EXETER -- Head down, shovel in hand on a dew-speckled Sunday morning, scraping horse manure off the barn floor at his family's 747-acre farm, Lincoln Chafee hardly looks his part in the national political drama playing out around him.

At 53, he is still a wispy 5-feet-10, 150 pounds. When his fellow Republican senator and elder party statesman John McCain came to town, he referred to him as that "fine young man." His sometimes awkward sentences are punctuated with "yipes!" and "gosh."

In plaid flannel shirt and jeans, he blends right in with the regulars who gather for coffee and Sunday-morning palaver at Clark and Jason Whitford's Blueberry Hill Farm Country Store, where framed photos of a prized cow share wall space with President Bush.

And make no mistake about it: When Chafee talks about wrangling with "the big, strong and powerful" in this corner of his world, he is talking about horses -- and the post-college years he spent shoeing them at racetracks from Montana to Calgary.

"They exercise all day. They race at night. They are high energy animals. ... I remember the trainers. You'd hear it over and over. 'Don't get excited.' Whether you're playing cards ... or around horses. 'Don't get excited.' "

Which is probably not bad advice for a Republican seeking reelection to the U.S. Senate from the bluest of states, in what is either -- depending on which poll you consult -- a neck-and-neck horse race or a lock for his Democratic challenger, Sheldon Whitehouse.

Some thoughts to ponder about Chafee: Along with a quiet confidence that he attributes to his years on the racetrack circuit, he and his wife, the former Stephanie B. Danforth -- the great-great granddaughter of the Metcalf who founded the Rhode Island School of Design in 1877, have a family fortune that exceeds $60 million, according to his public disclosure filings.

Republican control of the U.S. Senate could hinge on his reelection.

He has enjoyed the odd-man out role he has played -- again and again -- in the worlds of power in which he has traveled from the Rhode Island State House as a delegate to the 1986 Constitutional Convention, to Warwick City Hall as a councilman and then mayor, to Washington where he is seeking a second full term.

With relish, for example, he tells of racing home to write his impressions of the second meeting he attended as a newly elected Republican on the Democrat-dominated Warwick City Council in the 1980s.

After a six-hour hearing on a bid for a zone change to allow the development of 10 luxury condominiums in historic Pawtuxet Village, he wrote a blistering account that ran in the Warwick Beacon.

It began: "There was an unpleasant smell in City Council chambers on Tuesday night. It was the fetid fumes of disgruntled citizenry, unfulfilled expectations, high tempers and politics for sale." And it went on from there.

In retrospect, he says: "It was strong."

But the way he remembers it, the meeting went late because the council let the developer's lawyers and traffic engineers and experts talk first, and at length, while "the council chamber was full of people in flannel shirts, holding their children, waiting for their turn."

Opponents all, when the residents finally got their chance to speak, he remembers them asking: "Don't we have a voice in what happens in our neighborhood?"

"But there was no negotiation. 'This is the way it's going to be. Are you ready? All those in favor, say aye.' And it was done. I went back and I was furious."

Telling this story, he leaped from the outside deck chair where he was sipping coffee to recount with dramatic flair what happened at the next council meeting.

"They just one after another teed off on me, one after another shaking their fingers at me. 'What white horse do you think you ride on?'

"And I'm going, 'This is great. It's going to be a good story tomorrow . . . I'm going to come out on top on this . . . I'm with the residents.' "

Former colleagues do not remember the evening as clearly or fondly.

"We thought improving the tax base of the city was important . . . he would generally take an opposing point of view," recalls former Councilman C. Kenneth Wild, now a top aide in Democratic Congressman James Langevin's office."He thought he had to be a dissenting thought presence for balance."

"I think he was sincere in his idealism, but kind of far out," says Gerald Goldstein, the only other Republican on the council and a one-time campaign manager for Chafee's late father, former Gov. and U.S. Sen. John H. Chafee.

But then as now, Chafee saw his role this way: "Somebody's got to sift through all the garbage and figure out what's in the best interest."

"It's very similar to what's happening in Washington, I think. Same thing. Zone change in a neighborhood that they haven't agreed to. Going to war without knowing what we're doing. ... Isn't anyone sifting through, figuring it out?

"Shame on us in Congress for not asking harder questions. We got rolled." By whom? He won't go that far, talking instead about the post-Sept. 11 frame of mind in Washington:

"It was weapons of mass destruction, weapons of mass destruction. It's coming down main street tomorrow. ... I think we got taken advantage of. This was an agenda of regime-change in Iraq and, as a Congress, we didn't ask enough hard questions before we went to war."

But he doesn't write opinion-pieces for publication quite so freely anymore.

"It's harder because it's my own party. It's different. It was fun speaking out because that's the way it's supposed to be. Republicans take on Democrats. You expect that. I can't stand up and write these things now."

Why not? "I have to deliver for my state," he explains. "I have to keep it bottled down."

What would the headline say over the piece he yearns to write? "I can't." No, really: what would it say? After a long pause: "Working hard to pull the party to the middle to keep the country going on a better course."

Not that he hasn't bucked his party leaders on high-profile votes.

He voted against the Iraq war; the GOP's "flawed" Medicare prescription-drug plan; President Bush's Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito; and what he has taken to calling the Bush "tax cuts for the rich." He also cast a write-in vote for the first President Bush in the last election as a protest against the son.

"Yeah. That's my statement," he says.

What is important to him? What does he want to get accomplished? Chafee takes pride in the passage of legislation aimed at putting contaminated industrial properties back on tax rolls by providing liability protection and $350 million in clean-up grants to prospective purchasers. He is also particularly proud of his continuing efforts to reduce dependence on foreign oil by raising fuel-economy standards to cut consumption; and also, a stalled bill to provide $30 million, between 2007 and 2012, for research into the environmental causes of breast cancer.

Looking ahead, he wants to "reduce dependence on foreign oil, address global climate change, work to ensure stability in the Middle East and bring people together to address the nation's health-care crisis."

To keep him from straying too far outside the fold, GOP leaders have rewarded Rhode Island with what he boasts is the second highest rate of return on federal gas taxes: $2.21 in federal transportation aid for every $1 in gas taxes collected.

Chafee believes this is a tribute to his "ability to keep good relations with my leadership, to walk that respectful line."

As a maverick in a Senate that teetered from Republican to Democratic control by a one-vote edge five years ago, Chafee held a much-sought vote until the 2004 congressional elections gave the GOP 55 of the 100 Senate seats.

He remembers: "Watching TV and seeing President Bush has now won; Ohio has come in; the Republicans have swept the South... Five Democratic seats were open. Won them all, 55-45, and I'm thinking: they don't need me anymore."

"But [Senate Majority Whip] Mitch McConnell called me right after the election, maybe even the next day, saying, "I don't know what you are thinking, but we want you, we respect your voice in the caucus and we're on your side."

"I'm thinking, he's got to be yahooing -- 55 seats! -- what is he doing taking the time to call me?"

One theory is that McConnell wanted to dissuade Chafee from bolting the party, as Vermont Sen. James Jeffords had done. For a time, Chafee himself seemed to flirt with the notion.

But McConnell, whose job in the Senate is to count noses, offers this perspective on Chafee's role:

"It takes 60 votes to cut off a filibuster, so it has become routine that you need 60 -- not just 51 -- to accomplish anything in the Senate. Well, you begin to get the drift: the people in the middle, the moderate Democrats and moderate Republicans have enormous influence and power in brokering centrist positions. Linc is right in that group and that makes him influential far beyond his one vote."

Chafee acknowledges: the pressure sometimes gets intense.

"They lean on me so many times on votes. Bill Frist, the [majority] leader will have me into his office -- and he's been good to me, really good, taking me on a trip [with him] with a small group of Senators to China, ... and he'll say 'I need you on this vote' and I'll have to say no."

"And there have been times I have been the key vote. It just hasn't happened. But still keeping good relations ... Going to Republican social events ... Not hiding or anything like that. Sitting with the people that are angry at me."

Warwick City Council redux. Only with bigger stakes.

The Rhode Island race is one of six or seven that could tip control of the Senate from Republicans to Democrats, which Chafee opponent Sheldon Whitehouse has made his main selling point.

Polls still show a significant number of undecided voters, which Jennifer Duffy, the former Rhode Islander who analyzes Senate campaigns for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, explains this way: "I think people are torn between liking Chafee, appreciating his independence, the whole thing -- and buying into the Democratic majority argument."

Chafee remembers people telling him after his 2000 win: " 'This seat is yours.' I never believed that.'

"I remember seeing the Bush agenda come on, going yes, I could see this coming a mile away: a primary and then a tough general. So, just put on the helmet, buckle the chin-strap."

He remembers the quiet that enveloped his life after losing his first bid for mayor.

"Everybody who says I'm with you isn't. The other shock was the phone. Nobody calls. You're nobody."

And when the phone finally rang, he remembers picking it up thinking it would be someone "calling to say 'good run' and they say, 'uh, how's it going? I'm looking for your dad's number.' That's the way it is."

He remembers his father's advice about getting into politics: "You have to have something to fall back on to give you the confidence to do what you think is right. You can't be worried this is my only way to make a living."

After losing his first bid for mayor, Chafee found a niche for himself in a small consulting firm headed by former Democratic Gov. J. Joseph Garrahy and the late Edward F. Burke that promoted high-speed rail from Washington to Portland, Maine, and hydro-Quebec power. Sixteen years later, he simply wants to win.

And if he doesn't? "Well, I like challenges ... something like make Amtrak run on time. Something like that."

But answering the unthinkable question doesn't mean Chafee expects to lose. Foraging for votes recently at the Budlong Manor in Cranston, he ran into one old-timer after another who seemed thrilled, between heaping forkfuls of roast chicken, meatballs and stuffed shells, to have a member of Rhode Island's political royalty up front and close.

"Oooh. I see you every day on TV," said Marion Taylor, 79.

"It' that time of year, isn't it?" said Chafee, between howdoyou's.

"I just like him," said Jean Aveline, 83. "I think he is pretty straightforward and honest compared to a lot of his colleagues."

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