Rhode Island's Republican senator makes an appearance in Manhattan, but shuns the convention and gives no sign of support for President Bush.

08:30 AM EDT on Wednesday, September 1, 2004

BY SCOTT MacKAY
Journal Staff Writer

Journal photo / John Freidah Sen. Lincoln Chafee, standing right, and his state office director, John R. Pagliarini, foreground, attend a reception sponsored by the financial service industry at Madame Tussaud's New york Wax Museum yesterday. At left is a wax figure of actress Susan Sarandon.

NEW YORK -- Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee, the liberal Yankee Republican from Rhode Island, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, the conservative Southern Republican from South Carolina, bumped into each other outside Madison Square Garden yesterday afternoon and acted like two long-lost college fraternity brothers.

"He's my buddy," Graham told a reporter, smiling. "I'm a big fan of Lincoln Chafee. Without him we will not have a Republican majority in the Senate."

"Senator Chafee is a great asset for our party," Graham said.

Chafee can only wish the Rhode Island Republican convention delegates felt as Graham does.

In after-hours conversations over drinks, over scrambled eggs and bacon at breakfast, and in the corridors outside the Republican National Convention, Rhode Island's GOP delegates say Chafee's refusal to publicly endorse President Bush's reelection campaign is a serious political error that practically guarantees him a primary challenge from the conservative side of his party when his seat comes up in 2006.

The name most mentioned as a Chafee challenger is Cranston Mayor Stephen Laffey, who is focused on his own reelection and isn't saying anything about his plans after that. But Laffey has criticized Chafee's independence from the national GOP and the senator's noncommittal stance on Bush's reelection.

"This thing with refusing to say whether he will vote for Bush," says Dave Talan, of Providence, a convention delegate and the GOP candidate for Providence mayor in 2002. "That is not a good thing."

John Holmes Jr., of Bristol, is an alternate delegate and former state GOP state chairman. A moderate, Holmes was close to Chafee's late father, Sen. John H. Chafee.

"The real conservatives of Rhode Island, who have been frustrated with the public comments of Senator Chafee, are going to support somebody aginst him," says Holmes.

"I admire Senator Chafee's independence," said Holmes. "But it wouldn't cost him any political capital to have backed President Bush. Even Democrats in Rhode Island expect that Lincoln Chafee is going to play a role in Republican politics."

CHAFEE IS SPENDING less than 24 hours in New York this week. The most public event he attended yesterday was a reception for the Republican Majority for Choice, a group of party moderates who have been fighting a largely losing battle for abortion rights in a party whose platform calls for a constitutional amendment banning the medical procedure.

Chafee joined a group of more than 200 abortion-rights supporters at a posh fundraiser in a Park Avenue skyscraper that provided a Manhattan-centric view of the world, one was right out of a New Yorker cartoon.

Chafee has broken with Mr. Bush on some major issues, including the war in Iraq, the massive tax cuts that have triggered federal deficits, and a host of social issues from abortion and gay marriage to stem-cell research.

Rhode Islanders especially applaud his opposition to Mr. Bush's Iraq policies, he says. Voters aren't buying the president's arguments that fighting terror and the military invasion of Iraq are linked.

"This isn't about al-Qaida," Chafee said. "This is a whole vision of remaking the Middle East -- let's be up front about it.

Chafee says he is proud of his vote against going into Iraq -- a vote even Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry did not make.

"I've never wavered on that vote," Chafee said. "When I take a position, I don't do it for political interests. I do it because I think it is the best thing for our community, for our state and for our country."

While some Republicans consider Chafee a flake, liberal, or worse, he has strong voter appeal in Rhode Island. In 2000, Chafee defeated Democrat Bob Weygand, at the time a sitting congressman and former lieutenant governor, with about 57 percent of the vote.

The most recent Brown University poll, conducted in late June, put Chafee's job approval rating at 56 percent; President Bush, by comparison, was at 31 percent. The poll of 400 registered Rhode Island voters carried an error margin of 5 percentage points.

"He consistently polls very well. A 56-percent approval is a very good number for a Republican in Rhode Island," says Darrell West, Brown University political science professor and pollster. "Right now in Rhode Island, Bush needs Chafee more than Chafee needs Bush."

ONE OF MR. BUSH'S problems, says Chafee, is that the president is trying to shift gears in an election year and put a moderate convention face on a party that has hard-right positions on social issues and the war.

"You have got to be consistent," Chafee says. "That's one of the problems he's having. He has been playing so much to the conservative base and now he is waving the moderate flag. You don't know that people will buy it."

"I'm going to try to be honest," Chafee said.

Some Rhode Island Republicans believe it would be foolish to challenge Chafee in a primary, a move that would only help a Democrat take the seat that his father held before him.

"Linc Chafee is a good Republican," said Sen. Dennis Algiere, of Westerly, the state Senate minority leader and a convention delegate. "If he was far off the sentiments of Rhode Islanders he never would have had so sucessful a public-service career in our state. That he was a city councilman, a sucessful Warwick mayor and got elected to the U.S. Senate pretty much speaks for itself."

Governor Carcieri, who opposes abortion and gay marriage, says that Chafee has been helpful on the governor's campaign to rebuild the state GOP at the legislative level, where Republicans are seriously overwhelmed by Democrats.

Further, Carcieri says, Chafee has done a fine job representing the state's interests in Washington. "Whenever we need him, he is there," Carcieri says.

Robert Manning, of Charlestown, the Rhode Island GOP's new national committeeman, says Chafee is likely to face a primary challenge, especially if President Bush is reelected and Republicans garner five or six Senate seats this November.

If the Republican-Democratic balance in the chamber stays at or near its current 51 Republicans and 48 Democrats, the GOP leadership and a Bush White House would not want to push a primary and risk losing the seat to a Democrat.

"As a Republican in Rhode Island, you always worry about a primary," said Chafee. "It is just part of the business."