Maverick Senate candidate
Gains among disgruntled Republicans

By M.L. Johnson, Associated Press Writer  |  March 12, 2006

PROVIDENCE, R.I. --Republican Senate candidate Stephen Laffey has developed a reputation for being outrageous.

He once told a newspaper columnist that God wanted him to run for mayor of Cranston.

When journalists noticed that he had digitally erased a former friend from photographs on the Web site for his Senate campaign, he suggested aliens may have been responsible.

But although Laffey jokes abound among Rhode Island's political insiders, he is mounting a serious campaign for the Senate seat held by fellow Republican Lincoln Chafee.

Republican leaders clinging to their five-seat majority in the Senate support the politically moderate Chafee and worry that Laffey could win the primary only to lose a general election in this heavily Democratic state.

But other Republicans angry with Chafee for refusing to back President Bush on everything from tax cuts to his nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court have begun lining up behind Laffey.

The pro-business Club for Growth endorsed the former investment banker and has spent tens of thousands of dollars in recent months on television ads supporting him. The National Review Online, a conservative publication, recently endorsed Laffey, saying that although it does not agree with him on energy issues he provides a palatable alternative to Chafee.

Perhaps more importantly, local Republican groups dissatisfied with Chafee are starting to back Laffey, whose visceral appeal seems more important than his specific policy proposals.

The Republican Town Committee in Exeter, Chafee's hometown, endorsed Laffey last month. Then-chairman William Devanney said he was impressed by what he called the mayor's conservative Republican approach.

"(Chafee) hasn't been a real voice for the Republican party," Devanney said. "I think he's taken the Democratic view more often."

George Resnick, chairman of the Johnston Republican Town Committee, said the eight or so members who voted to endorse Laffey were unanimous in their choice.

"They believe that the senator has voted against the president on a majority of issues that they consider important," he said. (Chafee didn't even vote for Bush for president in the 2004 election, instead writing in his father, George H.W. Bush.)

Nationwide, a handful of incumbent senators face primary challenges, but Laffey seems to present the greatest threat of an upset, said Dan Ronayne, spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Republican candidates in Rhode Island must walk a fine line. The state has more than three times as many registered Democrats as Republicans.

The winner of the state's Republican primary will face either Secretary of State Matt Brown or former Attorney General Sheldon Whitehouse in the general election, and several statewide polls predict either Democrat would defeat Laffey.

That adds up to a tough choice for Republican voters, said Peter Ubertaccio, a political science professor at Stonehill College in Easton, Mass., who follows national Senate races.

"Do you go with your heart, and your heart might be with Steve Laffey, or do you go with your intellect, your mind and say, 'We need at all costs to hold onto our majority in the Senate and Lincoln Chafee can do that?'" Ubertaccio said.

Several national Republican groups have made the utilitarian choice. The National Republican Senatorial Committee, which works to re-elect incumbents, has spent about $150,000 on Chafee's behalf. The Republican Majority for Choice and the Republican Main Street Partnership, which supports moderate candidates, also pledged to raise money for him.

With hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on a campaign barely begun, tension has been heightened by the fact that there are no reliable independent polls in the race.

Brown University produces the only independently funded poll in the state. But Darrell West, the political scientist who runs it, is no longer including questions about the Republican primary.

Rhode Island has so few registered Republicans -- about 71,000 in a state with more than 1 million people -- that the university would have to make thousands of phone calls to get a reliable sample, West said. That's too expensive.

In addition, independents can register as a Democrat or Republican at the polls on the day of the primary and vote immediately. That can lead to the unexpected, said Robert Blendon, who teaches polling at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.

For example, independents who don't normally vote elected Jesse Ventura as governor of Minnesota in 1998.

Without reliable polls, analysts often look to an incumbant's approval rating to predict the outcome, Blendon said. A recent poll by the Benenson Strategy Group for Brown's campaign put Chafee's approval rating at 70 percent and Laffey's at 34 percent.

But that's among voters overall, and Blendon said Republicans angered by such things as Chafee's vote against the war in Iraq may feel differently.

"If they really think he doesn't deserve another term among Republicans," Blendon said, "then they are going to vote for anyone who breathes."