Sen. Lincoln Chafee, right, and Cranston Mayor Steve Laffey await the start of a debate at Toll Gate High School, in Warwick.

The Providence Journal / Ruben W. Perez

The national Republican party’s support of U.S. Sen. Lincoln Chafee’s reelection campaign in 2006 was one of many sins that led to the party’s defeat in the midterm elections, according to a new political memoir, Primary Mistake, by former Cranston Mayor Steve Laffey, who lost a primary challenge to Chafee last year.

Laffey argues that the national party “sabotaged” his U.S. Senate campaign and turned its back on its own principles by fiercely supporting the more liberal Chafee over a conservative challenger who lined up more closely with the party on the issues.

“Support for Chafee was not a moment of weakness or an aberration due to extenuating circumstances, but a symptom of a greater malaise, rotting the Republican Party at its core,” writes Laffey. “It was a sign that our leaders had not only turned their backs on Republican values, they had turned their backs on Republicans. It was a sign that they had stopped listening; the sound of their own egos was simply too loud.”

The book, to be released Thursday, is written for a national audience of politically active Republicans and right-leaning independents — the kind of people “who sent 25 bucks to my campaign,” Laffey says. “I hope people in Rhode Island read it and love it, and they may laugh a little bit harder at some of the stories — but as I wrote it, my mind was always thinking about outside of Rhode Island — Nebraska or Virginia; what would someone in Virginia think?”

Several books about the 2006 election have already been published, notably The Thumpin’, a study of the Democrats’ candidate recruitment and campaign strategy.

In an interview last week, Laffey says his book comes from the trenches of political battle. “I knew that people would write books about the election from what I call the 40,000-foot level — total policy, written maybe by academics,” he explained. “I thought the country could use a book by a crop duster, someone who was on the ground level.”

Although the book briefly covers Laffey’s time as mayor, the focus is on his campaign to unseat Chafee in the Republican primary a year ago. The narrative travels from debates and behind-the-scenes strategy sessions to advertisements and door-knocking and the Laffey campaign’s efforts to seed its message into political blogs and radio talk shows.

National Republican Party leaders had calculated that Chafee — who voted against authorizing the Iraq war and many of President Bush’s other initiatives — was the only Republican who could win in Rhode Island, especially in a national climate turning against the GOP. The party unleashed an attack campaign against Laffey, which he says was unprecedented among Republicans. The antitax group Club for Growth came to Laffey’s aid, providing money and advertising during the campaign.

Referring to Chafee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Laffey writes: “Their entire campaign was focused on demonizing me and turning the U.S. Senate race into a huge slime fest.”

Chafee won the race by 8 percentage points in an election that smashed the state record for voter turnout in a Republican primary.

But the general election was another matter.

With polls showing that President Bush was more unpopular in Rhode Island than in other state, Chafee’s Democratic opponent, former Attorney General Sheldon Whitehouse, pounded a single issue throughout the campaign, reminding voters that Chafee supported Republican leadership of the U.S. Senate. Whitehouse won the general election, claiming a critical seat in his party’s 51-49 takeover of the chamber.

LAFFEY’S PUBLISHER, Sentinel, an imprint of publishing giant Penguin Group, had promised five months ago that the blunt, former two-term mayor would “name names” in his book, and Laffey delivers plenty of names. He blasts national GOP leaders, including Republican National Chairman Ken Mehlman and U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole, head of the NRSC, for trying to persuade Laffey to run for lieutenant governor and leave the Senate to Chafee. Laffey also criticizes President Bush for allowing the national party to “slime” Laffey with attack ads. The money spent attacking him here in Rhode Island, Laffey argues, could have been used to save Senators George Allen in Virginia or Conrad Burns in Montana, who lost close races to Democratic challengers.

The book skewers a few local political figures as well, such as former Cranston City Councilman and GOP city chairman Randy Jackvony, a political adversary.

He writes: “Jackvony couldn’t find room in his massive ego to put the Cranston taxpayers ahead of himself … Jackvony was the kind of guy who’d rather be a general in a phone booth than a captain in a real army.” He claims Jackvony was among a group of local Republicans who told him in 2002 he could not run for mayor because the party already had a candidate. Laffey ran and won.

In an interview last week, Jackvony denied telling anybody they “could not” run. He responded: “Does the book say on the first page, ‘Inspired by a true story?’ Knowing Steve, I’d expect there’s a kernel of truth somewhere in there that he blows up into myth.”

Jackvony says he tried to recruit Laffey to run for mayor, but Laffey declined, saying he wanted to run for Congress. Only after many party officials had lined up behind another mayoral candidate did Laffey change his mind, Jackvony said.

Laffey subtitled the book How the Washington Republican Establishment Lost Everything in 2006 (and Sabotaged My Senatorial Campaign). But he saves the sharpest barbs for his former primary opponent:

“For many Republicans,” he writes, “Senator Chafee’s liberal positions were more than enough reason to vote him out of office. For others, his inefficacy and his follower status made him, not so much a thorn in their side, but an embarrassment. … I ran because there were real problems in this country, and Chafee didn’t have the guts or capacity to take hold of the reins and lead.”

Chafee is also called: a “backstabber,” a “confessed cocaine abuser,” “fickle” and “a dull fellow,” a “limousine liberal,” a “Ted Kennedy Republican,” a “possible member of a Neville Chamberlain fan club” and “the most spectacularly failed investment of the 2006 election cycle.”

Responds Chafee: “He’s still smarting over the whippin’ I gave him, I guess.”

Laffey’s argument is flawed at its core, Chafee says, considering the hurricane-force headwind, driven by an unpopular war, blowing into the face of Republicans in the last election.

“Nobody ever thought Steve Laffey could win a general election race in Rhode Island in 2006,” says Chafee. “He had no chance and everybody knew it. I voted against every major Bush initiative and I still lost. Imagine what would have happened to Steve Laffey. He would have gotten 20 percent of the vote, tops.” Laffey lost his home precinct in Cranston. “The people who knew him the best voted against him — his own neighbors.”

A poll one week before the primary by the independent pollster Rasmussen Reports put Whitehouse more than 25 points ahead of Laffey in a hypothetical matchup.

Laffey’s memoir doesn’t speculate in depth about how he might have done against Whitehouse. “The theme of the book is when you put power over principle, you end up with neither,” he said. He ends the book with a “hopeful” chapter, offering a road map back to power for the Republican Party. “The moral of the Rhode Island primary,” Laffey writes, “is this: The growth and victory of the Republican Party will depend, not on vilifying people, but on spreading the ideas of limited government, economic growth, a strong national security, and reform.”

marsenau@projo.com