Lincoln Chafee - Independent Candidate for Rhode Island Governor

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Chafee Leads In Rhode Island Governor Match-ups

March 2, 2010

Tuesday, March 02, 2010

Ex-Senator Lincoln Chafee is the leader for now in Rhode Island's race for governor.

The first Rasmussen Reports Election 2010 telephone survey of the race finds Chafee, a Republican turned independent, ahead in two hypothetical three-way contests, regardless of which Democratic hopeful ends up as the party's nominee.

Chafee earns the support of 37% of likely voters in Rhode Island to 27% for Democrat Frank Caprio, the state's current treasurer, and likely Republican nominee John Robitaille's 19%. Seventeen percent (17%) are undecided.

When State Attorney General Patrick Lynch is the Democrat in the race, he earns 24% of the vote to Chafee's 38% and Robitaille's 22%. Given this match-up, 16% are undecided.

Chafee was appointed to the Senate in 1999 following the death of his father, Senator John Chafee. He was elected to a full Senate term in 2000 but lost his bid for reelection in 2006. Chafee, who often clashed with the Senate GOP leadership because of his liberal political views, became an independent in 2007.

Chafee's political views are perhaps understandable given that Rhode Island has been a reliably Democratic state in presidential and congressional contests for years now. While the national political mood has soured toward incumbents and Democrats in particular, there's little sign of that thus far in the state.

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New Rasmussen poll shows Chafee's lead growing

RIFuture.org
By, Brian Hull

There's a new Rasmussen poll that was conducted on February 25. Let's compare the results with February's Brown University poll and the WPRI poll from late January.

Rasmussen Poll (February 25, 2010)
Chafee: 37%; Caprio: 27%; Robitaille: 19%; Not Sure: 17% 
Chafee: 38%; Lynch: 24%; Robitaille: 22%; Not Sure: 16%

Brown University Poll (February 9-12, 2010)
Chafee: 33.8%; Caprio: 28.3%; Robitaille: 12.1%; Don't Know: 25.8%
 Chafee: 32.9%; Lynch: 17.7%; Robitaille: 13.7%; Don't Know: 35.6%

WPRI Poll (January 27-31, 2010)
Chafee = 31%; Caprio = 30%; Robitaille = 13%; Not sure / Refused = 25% 
Chafee = 34%; Lynch = 23%; Robitaille = 18%; Not sure / Refused = 25%

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Lincoln Chafee on Dan Yorke

March 1, 2010

Click here to listen to the Podcast of Linc Chafee on the Dan York Show.

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'Chafee may have chosen the right time to run for governor'

Pawtucket Times
By, Jim Baron

Politics as Usual [excerpt]

Lincoln Chafee picked the wrong year to seek re-election to the U.S. Senate as a Republican in 2006, but he may have chosen the exactly right time to run for governor as an independent this year.

The mood of the voters may be with him this time around. Governor Carcieri's increasing unpopularity, and the electorate's overwhelming sense that the state is moving in the wrong direction could poison the well for any Republican hoping to succeed him and with two long-time insider politicians -- the sitting attorney general and general treasurer -- vying for the Democratic nomination, an Independent Chafee steering his own non-partisan course could ride the wave of voter dissatisfaction to victory. In an op-ed in the New York Times a week or so ago, Chafee summed up the national (and in many ways, local) political situation in a neat little one-quote nutshell: "Republicans lead in the wrong direction and Democrats are unable to lead in any direction at all." 

That line absolutely sings, it is poetry -- it sounds like a lyric from an early Bob Dylan song, back when he was young and angry.  

Chafee should have that sentence printed at the bottom of every sheet of his campaign letterhead and paste it on every piece of advertising his team puts out.  

If any campaign slogan could win an election, that might be the one. Who has kept President Barack Obama locked up in an attic for the last 13 months and how did he finally escape? 

That's the thought that went through my mind when I watched some of that health care reform summit last week. There you saw the Barack Obama the American people voted for in 2008, sitting down with the leaders of both parties and trying to hash out a solution to one of the nation's most vexing problems: the inability of so many people to afford any health insurance at all, and the inadequate and incomplete coverage so many others have to get by with. 

Unfortunately, it was too little and far too late. 

If Obama had convened that summit in February, 2009, he would have been dealing from a position of strength, taking advantage of a more than 2-1 Electoral College mandate to achieve an important policy goal.  Instead, by February, 2010, it had become a desperate, last-ditch move to try to salvage some small piece of what was supposed to be the crown jewel of his domestic agenda, one that he squandered the first year of his presidency booting away. 

Obama was supposed to be the leader, grasping his post-partisan election mandate and running with it. Instead, he chose to let Congress carry the ball, and they wound up punting at every opportunity to the point where Obama may now be an irredeemably failed president. 

Nobody elected Nancy Pelosi to be the leader of the free world, Harry Reid, neither. Why did Obama job out the vital issue of health care reform to those two? Obama has looked absolutely hapless standing on the sideline and watching Reid and Pelosi fumble the ball he should have been carrying to paydirt and spiking in the end zone. And his passive inaction while Congress dithered and dickered helped lead to the rise of the Tea Party movement that could very well bring about his downfall in 2012.  

This problem was foreshadowed by authors John Heilemann and Mark Halperin in their terrific book about the 2008 presidential campaign "Game Change." They recount a time in the spring of 2008 when a staffer tells Obama: "You need to take more ownership of this campaign. You've got a great team here, you've got confidence in them, they've got your best interest at heart. But what it feels like to me is they say, 'Here's your schedule for the week, here's our theme -- and off you go. I think you are the best political mind we've got, You ought to be more engaged." Obama should have that guy, Pete Rouse, say that to him at least once a day for the rest of his term in office. 

It's too bad. Obama might have been a great president. Instead, he could come to be seen, as I have predicted before, as the Jimmy Carter of the 21st Century.

Sure, go ahead, fire all of the teachers and staff at Central Falls High School. Good idea! 

Then what are you going to do next year when half the kids drop out, most are still not reading or doing math anywhere within shouting distance of grade level, and they are still going home to single-parent families in poverty, where little or no English is spoken? 

Fire the new batch, too! Keep firing teachers every year if you have to and those kids will learn sooner or later. Won't they?  Oh yeah, and vilify the union, too, while you are at it. That will help improve the situation enormously. 

I remember covering Central Falls at the time the state took over the school system. It was supposed to become this great laboratory where the newest and most effective teaching methods and cutting-edge programs would be brought in to make Central Falls an educational model for the entire nation. 

But since that hasn't worked out as planned, a wholesale firing of the teaching staff seems like the most intelligent response, doesn't it?

Click here for original article.

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Ban filibuster abuse for good of all

February 26, 2010

POLITICO.com
By: Lincoln D. Chafee 

In the spring of 2005, I was one of the senators who banded together as the Gang of 14 to preserve the filibuster rule. We aimed to prevent the Republican majority from scrapping it on a simple majority vote, the "nuclear option." The seven Republicans in the group agreed to vote against the nuclear option, if and when Republican Majority Leader Bill Frist called for a vote.

The seven Democrats agreed to vote against their party's filibusters, unless "extraordinary circumstances" were in play.

Today, with Republicans in the minority and resorting to the filibuster nonstop, the definition of an extraordinary circumstance is: The Senate is in session.

Knowing what I know now, it's tempting to say I would like to go back in time and sit on my hands while Republicans pulled the trigger on the nuclear option. But to keep faith with the idea that it's always good for opponents to be on speaking terms, I'll say, instead, that it's time for a new bipartisan gang to take charge of the Senate and ban frivolous filibusters.

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Brown University poll shows Chafee is the one to beat

February 24, 2010

RIFuture.org
By, Brian Hull

Yesterday's Brown University poll is showing a significant lead by Lincoln Chafee over the other candidates in each of the general election scenarios.

Chafee: 33.8%; Caprio: 28.3%; Robitaille: 12.1%; Don't Know: 25.8%
 Chafee: 32.9%; Lynch: 17.7%; Robitaille: 13.7%; Don't Know: 35.6%

Continue reading "Brown University poll shows Chafee is the one to beat"

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Lincoln Chafee has forged a path of independence and he is now prepared, with your support, to bring his unquestioned integrity, proven record of working together for the common good, and ability to represent our state at the highest levels of business and government to the Governor's Office.

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