The Cranston mayor and U.S. Senate hopeful says he's not seeking an endorsement at the state Republican Party's "charade of a convention" tonight.

01:00 AM EDT on Thursday, June 29, 2006

BY KATHERINE GREGG
Journal State House Bureau

PROVIDENCE -- On the eve of tonight's state GOP convention, Cranston Mayor Stephen P. Laffey announced that he was not even "seeking" his party's endorsement to challenge U.S. Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee in September's Republican primary.

That, of course, begs the question: Did Laffey try and fail to wrest the nomination away from the maverick Rhode Island Republican who has held the seat since 1999?

Suggesting the battle was over months ago when state party leaders agreed to take $500,000 from the national GOP with the proviso they back Chafee's reelection, Laffey said: "The state party made clear last September they prefer the insider candidate over the reformer and I have no interest in participating in their charade of a convention.

"I belong to the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan and am more interested in the endorsement of each individual Republican primary voter," Laffey said.

A spokeswoman said Laffey will spend the evening campaigning in Johnston, and then hitting a coffee hour in Warwick instead.

But Chafee, of course, is hoping tonight's vote by the 245-delegate convention will publicly reaffirm his popularity within his own party, dispel the notion that his best and perhaps only hope of surviving the Sept. 12 primary is a huge influx of unaffiliated voters, and demonstrate to political pulse-takers both inside and outside Rhode Island that "I am the only candidate who can take on and defeat the Democrats in a general election."

"These are people who care passionately about the Republican Party, not party insiders," Chafee campaign manager Ian Lang said yesterday after it had become increasingly apparent that Laffey would not publicly fight for the nomination, delegate by delegate.

Starting at 6:30 p.m. at Rhodes on the Pawtuxet, the convention is being hosted by The Rhode Island Republican State Central Committee.

As of March 31, the state party committee had only $31,205 in the bank.

As of yesterday, there were only 68,838 registered Republicans in the state out of 663,489 registered voters statewide. The party holds the governor's office, but controls only one of Rhode Island's four seats in Washington and fewer than two dozen of 113 General Assembly seats.

And recent history abounds with instances where the party endorsement did not equate to a GOP primary win.

In 1992, J. Michael Levesque, then mayor of West Warwick and now one of Harrah's most visible casino promoters, won the state GOP endorsement for governor, only to lose the primary to last-minute candidate Elizabeth Leonard, the owner of a Seekonk car dealership who was subsequently beaten by then-Gov. Bruce Sundlun.

In 1994, a party nominating committee favored former U.S. Attorney Lincoln C. Almond over Republican U.S. Rep. Ronald Machtley in the race for governor; the GOP state convention opted to give the endorsement to Machtley instead. Almond won the primary and the office.

In 2002, party leaders endorsed James Bennett for governor over retired business executive and political newcomer Donald Carcieri, who also went on to win the primary and the office.

On June 16, a tiny nominating committee headed by Republican lawyer Bruce Wolpert voted to recommend the party's endorsements go to Chafee in the U.S. Senate race; newcomer Edmund Leather in his bid for the 1st Congressional District seat held by Rep. Patrick Kennedy; Carcieri for governor; political unknown Kernan "Kerry" King for lieutenant governor; William Harsch for attorney general; and Warwick Councilwoman Sue Stenhouse for secretary of state.

Asked why the nominating committee endorsed Chafee over Laffey, Wolpert said "there are many Republicans who support the type of Republicanism that Linc Chafee espouses . . . from economic policy to social policy." It is "a more moderate type of Republicanism," he said, than "you get in other parts of the country."

Only 8 of the 13 nominating committee members voted, and they included the head of Chafee's Rhode Island district office, John R. Pagliarini. Others voting along with Wolpert were state party chairwoman Patricia Morgan, John Kendrick, Mike Salvatore, Agnes Lapointe, Jane Anthony and Saverio DeRuggiero, according to state party staff.

Since then, the state's former adjutant general, Reginald Centracchio, has put previous commitments to the test by announcing his Republican candidacy for lieutenant governor. Hedging his bets, Carcieri yesterday said of King: "I'm not backing off. I said he's a great candidate . . . but now it's a primary and you've got two excellent candidates."

Which is not to say the race for lieutenant governor will steal all the thunder from Rhode Island's nationally watched U.S. Senate race, or that Laffey's loyalists will not try, in some way, to make a statement.

In an interview earlier this week, state National Republican Committeeman Robert Manning questioned "whether the delegates as a whole are representative of Republican voter opinion."

"I believe the registered Republican voters in this state are probably reasonably mainstream with Republicans voters value-wise across the country, which would put the senator significantly to the left of mainstream Republican voters and the mayor pretty much square on."

As the party's national committeeman, Manning said: "It bothers me when I see a significant number of Republican delegates voting for somebody who has voted against mainstream Republican principles numerous times in the last year and a half. Just in recent days, he voted against the repeal of the estate tax."

But, "where the delegates are, I think, is a more challenging question," Manning said, because "they may vote for somebody they think can win as opposed to somebody who necessarily represents their values" and "the resulting vote . . . may not be reflective of what Republican voters will do in the fall."

The tiny world of Rhode Island Republican politics was brimming with rumors yesterday that Laffey loyalists might abstain or walk out during the endorsement vote. All his spokeswoman Nachama Soloveichik would say is: "This office is not encouraging putting his name in nomination."

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