Lincoln Chafee

Lincoln Chafee
Official Senate portrait
74th Governor of Rhode Island
In office
January 4, 2011 – January 6, 2015
LieutenantElizabeth Roberts
Preceded byDon Carcieri
Succeeded byGina Raimondo
United States Senator
from Rhode Island
In office
November 2, 1999 – January 3, 2007
Preceded byJohn Chafee
Succeeded bySheldon Whitehouse
Mayor of Warwick
In office
January 1, 1993 – November 1, 1999
Preceded byCharles Donovan
Succeeded byScott Avedisian
Personal details
Born
Lincoln Davenport Chafee

(1953-03-26) March 26, 1953 (age 71)
Providence, Rhode Island, U.S.
Political partyLibertarian (2019–present)
Other political
affiliations
Republican (1971–2007)
Independent (2007–2013)
Democratic (2013–2019)
Spouse
Stephanie Birney Danforth
(m. 1990)
Children3, including Louisa
Residence(s)Teton Village, Wyoming, U.S.
EducationBrown University (BA)
WebsiteCampaign website

Lincoln Davenport Chafee (/ˈf/ CHAY-fee; born March 26, 1953) is an American politician. He was mayor of Warwick, Rhode Island, from 1993 to 1999, a United States Senator from 1999 to 2007, and the 74th Governor of Rhode Island from 2011 to 2015. He was a Democrat from 2013 to 2019; in June 2019, The Boston Globe reported that he became a Libertarian,[1][2] having previously been a Republican until September 2007 and an independent and then a Democrat in the interim. He is the last non-Democrat to hold statewide and/or Congressional office in Rhode Island.

The son of Republican politician John Chafee, who was the 66th Governor of Rhode Island, the United States Secretary of the Navy, and a U.S. Senator from Rhode Island, Lincoln Chafee's first elected office was as a member of the Warwick City Council in 1985. After John Chafee died in 1999, Lincoln Chafee was appointed to fill his father's seat in the U.S. Senate to which he won a full term in 2000.

Chafee was the only Republican in the Senate to vote against authorization of the use of force in Iraq in the lead-up to the Iraq War. He was defeated in his 2006 reelection bid by Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse. Chafee subsequently shifted his affiliation towards the Democratic Party by first endorsing Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election, running as an independent for Governor of Rhode Island in 2010, serving as the co-chair of Obama's 2012 re-election campaign, and then finally officially switching his registration to the Democratic Party in May 2013. In March 2019, he switched his political affiliation again to the Libertarian Party.

In 2015, he sought nomination to become the Democratic Party candidate in the 2016 presidential election, but withdrew prior to the primaries. In January 2020, Chafee filed to run again for president, this time seeking the Libertarian nomination. Chafee withdrew his candidacy on April 5, 2020, and announced he would instead focus on helping "other Libertarians seeking office."

  1. ^ "Ex-RI Politician Changes Political Parties – Again". NECN. June 6, 2019. Retrieved July 13, 2019.
  2. ^ Fitzpatrick, Edward (June 4, 2019). "Make that four political parties for Lincoln Chafee". The Boston Globe. Retrieved June 5, 2019.