrunner Hillary Clinton on her vote to authorize the Iraq War when they both served in the Senate. The vote, which hurt Clinton in her 2008 bid, raises questions about her judgment, Chafee has said.

“I don’t think anybody should be president of the United States that made that mistake,” Chafee told the Washington Post in April. “It’s a huge mistake, and we live with broad, broad ramifications today — of instability not only in the Middle East but far beyond and the loss of American credibility. There were no weapons of mass destruction.”

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Environmental stewardship and “protection of personal liberties,” such as freedom from phone searches and the right to an abortion, are other priorities of Chafee’s, according to his exploratory committee website.

Days after forming that committee, he told CNN he was running, but a spokeswoman later insisted he was still in the exploratory phase. That phase allows prospective candidates to travel and conduct polls without having to disclose donors or restrict their coordination with outside groups on strategy and messaging.

Chafee has little traction in public opinion polls. He registered just a single percentage point among Democrats in a national poll of registered voters taken May 19-26 by Quinnipiac University. Clinton led the field with 57 percent, followed by independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who is running as a Democrat, with 15 percent. The other Democrat to announce his candidacy, former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, also had 1 percent.

Chafee, the son of the late R.I. Sen. John Chafee, graduated from Brown University in Providence and worked as a blacksmith for several years. By 1999, he was the Republican mayor of Warwick, R.I., a town of about 80,000.

That year, his father died while serving his fourth term in the Senate. Lincoln Chafee was appointed to his father’s seat and won election on his own in 2000.

In 2003, he became the only Republican senator to vote against the Iraq War and called for reinstating the top federal tax rate on high-income earners. He also voiced support for same-sex marriage. In 2006, Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse defeated him.

Chafee became an independent the following year, saying the GOP had become too conservative. In 2010, he won the governorship of Rhode Island, an office his father had also held, as had his great-great grandfather, Henry Lippitt. In 2013, while still in office, he became a Democrat. At the time, his approval had rating dropped below 25 percent in the overwhelmingly Democratic state, which was still ravaged by high unemployment. Later that year he declared he wouldn’t run for re-election.

Chafee has said he could be the Democrats’ nominee despite having only joined the party two years ago because his record has been consistent, while other candidates have history in the GOP.

“Jim Webb was a Republican and Senator Clinton was a Goldwater Girl,” he told CNN in April.

He and his wife, Stephanie, live in Warwick, R.I., according to his exploratory committee website, and have three children.

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