Lincoln Chafee Presidential Campaign, 2016 (The More Things Changed)

Lincoln Chafee, the 74th Governor of Rhode Island, former United States Senator, and former Mayor of Warwick, formally launched his 2016 presidential campaign on June 3, 2015 at a speech at the George Mason Center for Politics & Foreign Relations in Arlington, Virginia. His campaign marked the first time a candidate from Rhode Island had sought the nomination of a major party.

Although Chafee failed to secure the Democratic nomination and finished in fourth place, his dovish candidacy, founded on the twin promises of "waging peace" and election reform, was supported by fervent grassroots support, making him a key figure in recent Anerican populism.

Background
Chafee's father, John Chafee, was the senior United States Senator from Rhode Island; he had intended to retire and not seek reelection in 2000, and Lincoln had intended to run for and win his father's seat the same year. On October 24, 1999, however, John Chafee died, and Republican Governor Lincoln Almond appointed his son to fill the vacancy. Due to the proximity between his appointment and the scheduled election in 2000, no special election was called. Chafee was elected to his seat outright with a 57% majority against his Democratic opponent, U.S. Representative Robert Weygand.

Chafee was seen as the most liberal Senator of his party, and faced a tough primary battle against Cranston Mayor Steve Laffey in 2006, which he won by a 55 to 45 percent margin. His battle with Laffey in the primary significantly drained his campaign funds, and Chafee lost to Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse, one of six Republican seats lost when Democrats regained their majority in the midterm elections of 2006.

After his Senate loss, Chafee left the Republican Party, saying, "it's not my party anymore". After a hiatus from politics, he announced his candidacy for Governor of Rhode Island in the 2010 election; in a seven-way race, Chafee won the governorship with 36 percent of the vote. Having previously indicated the possibility that he might run for re-election for Governor as a Democrat, Chafee officially joined the Democratic Party in February 2012, shortly after being named one of President Barack Obama's re-election campaign co-chairs.

He chose to run for re-election in 2014, and faced a tough primary fight against Treasurer Gina Raimondo and Providence Mayor Angel Taveras. After winning the primary, he won the general election with just over 45% of the vote against the Republican nominee, Cranston Mayor Allan Fung, and Moderate Party nominee Robert J. Healy.

Twelve Points for Prosperity through Peace

 * Electoral Reform
 * No Ambassadorship for Sale
 * No Torture
 * No Warrantless Wiretapping
 * Bring Edward Snowden home
 * No Drone Strikes
 * Fair Trade Agreements
 * Reduce Tensions with Russia
 * Repair Relations with Latin America
 * End the War on Drugs
 * Ban Capital Punishment
 * Go Metric

Chafee's campaign was often centered on foreign policy, and consistently took more strident antiwar positions than his primary opponents. He initially outlined his "Ten Points for Prosperity through Peace" as the basis of his campaign.

Fundraising
Governor Chafee's campaign relied heavily on small donors. However, three SuperPACs supported his candidacy:, which was founded by CGeneral Campaign Chairman Lawrence Lessig and led by anti-corruption advocate Cyrus Patten, Honesty PAC - led by longtime Chafee staffer and advisor Kenny Alston - and Cenk Uygur's.

By the time Chafee suspended his campaign on April 27, he reported $16,418,135 in receipts.

Early State Contests
Immediately following his announcement at George Mason, Chafee attended a pre-scheduled event with local Democrats in Grafton county, New Hampshire. Because of his longstanding New England ties, and proximity to Rhode Island, New Hampshire became the crux of his campaign's strategy over the Iowa caucuses, where he finished in a distant 4th place.

In the February 9th New Hampshire primary, the three top-polling candidates in the state - Governor Chafee, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and New York Congressman Bernie Sanders - finished in a near-tie. The results of the primary were not certified until the following afternoon, where Chafee finished in 2nd place, behind Sanders and ahead of Clinton by only a few thousand votes.

Chafee's campaign did not significantly contest the Nevada caucuses or the South Carolina primary election, despite winning delegates in each, choosing instead to focus on the Super Tuesday and other March contests, where he and his staff believed they had a greater chance of victory.

March Contests
Chafee's near-win in New Hampshire gave his campaign a boost in fundraising efforts and momentum. The campaign's Super Tuesday strategy focused on Vermont, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Colorado.

In the Minnesota caucuses, Hillary Clinton's narrow and unexpected win led to tension between supporters of Governor Chafee's campaign and supporters of the Sanders campaign. 41 students were arrested at protests and clashes at the University of Minnesota.

Chafee won the Maine caucuses on March 6th, giving much-needed lift to his campaign. His victory came as a surprise to many newscasters and pundits, who had largely written off his campaign, and the consistent polling lead of Rep. Sanders in the state. Chafee credited his win as "I listened to the people. Even if only a single person were there with me and my staff, I listened to them. I did my homework and it paid off."

Encouraging preliminary results from the Democrats Abroad primary - later confirmed as a win - further bolstered his campaign, which he sought to capitalize on with publicized international foreign policy trips. In an unusual move for a presidential candidate, he campaigned heavily in the state of Alaska - which he later won - for its relatively small share of delegates, as part of his "seaside strategy."

Later Contests
Chafee suspended his campaign on April 26th, following the Acela primary contests and failing to carry his home state of Rhode Island.

"Seaside Strategy"
Throughout the campaign, Chafee pursued a strategy of focusing on small towns and cities, particularly those dependent on waterways. Senior campaign strategist Bill Fischer coined the phrase "small town strategy" - dubbed the "seaside strategy" by Politico - to describe Chafee's focus on and eventual wins in Maine and Alaska.

Chafee's campaign was also notable for scheduling a stop in Barrow, Alaska (officially Utqiaġvik since October 2016). Chafee gave a speech at Iḷisaġvik College about his stance on environmental issues, and supporting communities threatened by climate change and environmental change. He repeated much of the same topics in a speech at Valdez, Alaska, site of one of the worst oil spills and ecological disasters in American history.

Foreign Policy
Chafee was the only Republican in the Senate to vote against authorization of the use of force in Iraq. On June 22, 2006, he was the only Republican to vote for the Levin amendment calling for a nonbinding timetable for a withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. Chafee voted against the Kerry-Feingold amendment calling for a binding timetable.

In November 2006, immediately following the midterm elections, Chafee joined key Democrats in opposing President Bush's renomination of John Bolton as United States Ambassador to the United Nations. On December 4, 2006, the White House announced that Bolton would no longer seek the appointment, and would resign within a matter of weeks. Throughout the campaign trail, Chafee pointed to this moment, along with his lone Republican vote against the Iraq War, as his two proudest foreign policy moments as a Senator.

Chafee has been a consistent critic of what he termed the prevailing attitude of arrogance and recklessness on matters of war and peace that characterized those years [of the Bush administration.]

Despite being a frequent supporter of free trade agreements, he has stated that he would have the Trans-Pacific Partnership re-negotiated, particularly to lessen the restrictions on copyrights and patents.

International Trips
Main article: Lincoln Chafee International Trips, 2016 (The More Things Changed)

From March 10th through 14th, March 27th through April 3rd, and April 10th through April 13th, Chafee underwent a series of international trips to bolster his foreign policy credentials. The three legs of his trips were focused on Latin America, Israel and the Middle East, and on Europe. A fourth leg, focused on Asia and the Pacific, was planned but never implemented.

"The Chafee Corollary"
During his March 10th speech at Rafael Landívar University, he gave what was he termed the "Manifest Obligation" - dubbed the "Chafee Corollary" by members of the press - that called for a focus on Latin America and the obligation of the United States to protect and aid the rest of the Americas, stating: "'Under the Monroe Doctrine, first articulated over 200 years ago, the United States claimed the Americas were our own domain to protect or conquer this continent as we pleased. We then claimed a Manifest Destiny, to claim land as though it were a divine imperative. In the past century, neoconservatives claimed wars of intervention, for the sake of supporting brutal anti-Communist dictators as though it were a humanitarian imperative. It was not true. In this new century of progress and openness, we have an obligation to wage peace in our hemisphere. It is our Manifest Obligation. It is our own imperative for this new century.'"

Domestic Policy
While serving in the U.S. Senate, Chafee was characterized as a "moderate Republican." Later, as governor of Rhode Island, he pursued a centrist agenda that alienated special interests on both the left and right, "from unions to the state's Roman Catholic bishop." On domestic issues, he advocated for a general policy of pragmatic fiscal conservatism and liberal social policies.

Central to Chafee's domestic policy was the need for dire election reform.

Citizen Equality Act of 2017
The Citizen Equality Act was the centerpiece of Chafee's campaign finance and electoral reform program, largely crafted and promoted by senior advisor Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard professor who had previously served as an informal advisor to Representative Bernie Sanders' campaign before becoming disillusioned and reaching out to the Chafee campaign.

Among its provisions, the act would:
 * Restore and strengthen voting rights (including automatic registration and making election day a holiday);
 * End gerrymandering by replacing current single-member districts with independently determined, multi-member districts in which ranked choice voting is used to achieve better representation of all citizens' views;
 * Establish "citizen-funded elections," in which each citizen is given a voucher to distribute public funding in a decentralized way, with matching funds for small donations out of pocket as well; and
 * Put strong limits on the revolving door between government work and lobbying.

Homeland Security and Privacy
While a United States Senator, Chafee voted for the USA Patriot Act and its expansion of government surveillance powers in the fight against terror and has said he strongly opposes the use of the Patriot Act by the National Security Agency to collect Americans' phone data en mass. Chafee has said that the Fourth Amendment is clear about its protections, and law enforcement must get a warrant before collecting any phone data, stating during the first Democratic debate "I believe that under the Fourth Amendment, you should be able to do surveillance, but you need a warrant."

Alone of any Democratic candidate, or any other candidate in the 2016 election, Chafee supported bringing former NSA contractor and leaker Edward Snowden home from his self-imposed exile in Tivat Airport, Montenegro, without bringing federal charges against him. During his international tour of Europe, he met with Snowden and again repeated his intention, if elected, to bring him back to the United States without prosecution.

National Initiative
Chafee also supported adding an amendment to the Constiution to allow for a national initiative, to allow for an initiative to be petitioned at the federal level.

Media Coverage
Although he initially polled in the single digits and with little traditional media coverage, Chafee used social media to help his campaign gain momentum. His campaign utilized Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Tumblr and Reddit. Chafee gained a large online grassroots following, with supporters rallying support on Twitter under the hashtags #WeNeedLinc and #BringHimHome, a reference to NSA leaker Edward Snowden.

Platform Committee
Ordinarily, the Chair of the Democratic National Committee appoints the members of the Platform Committee, with a non-voting member of each remaining campaign. On April 6th, the Democratic National Committee announced that Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the DNC Chair, would only appoint three - the Clinton, O'Malley, Sanders, and Chafee campaigns would each appoint three members to the Platform Committee.

The Chafee campaign announced its selections for the committee as:
 * Former U.S. Senator Mike Gravel (D-AK)
 * State Representative Elizabeth Edwards (D-NH)
 * Former DNC Chair Debra DeLee

In addition, Harvard Professor and the campaign's General Chairman, Lawrence Lessig, was selected as his campaign's nonvoting representative.

Following the adoption of the platform, former Senator Mike Gravel expressed his dissatisfaction with the lack of an endorsement of a National Initiative and criticized the platform as "imperialist" and "a total shame." Just as in 2008, he left the Democratic Party and joined the Libertarian Party, where the National Initiative was adopted.