From the WSJ Opinion Archives
SCENE & HEARD
Chafee vs. Laffey
A populist conservative challenges the Senate's most liberal Republican.
PROVIDENCE, R.I.--If Lincoln Chafee has one thing going for him in his upcoming primary, it's fear--and don't think this perennial thorn in the GOP's side doesn't know it. In a recent debate against his more conservative primary challenger, he made the choice clear to voters: "Who can win in November?"
Rhode Island's few Republicans have been thinking of little else ever since Steve Laffey, the pork-busting mayor of Cranston, challenged the Senate's most liberal Republican to a showdown. The duel has forced upon them one of the more noteworthy choices in this year's election. Do they renominate Mr. Chafee, whose irritating voting record may make him more electable in this state that went 59% for John Kerry? Or do they vote their conscience for the upstart, and potentially lose a Senate seat--and even the majority?
Northeast "moderates" such as Mr. Chafee might comprise a dwindling bloc in the GOP, but in recent years they've been acting like they own the party. The Rhode Islander set the standard, using his crucial vote to help stymie an extension of the Bush tax cuts, death-tax repeal and budget reform--not to mention protest a partial-birth abortion ban and Supreme Court Justice Sam Alito. When this crew isn't blocking, it's pushing left, as evidenced by the recent House capitulation on a higher minimum wage.
Northeasterners explain that this is the price of re-election, and by extension the GOP's hold on Congress. But has it backfired? Despite a steady march to the left, Mr. Chafee and a dozen Northeast House members are on the brink of being routed this November. High gas prices, rising interest rates, concern over Iraq, these play some part. Yet there's something else going on, in particular in those highly gerrymandered Northeast districts that have often delivered Republican incumbents upward of 60% of the vote. GOP voters, frustrated by Washington earmarking, scandal and obstructionism, may have decided their particular breed of Republicans just aren't worth the trouble.
That's the mood up here in Rhode Island, where I heard the phrase "We might as well have a Democrat" so many times I quit writing it down. Mr. Laffey is seeking to capitalize on this frustration with a populist agenda that delicately walks between the Democratic contender, former state Attorney General Sheldon Whitehouse, and Mr. Chafee. On tax and spending issues, the former investment banker tracks Milton Friedman, wild about marginal rate cuts, an extension of the dividend and capital gains cuts, and torpedoing a few Alaskan bridges to nowhere. He backs the president in Iraq, supports free trade and is passionate about school choice.
On everything else, the blunt Mr. Laffey tracks Bill O'Reilly, bashing "too powerful" drug companies and oil firms, and demanding an enforcement-only immigration bill. In a nod to his state's Mother Earth quality, he opposes drilling in ANWR and enthuses about solar panels. His campaign drips with class-war rhetoric, which the newbie is hoping will fire up the lingering resentments of blue-collar Italian and Irish Democrats against their state's patrician families (i.e., the Chafees). "This race is between a hard-knock guy who pulled himself up by his bootstraps and someone who's had everything handed to him," he tells me.
Populist streak notwithstanding, the free-market Club for Growth has come out swinging for Mr. Laffey, pouring more into this race than any other. Activists have sniffed out voter discontent and are hoping to use this primary to send a message to other Northeast senators--Maine's Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins--that there is a price for defection. It's a high-stakes gamble; should Mr. Chafee win, the message will instead be that the party will ride to the rescue, no matter what the record.
As it's doing at the moment, with a fervor. If this fall goes as badly as the GOP establishment fears, Rhode Island could be the race that decides whether Harry Reid gets to reprint his business cards. No one is in the mood for a throw-down with their troublesome Northeasterners. Bill Frist led a list of Senate heavyweights holding Chafee fundraisers and the National Republican Senatorial Committee is meanwhile dumping money into Laffey attack ads. It even filed a complaint about the Cranston mayor to the Federal Election Commission. Joe Lieberman should have been so lucky.
Mr. Chafee's saving grace may, poetically, be the Democrats. The senator has also clearly sensed the mood, and hired the campaign team that helped Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter fend off a conservative challenge from Pat Toomey in 2004. More telling was his wife, who in April got caught sending an email to Democrats encouraging them to "disaffiliate" from their own party so that they could vote in the Republican primary for "Linc." By some counts, more than 12,000 have, which could prove decisive in a primary with about 70,000 registered Republicans and low turnouts.
Democrats are watching this with glee, though hardly sitting back. The executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, J.B. Poersch, is a Rhode Island native who worked for Sen. Jack Reed for 14 years and has made his home-state race a top priority. Mr. Whitehouse is no dynamo, but sports the liberal bona fides that many Rhode Islanders reflexively trust. He's nearly even with Mr. Chafee in the polls, and can't even see Mr. Laffey for the dust.
Yet it says something about GOP frustration that even these long odds haven't fazed many. Laffey supporters are betting that if he wins the primary, the GOP establishment will offer its support. They note that Rhode Islanders are willing to elect more conservative Republicans to statewide office, evidenced by the party's long hold on the governorship. Mostly, they turn to Mr. Laffey's near-miraculous wins in Cranston, where only 14% of voters are Republican. He won by 52% in 2002, and after turning around the near-bankrupt city's finances (which, it should be said, he did by raising taxes)--won with nearly 65% in 2004. He says Republican membership in the city is up 30% since he took over.
It's still a long shot, although at least some Republican strategists are nonplussed. They've long argued the party should write off the Northeast, and focus on consolidating its gains in the South and Midwest. If voters are as angry as seems, it may have no choice.
Ms. Strassel is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board.
