The Cranston mayor has been mentioned in several national publications and on CNN regarding a possible Senate run.

08:52 AM EDT on Thursday, April 21, 2005

BY SCOTT MAYEROWITZ
Journal State House Bureau

Is Cranston Mayor Stephen P. Laffey going to challenge U.S. Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee in a Republican primary?

Many Rhode Islanders have been asking that question for some time, but now national pundits are also starting to ponder such a race.

And Laffey hasn't taken any steps to quell such speculation.

In fact, his office has issued a statement in response to queries from reporters that has stoked the fires even more. It does not say much about his plans, but takes shots at Chafee, without mentioning him by name.

"I've been across the State of Rhode Island, and what I have found is that fair-minded Republicans, Democrats, and independents are not happy with the way things are running in Washington and neither am I," the statement reads. "Rhode Island needs strong, independent leadership in Washington, not weak, indecisive waffling."

Laffey won't say what he plans, just that he is unhappy with the current leadership. He repeats what he's been saying since first taking office: "Whatever I decide to do next, it will be well thought out, well-executed and designed to help the most people in Rhode Island live the American dream."

In recent weeks, Laffey's name has been mentioned in Washington political publications such as Congress Daily, The Hotline and Roll Call. A political column in The Los Angeles Times, CNN's Inside Politics and Chicago Sun-Times political columnist Robert Novak have also referred to Laffey.

So what does Laffey, who has been in public office for just a little more than two years, have to say about the speculation?

"I am humbled," Laffey said in a phone interview yesterday from Memphis, Tenn. "Believe it or not, I don't follow the latest rumors out of Washington. That's sort of inside politics . . . I'm sort of the ultimate outsider."

This comes from a man who has framed newspaper clippings lining the walls of his suite of City Hall offices.

Laffey, 43, won't say if he has done any polls or is lining up donors. He has spent the last few days in Memphis visiting his wife's family. She grew up in the area. Laffey also visited friends at Morgan Keegan, the brokerage and investment-banking firm where he worked for several years, eventually becoming its president and chief operating officer.

Morgan Keegan executives donated heavily to Laffey's two mayoral campaigns.

"Wherever I go, people would like for me to run for something," Laffey said, adding that his friends in Memphis want him to run for mayor there.

Laffey acknowledged that some people on the national level have been asking him to run, but won't disclose who they are.

Some folks have also tried to keep him out of the race, something Novak mentioned in his syndicated column Sunday.

"There have been a couple of insiders maybe trying to dissuade me," Laffey confirmed, again refusing to name names.

Norman G. Orodenker, a close family friend of Laffey's and one of his closest political advisers, said Laffey will make a decision by late spring.

"He's not weighing running for mayor of Cranston again. The question is only what he does," said Orodenker, a partner with the law firm Tillinghast Licht LLP. "He's got several possibilities."

Laffey's roommate at Bowdoin College and close confidant Thomas Marcelle said that once you become a statewide figure, like Laffey, "statewide races become open to you, whether it be for lieutenant governor, general treasurer or U.S. Senate."

"The thing that always surprises me about Steve Laffey is that here is the mayor of the third-largest city in Rhode Island and everyone has him running for five or six different offices," said Marcelle who defended the city in 2003 from a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union over a holiday display.

Jim Hackett, another member of Laffey's inner circle, notes that the Senate race keeps changing and that Laffey needs time to digest the landscape.

Secretary of State Matt Brown and former Attorney General Sheldon Whitehouse have both declared as Democrats. U.S. Representatives Patrick J. Kennedy and James R. Langevin both toyed with the idea of running but decided against it.

Hackett says pressure on Laffey is mounting and points to a conservative Web site, chuckmuth.com, where a petition urges Laffey to challenge Chafee.

David Keating, executive director of the Club for Growth, a conservative organization that has bankrolled races against moderate Republicans, said the Chafee race "is definitely on our radar."

Keating's group has not formally studied Laffey's record or backed any candidate, but he said Laffey seems in-line with his organization.

"From what we've heard . . . he's willing to take on wasteful, entrenched interests that really have no concern for the local taxpayer," Keating said.

Steven Moore, president of the Free Enterprise Fund, a conservative lobbying group, said that "it's not hard to get to the right of Lincoln Chafee. He's easily the most liberal Republican in the Senate."

Moore, who is also a former president of the Club for Growth, said that it's "certainly a potential" that someone could beat Chafee in a primary, because Republican primary voters "tend to be more conservative than general voters."

But, he warned, "there's real danger that even if you can beat Chafee in a primary, that all you're going to be doing is turning it over to a more-liberal Democrat."

In a heavily Democratic state such as Rhode Island, Moore said, "Unfortunately for conservatives, Lincoln Chafee might be the best you can get."