PROVIDENCE - Three days after he helped bury his father on the family farm, Warwick Mayor Lincoln D. Chafee was appointed yesterday by Governor Almond to serve the 14 months left in the term of U.S. Sen. John H. Chafee.

The 46-year-old Republican, who beamed boyishly as Almond introduced him at a State House news conference, said he hoped to follow in his father's footsteps as a moderating, unifying influence in the Senate.

He couldn't think of any major issue on which he disagreed with the late senator, he said, from the environment to health care to a quixotic ban on handguns that the elder Chafee had proposed.

"I think you can expect me to concur [with him] on all the major issues," Chafee said in the State Room before scores of enthusiastic supporters and employees from his mayoral office in Warwick.

The appointment of the four-term mayor becomes official when he is sworn in by the presiding officer of the Senate, Vice President Al Gore or President Pro Tempore Strom Thurmond, R-S.C. That is expected to happen tomorrow.

Almond's announcement came as no surprise, given that Chafee had been the lone Republican to announce his candidacy for the seat that his 77-year-old father planned to vacate upon retirement in January 2001.

Chafee was Almond's first choice, the Republican governor said. Almond offered the job Monday evening during a half-hour visit to the mayor's house in Potowomut.

"Trick or treat" was how Almond impishly greeted him, Chafee recalled.

For Almond, the only question was whether Chafee might decline the appointment, Almond said; Democrats had contended it would put their candidates — including U.S. Rep. Robert Weygand and former Lt. Gov. Richard Licht — at an unfair disadvantage, and threatened to make it a campaign issue.

Still, Chafee eagerly accepted.

"And I said, 'Well, you've got it,'" Almond recalled. "It was unconditional."

Chafee, a soft-spoken man who used to work as a blacksmith, said that his father, who died of heart failure on Oct. 24, had set a high standard as senator since 1977. But, he said, he accepted the challenge "without hesitation."

Several Democrats immediately accused Almond, John Chafee's protégé, of dirty pool.

William J. Lynch, the chief of the Democratic Party, repeated earlier arguments that Almond should have named a caretaker who had no intentions of running when the term expires.

"This is an obvious attempt to help Mayor Chafee's campaign," said Lynch, although he acknowledged that if he had been in Almond's position, "I probably would have done the same thing."

Another leading Democrat, state Senate Majority Leader Paul Kelly, issued a statement saying Almond "probably feels that this appointment would somehow give a political advantage to Lincoln Chafee in next year's election." But, he said, "the ultimate political authority rests with the Rhode Island electorate."

For their part, Weygand and Licht said they expected the news and wouldn't change their game plans.

"We always anticipated... that the race would be between Lincoln Chafee and myself," Weygand said. "This doesn't change our strategy at all."

Licht, who is making a second run for the Senate after failing to unseat John Chafee in 1988, said, "I had the courage or willingness to take on Senator Chafee at the top of his game when there wasn't a Democrat willing to do so. I'm not going to be deterred merely because Governor Almond exercised his vote today for Lincoln Chafee."

At the afternoon news conference, where he was joined by his wife, Stephanie Danforth Chafee, and brother Zechariah Chafee, the mayor good humoredly dismissed the likely criticism.

"I'm a Republican in a heavily Democratic state," he said, grinning. "I can't ever imagine a Republican having an advantage in this state."

Nonetheless, he later acknowledged that incumbency will help him raise money for a Senate campaign, which is likely to cost $2 million to $3 million.

As of July 31, Chafee had a war chest of $49,469, according to disclosure statements with the Federal Elections Commission. That paled next to the campaign balances of Weygand ($540,169) and Licht ($438,481, including a $100,000 loan from himself.)

But Lincoln Chafee is wealthy. Financial disclosure reports that he filed with the secretary of the Senate lists numerous assets, including a blind trust in his wife's name worth more than $50 million.

In Washington, D.C., senators immediately extended expressions of bipartisan welcome to Chafee. Republican leaders plan to honor his request for a seat on the Environment and Public Works Committee, chaired for the past five years by John Chafee.

"We know that Senator Chafee would very much have liked to have his son succeed him," said Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss. "It's a kind of emotional thing to a lot of us, because of what John meant around here."

Senator-designate Chafee "will be generously welcomed," said Sen. Robert G. Torricelli, D-N.J., chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. "There are very warm feelings toward him because of the respect for his father."

But some of the hard political realities in Chafee's new life were instantly apparent.

He'll rank 100th among the 100 members in the seniority-bound Senate.

Lott said "a senior senator" will take John Chafee's slot on the Finance Committee — perhaps the most powerful in the Senate, with jurisdiction over taxes, Social Security, Medicare and a variety of other health, pension and welfare programs.

And Chafee will have to divide his attention between the Senate and his campaign.

Lott said Republicans want to avoid erosion of their 55-to-45 Senate majority and predicted that yesterday's appointment would give Lincoln Chafee an edge in holding his father's seat in next year's elections.

"You'd think it would be," he said. "I hope it would be. But it hasn't always worked out that way."

But Torricelli, whose job is to defeat Republicans next year, called it "unfortunate" for Almond "to interfere in the electoral contest by providing an advantage" to Chafee.

Sen. Jack Reed, a Democrat and now Rhode Island's senior senator, called Chafee "a fine gentleman, a very pleasant individual, very cordial and very affable."

On the appointment, Reed said, "It's more important what he does here than how he got here. He's coming into a very challenging environment. Within days or weeks or months, he will have the opportunity to demonstrate his ability and his commitment to the people."

Reed noted that there are tough issues to come before Congress adjourns for the year, particularly on budget votes that contain complex choices about Social Security and the restoration of Medicare funds cut from home health care and other medical institutions.

Chafee had conferred in recent days with his father's close friend, Sen. John W. Warner, R-Va., and spoken to Lott shortly before his appointment. Almond, too, had alerted Lott and Reed that Chafee would be his choice.

However long he serves, Chafee has one of the more unusual backgrounds in the Senate.

After graduating from Brown University in 1975, he attended horseshoeing school in Bozeman, Mont. For the next seven years, he worked as a blacksmith at harness racetracks in the United States and Canada.

Returning to Rhode Island, he worked for several companies, including Cranston Print Works and Rhode Island Forging Steel, before becoming a planner at the General Dynamics facility at Quonset Point.

He was elected to the Warwick City Council in 1986 and was elected mayor six years later, the first Republican to occupy the office in 32 years.

As mayor of the state's second-largest city, he has boasted a host of achievements, including improving the city's appearance, increasing recreation programs for the elderly and settling contracts with several public employees' unions.

Admirers say he has also helped preserve the environment, one of his father's biggest concerns in the Senate. The city bought 110 acres to be preserved as open space, the largest amount set aside in Warwick for this purpose in more than 30 years. The city has also developed the best recycling program in the state, according to supporters.

Chafee's brother, Zechariah, said Lincoln Chafee has a lot in common with their late father, from their interest in issues such as the environment to their honesty.

Although Lincoln Chafee is more soft-spoken than John Chafee was, said Zechariah, his demeanor hides a steely determination.

"There's plenty of fiber underneath," Zechariah said. "Don't worry about that."