Chafee joins Democratic field for 2016
WASHINGTON — Lincoln Chafee, a former Republican-turned-independent who became a Democrat while he was governor of Rhode Island, formally launched a campaign for the White House on Wednesday.
During a foreign-policy speech at George Mason University, Chafee announced he is seeking the Democratic nomination, joining former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and former Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland.
“I enjoy challenges, and today we have many facing America,” Chafee said. “Today I am formally entering the race for the Democratic nomination for president.”
When Chafee, 62, signaled in April that he was interested in seeking the White House, the move was a surprise to some in Rhode Island, where his record as governor gets mixed reviews. Facing the prospect of a primary challenge and sluggish poll numbers last year, he chose not to run for re-election to the post.
But Chafee has shown a willingness to confront Clinton, widely seen as the Democratic front-runner in the presidential race, raising questions about the financial dealings of the Clinton family’s foundation and criticizing the former senator for her support for the 2003 invasion in Iraq.
A Republican at the time of the war, Chafee was the only senator from his party to vote against it. In his speech Wednesday, he said his priority would be to end all wars.
“We must deliberately and carefully extricate ourselves from expensive wars. We need to be very smart in these voluble times overseas,” Chafee told a half-full law school classroom at the university in northern Virginia.
“Let’s wage peace in this new American century,” he said.
Other policy prescriptions in Chafee’s speech included moving the U.S. to the metric system and calling for an end to capital punishment.
He also said National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden should be let back into the U.S. without punishment, proposed repairing relations with Venezuela and said he favored an “open-minded approach” to drug trafficking.
Longtime Chafee strategists and donors said earlier that they know little about his intentions — or even his rationale for running.
“He’s not done anything other than posture on some issues,” said Mike Trainor, a former Chafee aide. “The question he’s going to have to answer is what credible indications can he give that he is at all ready to run a national campaign.”
Clinton has set a goal of raising $100 million for her primary bid. Sanders, who entered the race last week, has said he’s already raised at least $4 million. And allies of O’Malley have established a super political action committee to support his efforts.
All three have begun building robust campaign operations with staff members across the country, a step Chafee has yet to take.
In previous campaigns, Chafee has spent significant sums from his family fortune to further his political ambitious, including dropping $1.8 million on his 2010 governor’s race. But experts said running for president is significantly more expensive than seeking statewide office, with some pegging the estimated cost of a successful 2016 campaign at more than $1 billion.
Unlike the other Democratic challengers, who’ve focused on pocketbook issues, Chafee staked his campaign on growing international instability. His opposition to Clinton, Chafee said, is driven by the belief that the next president should not be someone who supported the war in Iraq.
“I don’t think anybody should be president of the United States that made that mistake,” Chafee told The
Washington Post in April. “It’s a huge mistake, and we live with broad, broad ramifications today — of instability not only in the Middle East but far beyond, and the loss of American credibility. There were no weapons of mass destruction.”
Clinton, then a senator from New York, voted to authorize the war, which became a major issue during her 2008 campaign. Clinton now opposes putting U.S. soldiers on the ground in Iraq to fight the Islamic State extremist group there, other than as advisers to the Iraqi forces.
Chafee, the son of the late Rhode Island U.S. Sen. John Chafee, graduated from Brown University in Providence and worked as a blacksmith for several years. By 1999, he was the Republican mayor of Warwick, R.I., a town of about 80,000.
That year, his father died while serving his fourth term in the Senate. Lincoln Chafee was appointed to his father’s seat and won election on his own in 2000.
Chafee left the Republican Party in 2007 to become an independent, and he supported President Barack Obama in both his campaigns. After winning election as governor, Chafee became a Democrat in 2013.
He has said he believes he could be the Democrats’ nominee despite having only joined the party two years ago because his record has been consistent, while other candidates also have history in the GOP.
“Sen. Clinton was a Goldwater Girl,” he told CNN in April, referring to 1964 Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater.
JINDAL SETS DATE
As Chafee announced his intent to challenge fellow Democrats for the presidency, two GOP governors said Wednesday that they will announce in short order whether they will seek their own party’s nomination.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said he will announce June 24 in New Orleans whether he will join the field of Republicans running for president.
“If I decide to announce on June 24th that I will seek the Republican nomination for President, my candidacy will be based on the idea that the American people are ready to try a dramatically different direction,” Jindal said in a statement emailed by his exploratory committee.
“Other Republican leaders are talking about change,” he said, but he had worked on actual plans to replace the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, make the U.S. energy-independent and change education policy.
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker did not give an exact date for his announcement or hint at his own policy priorities, but he said he will announce his intentions after the state budget is passed. The current budget expires June 30.
A slew of Republican governors and former governors have set their own announcements for the coming weeks, including former Texas Gov. Rick Perry today in Dallas. Republican TV personality and businessman Donald Trump is scheduled to announce his decision on June 16 in New York.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie also has said he plans to decide this month whether to run for the nomination. On Wednesday, Christie made his first visit in nearly five months to South Carolina, the site of an early 2016 primary.
Christie said he intends to compete actively in South Carolina if he chooses to run, despite some perceptions that his brash style and record on issues such as gun control won’t appeal to voters in the state.
The potential nominees would join four GOP candidates who already have entered the presidential race: former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Marco Rubio of Florida.
Rubio, who formally entered the race Monday, announced Wednesday that he sold a Florida house that had long been a political thorn in his side.
The senator bought the Tallahassee house in 2005 when he was a state legislator. He purchased it with another lawmaker, David Rivera, who served one term in the House. Since then, Rivera’s name has repeatedly surfaced in a campaign-finance probe in Florida.
A bank moved to foreclose on the house in 2010, in the midst of Rubio’s Senate campaign. Rubio took over the payments and put it on the market last month.
Rubio campaign spokesman Alex Conant said the house sold Wednesday for $117,000. That’s $18,000 less than Rubio and Rivera paid for it 10 years ago. Information for this article was contributed by Lisa Lerer, Michelle Smith, Jill Colvin and staff members of The Associated Press; by Ben Brody and Alison Elkin of Bloomberg News; and by Alan Rappeport of The New York Times.