Lincoln Chafee outside his office at Brown University. The former Republican U.S. senator says his old party has swung too far to the right.

The Providence Journal / Kathy Borchers

The cameras focused on a tearful Jesse Jackson, and the reporters seemed more interested in talking to Spike Lee, Brad Pitt and Oprah.

But at Chicago’s Grant Park, when President-elect Barack Obama declared “Change has come to America,” there was another face in the crowd that Rhode Islanders would have recognized. Former U.S. Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee, the Republican-turned-independent who campaigned for Obama, was about 20 feet from the side of the stage.

Chafee and his wife, Stephanie, waved to Obama’s brother-in-law, Craig Robinson, and his wife and two children. The Robinsons, who were on stage with Obama, used to live next to the Chafees on Barnes Street in Providence when Robinson coached men’s basketball at Brown University.

While the CNN cameras never found Chafee in the crowd, his proximity to “this defining moment” for the Democratic president-elect brought into focus Chafee’s unusual political path. At the same time, it shed light on the status of New England Republicans, an increasingly endangered species.

Chafee, 55, a former Warwick mayor who followed his father’s footsteps to the U.S. Senate, is now a visiting fellow at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies. During an interview in his Thayer Street office last week, he talked about the work he did for Obama over the past few months.

In early September, Chafee campaigned in Florida as part of “Republicans and independents for Obama.” In mid-October, he traveled throughout Ohio and Michigan. And at another point, he drove to New Hampshire to provide a counterpoint to a pro-McCain news conference by Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman, a Democrat-turned-independent.

Chafee said his campaign-trail message was: “We’ve got a lot of repair work to do after the last eight years, and [Obama] is the best candidate to begin that repair work, to pull the country together and get us back economically, environmentally, internationally.”

As he traveled through Columbus, Ohio, and Grand Rapids, Mich., and points in between, Chafee said he gained an appreciation for Obama’s campaign organization. “Amazingly, it seems like every town has an Obama headquarters,” he said. “They just had so many volunteers that they could afford to have little headquarters where they canvass the neighborhood, ID the voters and make sure they get out on Election Day in these key states.”

As it turned out, Obama won all four battleground states that Chafee visited. So Chafee was the key to victory, right? Hardly, he said, joking that at least he “didn’t do any damage.”

Chafee said Obama’s victory was more of a reflection on Mr. Bush’s presidency than on McCain’s campaign. But he said he thought McCain lost credibility by pandering to the right wing of the Republican Party. McCain might have felt he had to do that given his experience in the 2000 presidential election, “but it was so transparent,” he said.

For example, Chafee said he and McCain were the only Republican senators to vote against the Bush tax cuts of 2001, but as a candidate, McCain favored making those tax cuts permanent. Also, Chafee said he and McCain opposed drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but as a candidate, McCain joined the crowd chanting “drill, drill, drill.”

And then there was McCain’s choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate. “That was the final wet kiss to the right — a big, sloppy kiss to the far right,” Chafee said.

He speculated McCain might have faced a floor fight at the GOP convention if he’d chosen a running mate such as former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, who supports keeping abortion legal. But, he said, “It’s just surprising to me that having secured the nomination, [McCain] couldn’t come to the middle.”

Chafee said he believes McCain’s loss and recent Republican congressional losses should prompt the GOP to become more moderate. But, he said, “I’m pessimistic that the party is going to change. They are just going to dig into their bunker, and the Rush Limbaughs and the Sean Hannitys and the Bill O’Reillys will be screaming away.”

Chafee noted he was branded a RINO (Republican In Name Only), and this week a conservative Web site — humanevents.com — posted an article under the headline “RINO Season Is Now Open.” The strategy of targeting fellow Republicans doesn’t make sense, he said, because “you can’t be a party of a few Deep South states and a few Rocky Mountain states and expect to be in the majority and have the chair of committees.”

Chafee lost the 2006 election to Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse after withstanding a Republican primary against former Cranston Mayor Stephen P. Laffey. Last year, he became an unaffiliated voter, saying the Republican Party had moved too far from his stances on critical issues.

Why didn’t he just become a Democrat? “It took me a long time to think of leaving the Republican Party, and that’s another big step to become a Democrat,” he said. “It was fun being a Republican in Rhode Island with [former U.S. Rep.] Ron Machtley, [former U.S. Rep.] Claudine Schneider, my Dad, Governor Almond — these are my kind of Republicans.”

But his kind of Republicans is becoming scarce in these parts. On Monday, the only Republican House member from New England — U.S. Rep. Christopher Shays, of Connecticut — spoke at Brown University about being “shell shocked” by his defeat in the Nov. 4 election. Shays said that over the last decade the GOP seemed to become less concerned about finding practical solutions than about espousing an ideology that played to the religious right and punishing perceived disloyalty.

Chafee had a similar take, saying that over the years it has become increasingly difficult for Republicans to win in New England, and after the tenure of President Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney, “it’s almost Mission Impossible.” The Republican “brand” might be at its lowest point, he said. “Post-Watergate, those were dark years, but I think this is worse.”

So what has happened to the New England Republicans once epitomized by his father, the late Sen. John H. Chafee? Chafee traced the decline back to 1964 when Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater opposed that year’s Civil Rights Act and won some formerly Democratic Southern states.

Chafee said New England Republicans stood for “the green eye shade — we were the fiscal conservatives, balance the books.” He said, “We didn’t care about the social issues as much. If two gay people want to get married, that’s fine. And abortion — the courts have ruled on that, let’s leave that alone. The environment is very important: Yes, there is a role for government to play in making sure there is clean air and clean water.”

When he appeared recently on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show, Chafee recalled telling fellow Republican senators: “It breaks my heart to hear the Democrats talking about fiscal discipline. That used to be such a Republican virtue, and it’s completely been torn to shreds under the Bush/Cheney administration.”

During the interview at his office, he said he opposed farm subsidies that “came back under Bush/Cheney because those are red states.” He noted he was the only Republican senator who voted against the Iraqi war resolution in 2002, and he voted against the Medicare prescription drug benefit.

“These are hundreds of billions of dollars — each of the things I mentioned. I voted against all of them,” Chafee said. “I’m a true conservative.”

Chafee said President Bush inherited a surplus, a solid economy and a relatively peaceful world, and he’s leaving office amid a deficit, economic strife and “conflict in every corner.” He said he can’t think of a single good thing that Bush and Cheney accomplished in eight years.

No progress was made on environmental issues, he said. As a candidate, Mr. Bush pledged to regulate carbon dioxide emissions. But Chafee, who just finished reading Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency, said the vice president “took malleable putty that was George W. Bush and molded it — so skillfully — and he got the president to go back on his campaign promise to regulate carbon dioxide.”

Given his interest in that issue, is Chafee hoping to become Obama’s choice to head the Environmental Protection Agency? “I see different, you know, rumors,” Chafee replied cautiously. But, he said, “Nothing happening right now as we sit here, so...”

So … is he interested in some kind of position in the Obama administration? It depends on what the position would be, he said, explaining that he “came away fairly disillusioned” after seven years as a senator in Washington, D.C. “But at the same time, if I can contribute in some way to getting this country back on track, I would.”

Does he see himself running for elected office again? “Yes, I think that’s possible,” he said, later adding: “There are options, obviously, in 2010 here in Rhode Island.”

When asked if he’s interested in running for mayor of Providence in 2010, Chafee replied, “It’s an option.” While he’s renting out his former home in Warwick and still registered to vote in Exeter, where he lived after returning from Washington, he bought a house in Providence in 2006.

What about running for governor in 2010?

“I’ll make that decision some time down the road,” Chafee said. “If I ran statewide, I assume it would be as some kind of independent.”

At Brown, Chafee leads a study group with the highfalutin title: “Whither America?” But if the students are looking for a challenging assignment, they might want to ponder another question: Whither Chafee?

efitzpat@projo.com