The word of the night at the State Republicans' Lincoln Day Dinner Feb. 19 in the town of Lincoln was "healthy."
Competition is healthy, said many in the crowd of longtime Republicans who turned out to hear Cranston Mayor Stephen Laffey speak. They were referring to the Republican Senate primary contest between Laffey and his challenger, incumbent Senator Lincoln Chafee '75, which has only magnified existing divisions in the Rhode Island Republican Party.
The party is small: just 10 percent of voters in Rhode Island were registered Republicans as of Election Day 2004, according to the Rhode Island Board of Elections. 38 percent registered as Democrats, and the remaining 52 percent of voters did not affiliate with a political party in their registrations for the 2004 elections.
There are substantial ideological gradations within that 10 percent of Republicans, said Patricia Morgan, chair of the Rhode Island Republican Party.
"It is a big tent, there is no doubt about it. We have people who are very liberal and people who are very conservative," she said.
Those differences often play out in the theater of statewide Republican primaries. In 2002, the state party endorsed James Bennett '79 in the gubernatorial primary, but he lost to current Governor Donald Carcieri '65.
Many discount Laffey's chances because they believe he cannot win a statewide election. Conventional wisdom says a Republican candidate must be moderate to appeal to voters in a largely liberal state - the Republican 10th of the electorate can only carry a candidate so far.
"In the states in the Northeast, when a conservative is nominated, they usually don't win. (Those states) don't elect conservatives," said Sarah Chamberlain, executive director of the Republican Main Street Partnership, which has backed Chafee in his re-election bid. "A conservative Republican cannot win in Rhode Island," she said.
A Feb. 4 poll conducted by Professor of Political Science Darrell West, director of the Taubman Center for Public Policy, indicated that Laffey would do poorly in the November general election against either serious Democratic candidate, Secretary of State Matt Brown or former Attorney General Sheldon Whitehouse.
Supporters of Chafee say he is better positioned to win the general election than Laffey, regardless of how competitive the Republican primary may be. Analyzing the recent poll, Ian Lang, Chafee's campaign manager, said Laffey would have to carry more than 80 percent of the unaffiliated voters to win.
Laffey has positioned him-self as a political outsider in his challenge to Chafee, echoing Carcieri's campaign as a businessman not previously involved in politics.
"I don't have a political career," Laffey told The Herald. "Mr. Chafee said he wanted to end my career. He thinks it's a career. I spent 15 years working my way up in an investment-banking firm. That was my career. This is public service. For him it's a career."
Laffey said he is a believer in Rhode Island Republicans, but he criticized the party, which endorsed the incumbent Chafee for the upcoming Senate race. According to Laffey, the state party is disconnected from voters and has done little to encourage more people in Rhode Island to vote Republican.
"There really isn't any Rhode Island Republican Party. It really hasn't done much this year. (The number of) state-wide registered Republicans has been going down (everywhere) except for Cranston," Laffey said, referring to his own efforts to register voters in his city. "There are a great number of people who are Republicans who are not registered."
Laffey's dissatisfaction with the state party also comes from his "excommunication" from the party and its events, he said. Laffey said he and a backer of his campaign, Robert Manning '75, who represents Rhode Island Republicans on the national party committee, were not invited to a December party fundraiser.
But Morgan, the head of the state party, said Laffey's claim is false, and Manning said he did not recall whether he had attended the fundraiser.
"My goal is that I want a Republican senator to send to Washington D.C.," Morgan said. "I think it's important to have a Republican senator - it would be better for Rhode Island if we had that. At this time in the race, (Chafee) is the most electable (candidate)."
State Republican parties in New England are caught between two squabbling forces: the increasingly conservative national party and the more moderate local stalwarts. Rather than the social conservatism that is fundamental to the national party's program, Morgan said, fiscal conservatism is the foundation of New England Republican parties. Both Laffey and Chafee bill themselves as fiscal conservatives, but to different degrees.
For his part, Chafee backs "a socially moderate and fiscally conservative version of Republicanism which is deeply rooted in the Teddy Roosevelt pro-environment Republicanism," Lang said. Chafee's voting record demonstrates his belief in reigning in government spending to ensure that "future generations are not burdened by debt," Lang added.
But others attack Chafee's voting record in the Senate as fiscally irresponsible.
"Lincoln Chafee hasn't voted for any of the pro-economic tax cuts and he shows no interest in ... these in the future," said David Keating, executive director of the Club For Growth. "If these pro-growth tax cuts do not get (through Congress), he'll probably end up voting for a tax increase," he added.
The Club for Growth, a political action committee that backs conservative Republican candidates who support limited government and lower taxes, recently endorsed Laffey in his candidacy for Senate.
Laffey raised taxes twice in Cranston during his first two years as mayor, a move he said was necessary but which critics have focused on in attacking his claim of being an anti-tax candidate.
"The day I took office, (Cranston) was on the verge of going broke," Laffey said. "It was running an 11.6 million dollar deficit. We raised taxes by half as much as Warwick ... but we have also cut everything else (in the budget) we can," he said.
Republican politicians must appeal to independents for the state primary in September, since registered voters who are not affiliated with either party can vote in either party's primary. Independent voters outnumbered Republicans five to one in Rhode Island in 2004.
"The key in the primary is getting the independents to vote," Chamberlain said. "We'll probably get some Republicans out to vote for (Chafee), but we need those independents," she added.
However, Manning, the Republican national committeeman, said independents rarely sway the results of the primary.
"You don't get a lot of independents. They have to change their party affiliation on that day and then change back," he said. "If you have any independent action it will probably be towards the Democratic primary."
Without a large turnout of independents in the Republican primary, according to West, Laffey may have a chance at unseating Chafee.
Conservative political action committees and publications from around the country have had a strong influence on the party in this election cycle because of the national attention paid to Chafee's re-election bid.
National Review, a conservative magazine based in Washington, D.C. and New York, recently endorsed Laffey in an editorial titled "Dump Chafee."
The editorial "expressed our disappointment with Senator Chafee's performance as a senator," said John Miller, a political reporter at the magazine. "Chafee's vote against (then-Supreme Court nominee) Sam Alito was really the last straw."
In addition to the Club for Growth, several other town committees have backed Laffey.
"I wouldn't classify Mayor Laffey as a conservative," Keating said. "I would classify him as pro-economic growth. He is the only one who is taking an outsider's view of Washington. Laffey is against pork barreling and special interests lining their pockets in Washington at the expense of the average (citizen)," he added.
Backing Chafee is the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the Republican Main Street Partnership, as well as Carcieri and other state officials. His supporters have largely focused on the need to keep the Senate seat for the Republican Party.
"If Chafee loses and Laffey wins the primary, then the Republicans have lost the seat," Chamberlain said. "This is one of the swing states that will make or break the Republican Senate."
