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John Chafee loyalists anguished over Lincoln Chafee’s White House run
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Candidate
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| Contributor | IndyGeorgia |
| Last Edited | IndyGeorgia Oct 18, 2015 04:18pm |
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| Category | News |
| Author | Ted Nesi |
| News Date | Saturday, October 17, 2015 04:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) – In October 1999, U.S. Sen. John Chafee was laid to rest amid the pomp and circumstance befitting a beloved statesman. President Clinton and roughly half of Chafee’s Senate colleagues traveled to Rhode Island to laud the 77-year-old as a Republican pragmatist, a gentleman, and a war hero.
Fast-forward exactly 16 years to this month, when Chafee’s son and Senate successor, Lincoln, took the stage in Las Vegas in a debate for the Democratic presidential nomination – and wound up ridiculed in mocking terms that were likely never used about his father.
The fallout from Tuesday night’s debate has former aides and allies privately despairing about the damage they think Lincoln Chafee is doing to his late father’s reputation, not to mention his own. And it’s led local observers to reflect on the rapid deterioration of the once-solid Chafee brand in the years since Lincoln Chafee was ousted from the U.S. Senate in 2006.
Multiple former aides to John and Lincoln Chafee declined to comment on the record about the latter’s presidential run, with many of them still deeply loyal to the senior Chafee. Almost none of them are involved in Lincoln Chafee’s shoestring presidential campaign, which seems to be largely piloted by the candidate himself, with assistance from two of his most loyal staffers, Debbie Rich and Jonathan Stevens.
“This has become some sort of cathartic exercise for him to attain some sort of vindication for the manner in which politics has treated Linc Chafee,” Bill Fischer, a veteran Democratic operative in Rhode Island, told WPRI.com. “And in the end it’s looking quite self-absorbed, and he’s not prepared for the stage. He is not prepared for the stage. He doesn’t have the staff around him to do this.” |
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