PROVIDENCE -- After a two-week reprieve, the rat-a-tat-tat of TV attack ads began anew yesterday with a full-fledged assault by an arm of the national Democratic Party against U.S. Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee.

The issue: port security.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee skewered Chafee for voting against a half-dozen attempts by Senate Democrats, since 2003, to increase and, in some cases, double and triple federal spending on mercantile cargo inspections and security research grants.

The tone of the ad -- and its allegation that Chafee "voted six separate times against making our ports more secure" -- was not only sharply disputed by the Chafee camp, it provided a preview of what's to come between now and Nov. 7 in one of the key states in the battle for control of the U.S. Senate.

Quiet since his expensive and hard-fought Sept. 12 win over Republican primary challenger Stephen P. Laffey, Chafee yesterday launched the first ad of his own campaign to keep Democratic challenger Sheldon Whitehouse at bay.

Looking relaxed in a blue button-down, open-collar Oxford shirt, with the living room of his Exeter farm in the background, Chafee urges viewers to ignore his opponents' efforts to put him in an ideological box.

First, "I was attacked by the right for being too liberal; now I'm being attacked by the left for being too conservative. That puts me in the middle, where I've always been, with you," says Chafee, looking directly into the camera and never once mentionning his party affiliation.

Chafee spent yesterday in Washington waiting for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's signal on what happens next in the immigration debate, while Whitehouse careened from a commercial food-workers event at the Venus de Milo in Swansea to a 50th birthday bash for a Cranston mayoral candidate.

Next month, U.S. senator and potential 2008 presidential contender John McCain, of Arizona, headlines an Oct. 4 fundraiser for Chafee; Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., comes to town Oct. 12 to help Whitehouse raise money.

While their campaigns continue to line up fundraisers and debates, including a likely AARP-Channel 6 debate scheduled to air Oct. 28, the two candidates -- and their backers -- made their case on the small screen.

Chafee's pitch: "Only by having the independence and courage to put people before party, and solutions over sound bites are we going to get our country back on track."

Asked in what way Republican Chafee believed the GOP-led Congress had steered the country off track, his campaign manager, Ian Lang, said: "What most people will tell you is that Congress has become too partisan . . . more interested in scoring partisan political points than [what is in] the best interest of the country." He described "independent man" Chafee as a needed voice of reason with a displayed willingness to buck his party.

Whitehouse has been on air since the day after the Sept. 12 primary.

His implicit message: that a vote for the unmentioned Chafee is a vote for a Republican-controlled Senate that will advance the "failed" policies of President Bush, whose approval rating in Rhode Island is an abysmal 22 percent. His argument: "A Democratic Senate changes the direction of our nation."

Lang accuses Whitehouse of running "as the generic Democrat" who "doesn't talk about who he is or what, as a leader, he has done."

But DSCC spokesman Phil Singer yesterday called Chafee's attempt to disassociate himself from the far right and the far left "irrelevant."

"What's wrong with it?" Singer asked rhetorically. "What's wrong with it is it glosses over one of the central issues in this race, which is that he is complicit in advancing a Republican agenda that's wrong for the country and wrong for Rhode Island . . . if you care about the environment, if you care about health care, if you care about getting the situation in Iraq right."

The DSCC ad plays to fears of a terrorist attack, while seeking to undermine Republican claims to strength in the antiterrorism arena and Chafee's own stature as a member of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

The ad also revives this centerpiece of Laffey's campaign to paint Chafee as a wasteful spender: his October 2005 vote against redirecting $223 million from the so-called "Bridge to Nowhere" -- connecting the Alaskan port town of Ketchikan to Gravina Island, home to an airport and about 50 people -- to hurricane-related highway repairs in Louisiana.

The amendment failed, 82 to 15, with both Chafee and Rhode Island Democrat Jack Reed voting against it. But the new DSCC ad cites the millions more Congress spent on a parking garage for an art museum in Nebraska, sweet potato research in Mississippi, and asparagus technology in Washington to say of Chafee: "Securing pork, not our ports."

Accusing the DSCC of distortion, Lang said Chafee has supported more than $10 billion in spending on port security programs over the last five years that has led to the use, for example, of radiation monitors and detection devices "to protect against radiological and nuclear threats" and the posting of inspectors overseas to screen cargo bound for the United States.

Of the Democrat-sponsored amendments he opposed, Lang said, "Senator Chafee does not favor using taxpayer dollars to throw money at a problem," only "thoughtful amendments which contain real plans to increase security and do not bring our nation further into debt." He said the six votes cited in the DSCC ad did not measure up.

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