RICHMOND -- He stood alone outside the gates to the Washington County Fair, hand outstretched to the T-shirt clad throng that had braved bumper-to-bumper traffic to catch country-singer Lee Roy Parnell, a steer show, a mini-tractor pull and, if they timed it just right, a dung-throwing contest.

Were this any other year, the trim 5-foot-10, 150-pound Linc Chafee might have spent the sun-dappled afternoon on Narragansett Bay on his yellow J24-class sailboat, the Goldfinch, or riding his thoroughbred, Trapper.

But not this late-August day with the Republican U.S. Senate primary only weeks away and a boisterous challenger, Cranston Mayor Stephen P. Laffey, who travels the state with PA speakers blaring patriotic music from the back of a pickup truck, nipping at his heels.

So Chafee hopped out of his green 2001 Toyota Prius -- with "I Am Electric" emblazoned across the back window; trudged through the dirt parking lot in his Reeboks, khakis and blue polo shirt; weighed the options out loud -- Inside? Outside? Which would be "more efficient"?

Choosing a spot outside the gate where, he ultimately decided, there would be fewer distractions, he reached out his hand.

"Hi. I'm Senator Chafee," the courtly 53-year-old son of the late governor and senator, John H. Chafee, who is seeking his second full-term in Washington, said again and again to a stream of blank stares, clicks of recognition and "Hi Senator! Good luck."

In lifelong Republican Bill Soens, 68, of Cranston, he hit upon the political conundrum of his campaign. "He didn't even vote for Bush in the last election," said Soens of Chafee's well-publicized write-in vote, in the last election, for President Bush's father as a protest against Bush number two's "divisive" agenda.

"How can you be a Republican and not vote for your presidential candidate? I don't understand that," Soens said.

(Candidate Bush "talked about compassionate conservatism and being a uniter, not a divider, [but] it just seems as though since he's been in office, it's been an agenda of energizing the far-right-wing base . . . This country is very, very polarized and a lot of it revolves around social issues," Chafee said in November 2004.)

Soens said he probably will vote for Chafee, "but I don't consider it to be a clear-cut choice. I really don't. It is not like he is so far head-and-shoulders above everyone else. He is just, I hate to say it, the lesser of two evils . . . because I would not vote for Laffey."

"He talks the talk, but he's not walking the walk," said Soens' wife Nancy. "Taxes are too high."

"Rents are going up and up and up," chimed her husband. "There's too much politics and not enough real empathy anymore." With a dairy-tipping contest about to begin, the loudspeaker crackled.

CHAFEE'S DAY began on a much more somber note: a ceremony outside the State House to dedicate a memorial to three soldiers who died in a war that he alone, among Republicans in the U.S. Senate, voted against.

The Iraq war.

A bell tolled. National Guardsmen fired their weapons in a salute to Sgt. Dennis J. Flanagan, Brian R. St. Germain and Staff Sgt. Dales James Kelly who, Chafee noted, had the desk next to his own at Electric Boat before he went into politics and Kelly to Bath Irons Works in Maine.

"Those really were good times," Chafee said fondly.

Others speaking to the family members -- gathered, roses in hand, on lawn chairs under a tent -- spoke about "paying homage to three Rhode Islanders who have made the ultimate sacrifice."

Later, Chafee would say of Vice President Dick Cheney's escalating campaign jabs at Democratic opponents of the war: "Yes, yes. I speak up at our Republican lunches . . . I think the administration has to understand how, from my viewpoint, how difficult correcting our adventure in Iraq is going to be if they are going to use divisive language." Democrat. Republican. "We all need to come together on this."

But this clearly was not the place to debate the wisdom of a war launched on what he has called "a false premise."

(Did the president lie, senator? "All I can say is 'what are the facts' and I try to look forward." Did he lie? "Did he say there were weapons and were there? No, there weren't. I am not going to use the word 'lie'. I am just going to say what's occurred.")

Chafee, too, gave thanks to the soldiers. Then, he said: "May the sadness inspire us to bring clarity to our goals and unity to our purpose."

Asked later how she viewed Chafee's vote against the war that took her husband, Nancy Kelly said: "From what I know of him personally, Lincoln Chafee has always to my knowledge been a man that made the decisions in his life based on his heart and his head together and I think anyone will tell you that the longest distance in any body is the 12 inches between mind and heart."

Sgt. Kelly's younger sister, Kathleen Kelly of Narragansett, whispered in his ear. Would she vote for him? "Yes." Why? "I really don't want to go there today."

From Providence, the former Warwick councilman and mayor made a quick stop at a sparsely attended fundraiser for Tom Madden, the GOP candidate challenging longtime state Sen. Jack Revens.

Arriving with a $50 campaign check, Chafee said he views such stops as part of his job. "It's part of building a two-party system in the state."

But, "I suspect this will not be crowded," he said. "A fundraiser at 1 p.m. for a Republican running against a 15-termer. David and Goliath. Most of our state races are."

Chafee was equally blunt about his own chances in the Sept. 12 primary, with polling that tells him: "I've got a tough race if it's just going to be the core."

There are only about 68,860 registered Republicans, compared with 235,268 Democrats and 363,519 independents. With a relatively low turnout of hard-line Republicans -- say, the 25,000 who voted in the 2002 GOP primary, he figures: Laffey wins.

But if the primary draws enough of the unaffiliated voters that he has been courting -- and GOP primary turnout reaches the record 45,023 who chose between Lincoln C. Almond and Ronald K. Machtley in the 1994 governor's race he expects to survive to face Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse in November.

"A hotbed of Republican primary voters," he joked as his Toyota hybrid headed to Pawtucket for a festival outside the Assumption of the Virgin Mary Greek Orthodox Church.

"Oooh. You're handsome in person," said Georgia Moretti as Tina Demopulos, related by marriage to Chafee's brother-in-law John Nassikas, squired him around.

Over at his own table, Tom Magill, Democratic candidate for mayor in Pawtucket, didn't give Chafee much chance of winning over Pawtucket, where there are only 2,000 or so Republicans out of 32,000 registered voters.

Off the top of his head, Magill could not recollect an issue in which he differed with the moderate Chafee, but he said: "It's a club in Washington."

"If the president of the United States wants something, the president of the United States is going to get something faster off a fellow Republican than he is off a Democrat, naturally . . . "

In Donna O'Donohue of Warwick, however, Chafee found a fan of his family and a Laffey-doubter.

"Right across the street from the office where Laffey is, you've got the [closed] Park Cinema. This is what we can expect?"

HAVING zig-zagged the state -- from North Kingstown to Providence to Warwick to Pawtucket to Richmond -- Chafee ended his one-day, 100-mile-plus campaign swing outside the Washington County Fair.

The next day he flew to and from Malibu, Calif., for a $500-a-person fundraiser hosted for him by lawyer Anthony Keats, a Brown University classmate.

One in an occasional series of articles looking at the candidates campaigning for statewide office.

kgregg@projo.com / (401) 277-7078