Lincoln Chafee (The More Things Changed)

Lincoln Davenport Chafee (/ˈtʃeɪfiː/; born March 26, 1953) is an American politician and diplomat from Rhode Island, and the current United States Ambassador to the Organization of American States. He served as mayor of Warwick from 1993 to 1999, as a United States Senator from 1999 to 2007, and as the 74th Governor of Rhode Island from 2011 to 2017. He is a member of the Democratic Party, having previously been a Republican until 2007.

The son of Republican politician John Chafee, who served as the 66th Governor of Rhode Island, the United States Secretary of the Navy, and a U.S. Senator from Rhode Island, Lincoln Chafee's first elected office was as a member of the Warwick City Council in 1985. After John Chafee died in 1999 while serving in the United States Senate, Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Almond appointed Lincoln Chafee to fill his father's seat in the U.S. Senate to which he was elected to a full term in 2000 as candidate of the Republican Party.

Chafee's tenure in the United States Senate was characterized by his support for fiscal and social policies that often opposed those promoted by the Republican Party. He was defeated in his 2006 reelection bid by Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse. Chafee subsequently shifted his affiliation towards the Democratic Party by first endorsing Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election, running as an independent for Governor of Rhode Island in 2010, serving as the co-chair of Obama's 2012 re-election campaign, when he formally announced his affiliation to the Democratic Party. He was re-elected in 2014 in a three-way contest.

In 2015, he sought nomination to be the Democratic candidate in the 2016 presidential election, and received 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 American populism. In 2016 Chafee formed a political organization, Not By a Mile, to educate voters about issues, get people involved in the political process, and work to organize and elect other pro-peace candidates.

On February 13th, 2017, Chafee was nominated by President Hillary Clinton to serve as Ambassador to the Organization of American States. On March 20th, formal diplomatic agreement to the appointment was received from the administration of OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro.

Early Life and Education
Lincoln Davenport Chafee was born on March 26, 1953 in Providence, Rhode Island, the son of Virginia (née Coates) and John Chafee. Chafee's great-great-grandfather, Henry Lippitt, was Governor of Rhode Island. Among his great-great-uncles are Rhode Island Governor Charles Warren Lippitt and United States Senator Henry Frederick Lippitt. His great-uncle, Zechariah Chafee, was a Harvard law professor and a notable civil libertarian. The Chafee family was among the earliest settlers of Hingham, Massachusetts, before moving south to Rhode Island. On his mother's side, his great-grandfather, George de Forest Brush, was a prolific painter in the American Renaissance, and his great-aunt was painter and theater designer Nancy Douglas Bowditch.

He attended public schools in Warwick, Rhode Island, Providence Country Day School, and later, Phillips Academy. At Brown University, Chafee captained the wrestling team, and in 1975 earned a Bachelor of Arts in Classics. He then attended the Montana State University Farrier School (horseshoeing school) in Bozeman. For the next seven years, he worked as a farrier at harness racetracks in the United States and Canada. One of the horses he shod, Overburden, set the track record at Northlands Park in Edmonton, Alberta. In describing how his time as a farrier affected him, Chafee stated that "when you’re around horses, you tend to be a quieter person."

Local Politics (1985–1999)
Chafee entered politics in 1985, when he was elected over eight other candidates to become delegate to the Rhode Island Constitutional Convention. A year later he was elected to the Warwick City Council, defeating an incumbent, and re-elected in 1988. He ran for Warwick Mayor in 1990, losing by 5 percent in a three-way race.

In 1992, he was elected Warwick’s first Republican mayor in 32 years, and was re-elected in 1994, 1996, and 1998, when he won by 17% and carried all nine wards.

Chafee was praised for his fair-minded and sensible approach to government, including his ability to work with seven Democrats (of nine seats) on the Warwick City Council. He conservatively managed the City’s finances, strengthening the city’s bond rating and paying down the outstanding pension liability.

He worked effectively and cooperatively with the municipal unions, especially in settling a difficult and prolonged teacher labor dispute that he inherited from the previous administration.

As Mayor, Chafee made conservation, environmental protection and wise growth a priority. He purchased 130 acres of open space, planted hundreds of street trees, and created new historic districts and a new economic development "intermodal" district at the state airport. His municipal composting and recycling initiatives dramatically decreased landfill waste. His "Greenwich Bay Initiative", which extended sewer service to the most environmentally-sensitive areas of the city, earned Warwick recognition by EPA as one of the best local watershed programs in the nation.

United States Senate (1999–2007)
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 the younger Chafee to fill the vacancy. Due to the proximity between his appointment and the scheduled election in 2000, no special election was called.

2000 Election
Chafee was elected to his seat outright with a 57% majority against his Democratic opponent, U.S. Representative Robert Weygand.

2006 Election
n September 2005, Steve Laffey, the mayor of Cranston, Rhode Island, announced his intention to run against Chafee in the Republican primary election. Among other stances differing from those of Chafee, Mayor Laffey opposed abortion and stem cell research. Laffey was supported by notable conservative groups including the Club for Growth and several anti-abortion groups. Chafee went on to defeat Laffey in the primary on September 12 by a margin of 53%–47%. The turnout for the Republican primary was the largest in Rhode Island history. In his victory speech, Chafee credited independent voters and disaffiliated Democrats for his victory.

Despite Chafee's high approval ratings statewide, the state had tended to lean heavily toward socially liberal or moderate candidates for many decades. As a result, Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse succeeded by attacking the instances in which Chafee supported his party's conservative congressional leadership (whose personalities and policies were very unpopular statewide).

Chafee lost to Whitehouse in the general election, 54%–46%. In response to a question at a news conference on November 9, 2006, Chafee stated he was unsure whether he would remain in the Republican Party after serving out the remainder of his term. According to Michelle R. Smith of the Associated Press, when asked whether he felt that his loss may have helped the country by switching control of power in Congress (toward the Democrats and away from Republicans), he replied: "To be honest, yes."

Tenure
Descended from a long line of moderate, center-right New England Republicans, Chafee's stances became increasingly liberal, more so than his father's positions had been. The now dominant conservatives referred to him as a "Republican In Name Only", or RINO. Most notable among these was Human Events magazine, which named Chafee "the No. 1 RINO in the country." In 2006, the National Journal rated Chafee as the most liberal Republican in the Senate, and placed him to the left of two Democrats, Nebraska's Ben Nelson and Louisiana's Mary Landrieu (the only Republican ranked to the left of the latter senator).

Known for often disagreeing with the Republican Party leadership, Chafee says he did not cast his ballot for President George W. Bush in the 2004 election, instead choosing to write in former president George H. W. Bush as a nod to the Republican Party of his father. Chafee frequently criticized the younger Bush's record on the environment, and expressed concern about the 2004 Republican platform and overall philosophical direction of the party. He described the younger Bush's presidency as "an agenda of energizing the far-right-wing base, which is divisive." Soon thereafter, he rejected Democratic overtures to leave the Republican Party after appeals to him from other Republican senators to remain in their caucus.[14] Chafee considered challenging George W. Bush for re-nomination in the New Hampshire primary in 2004 on an anti- (Iraq and Afghanistan) war platform. In his autobiography, Against the Tide (2007), he states that "In the fall of 2003, part of me thought it was cowardly to oppose the president on so many issues and then not oppose him head-on as he sought renomination." However, he decided not to run after the capture of Saddam Hussein on December 13, 2003.

Political Hiatus (2007-2009)
In December 2006, Chafee announced he was accepting a fellowship to serve as a "distinguished visiting fellow" at Brown University's Thomas J. Watson Jr. Institute for International Studies. The university had Chafee lead a student group studying U.S. foreign policy.

In September 2007, Chafee officially left the Republican Party, changing his affiliation to Independent. He said that he did so because of the Republican Party's drifting away from its core values, such as its abandoning fiscal conservatism. Citing the party's new tendency to pass tax cuts without spending cuts to balance the loss of revenue, he noted how the party was destroying social programs aimed to help middle-class and lower-income Americans, particularly Pell Grants and Head Start. In February 2008, he said he was considering voting for then-Senator Barack Obama in Rhode Island's Democratic presidential primary election. On February 14, 2008, with the Rhode Island Democratic primary approaching in three weeks, Chafee officially endorsed Obama. In 2012, he was one of 35 co-chairs selected to "act as key surrogates and ambassadors" for Obama's re-election campaign.

In 2008, Chafee joined the advisory board of J Street, a lobbying group that promotes diplomatic relations between Israel and its neighbors, and supports an independent Palestinian state.

In September 2008, Chafee received media attention for describing Sarah Palin, then-Governor of Alaska and the Republican vice-presidential nominee in the 2008 presidential election, as a "cocky wacko."

2010 Gubernatorial Election
On January 4, 2010 Chafee formally declared his intention to run for Governor of Rhode Island in 2010 as an independent, as the incumbent Governor Donald Carcieri (a Republican re-elected the same day Chafee lost his Senate re-election bid) was term-limited at the time. On October 31, 2010, electoral analysis site FiveThirtyEight.com gave Chafee a 63.8% chance of victory, compared to Democratic opponent Frank T. Caprio's 26.2% and Republican opponent John Robitaille's 10.0%. Likewise, other sites, such as the Cook Political Report, classified the race as a "toss-up". Chafee's approval rating at the time of his 2006 defeat was between 51% and 63%.

On September 16, 2010, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg - who had also switched from Republican to Independent - traveled to Rhode Island. Bloomberg praised Chafee's "experience and integrity", saying that Chafee would put Rhode Islanders' interests "ahead of party interests", and that Chafee would "produce results — because that's exactly what he did as a mayor and as senator."

It was reported that President Obama's lack of endorsement of any of the candidates indicated tacit support of Chafee over Democrat Caprio. In campaign commercials, Chafee used footage of Obama praising Chafee and his record.

Chafee easily won the endorsements of all major public school teachers unions, including the Rhode Island affiliates of the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers in his 2010 gubernatorial campaign.

On November 2, 2010, Chafee won the gubernatorial race, winning with a 36% plurality in the seven-candidate race.

Switch to the Democratic Party
In August 2012, he announced plans to attend the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, to show support for President Barack Obama. He was appointed co-chair of Obama's re-election campaign and formally switched his affiliation to the Democratic Party.

2014 Gubernatorial Election
Chafee 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.

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

Chafee 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.

Post-Campaign Activity
Following the suspension of his campaign, Chafee endorsed and campaigned for Hillary Clinton, the eventual Democratic nominee.

In addition to continuing his work with Honesty PAC, he founded the Not by a Mile organization, which aims to bring together advocacy groups for the issues he raised during his campaign.

Ambassador to the Organization of American States
Governor Chafee was appointed by president Hillary Clinton to serve as the United States Ambassador to the Organization of American States on February 13th, 2017. He has served in that capacity since March 20th, 2017, when Lt. Governor Clay Pell succeeded him as Governor.

In his acceptance speech, Chafee said:

"'What our hemisphere needs is the people who had the courage, under moments of high pressure, to make good decisions; to advance the causes of individual liberty and social justice enshrined in our charter."

Cultural and Public Image
Chafee's 2016 presidential campaign catapulted him to greater national prominence than ever before. His campaign was championed by fervent grassroots support. Journalist Margaret Talbot, in a profile for the New Yorker, writes:

"There is something admirable about Chafee's quiet earnestness and sincerity for the issues he believes in: he doesn’t want voters thinking that his commitment to peace stems from anything other than a deep-seated sense of fairness. ... Whimsical buttons feature the slogan “Prince of Peace” and Tumblr is full of memes that play up the contrast between Chafee’s homeliness and his popularity with his fans."

However, Chafee's heterodox views have drawn criticism from both his former party and his current party, including his support for NSA leaker Edward Snowden and his support for "rapproachment" with the terrorist group ISIL.