Lincoln Chafee: 'I've got a target on my back' [View All]

[Judi Lynn]

Lincoln Chafee: 'I've got a target on my back'

01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, August 21, 2005


BY SCOTT MacKAY and MARK ARSENAULT
Journal Staff Writers

WARWICK--

....CHAFEE'S SEAT is seen as one of the two best shots Democrats have to knock off a sitting Republican senator. (The other is in Pennsylvania.) Chafee is the lone Republican in the Senate who represents a state that voted 54 percent or more for Democratic Sen. John Kerry in his presidential campaign last year against Mr. Bush.

The president is not well regarded in Rhode Island; a Brown University poll in June showed just 24 percent of state voters approved of the way Mr. Bush is handling his job. The survey carried an error margin of plus or minus 4.5 points.

Polls suggest Chafee is beatable; a matchup against Whitehouse showed Chafee ahead, 41 percent to 36 percent, with the rest undecided. It is never a good sign, say political experts, for an incumbent to be that far under 50 percent approaching an election year.

Lincoln Chafee and his father are the only two Republicans to hold a Rhode Island Senate seat since the Great Depression. The younger Chafee inherited the seat when his father died in office in 1999. Then-Gov. Lincoln Almond appointed Chafee to fill out the term.
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