GOP embracing its maverick

EAST GREENWICH, R.I. -- Senator Lincoln D. Chafee hopped out of the driver's seat of his beige Toyota Prius -- a car with a dent on the side and ''I Am Electric" emblazoned across the back window -- and dashed through the rain. He'd forgotten his umbrella at the office, so he was soaked before he made it inside Meadowbrook Farms Elementary School.

Then, for the better part of an hour, he talked with a classroom of third-graders about the importance of saving the rain forests.

''The challenge is to balance between the animals and our needs," the Rhode Island Republican told the children. ''We're all part of the earth ourselves. We have to share it."

Chafee is the closest thing to a GOP flower child in Washington these days. He's a Brown University classics major who spent seven years shoeing horses before turning to the family business of politics. His liberal positions would be well-suited for a centrist Democrat. The ease with which he speaks of living in harmony with nature marks him as a product of the '60s, and a child of a household that always had a compost pile.

But with the Republican Party's hold on the Senate looking tenuous, the party of Wall Street and the religious right is suddenly chummy with its most prominent environmentalist. With a tough race looming, and a solid conservative challenging Chafee in the primary, Republican elites are sending checks to Rhode Island -- to help Chafee.

And the Democrats, eager to regain control of the Senate, are targeting the one Republican to the left of much of their own caucus. ''Chafee can deny that he is the elephant in the room until he is blue in the face," said Phil Singer, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, ''but he'll never be able to hide the degree to which he is beholden to George Bush and the Bush agenda."

Chafee's response to partisans on both sides has been to make an asset out of his quirkiness. He is soft-spoken and unfailingly polite. He insists on driving himself around town. He rarely delivers speeches on the Senate floor, and rarely raises his lilting voice.

He notes that in his six years in the Senate, and particularly since President Bush took office in 2001, he has frequently been at odds with his party. His public breaks with the White House on tax cuts, the Iraq war, and a host of environmental issues have left him a lonely man in the Capitol.

''The issues are going to change, but the character of the person you elect is important," Chafee said in an interview with the Globe. ''I've proven to have a backbone and proven to be honest even at my own peril, and to be able to work with the other side."

As Chafee, 52, is the first to acknowledge, his reliance on the Karl Rove political machine means he is choosing his battles with the president a bit more carefully these days; he calls it a ''mutual nonaggression pact" with the White House. Chafee says he'd rather have Rove and company working for him than against him.

But Chafee's race against a Democratic challenger figures to be just as tough as his primary campaign next year, and that means he can't be seen as too close to Bush in one of the most Democratic states in the nation.

Liberal groups are already advertising in Rhode Island to urge Chafee to vote against Bush's nominee for the Supreme Court, Samuel A. Alito Jr. Their massive letter-writing campaigns are being matched by efforts of conservative groups, who are joining forces with prominent Italian-American organizations in Rhode Island to push Chafee to support Alito.

''He has to be very worried about this vote," said Darrell West, a political science professor at Brown University. ''It's attracting a lot of local attention, and activists are engaged by this issue. He's under pressure from both sides."

The Democratic field in the Senate race includes former state attorney general Sheldon Whitehouse and Secretary of State Matthew A. Brown. Both are opposing Alito in a year that Democrats have high hopes for gains in the House and Senate, capitalizing on Bush's widespread unpopularity, discontent over the war in Iraq, and a series of GOP ethical lapses.

Chafee is waiting for the confirmation hearings in January to make up his mind, but has made clear that he has set the bar high for Alito, who would replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the court. ''It's a lifetime appointment," he said. ''There's some critical issues that have been decided in the past with Sandra Day O'Connor in the majority. There is a lot at stake here."

Chafee made the leap from mayor of Warwick to the Senate in 1999 through tragic means: His father, a senator for more than two decades, died, and the governor named the younger Chafee to take John Chafee's seat. ''Linc" won a full term in his own right in 2000, outpolling the president's Rhode Island performance by 25 points.

Chafee's brand of Republicanism -- with its emphasis on balanced budgets, environmental protections, and few foreign entanglements -- hearkens back to his father's era. It also comes into direct conflict with much of the Bush agenda, and with Alito's judicial philosophy, according to liberal groups.

''We expect him to keep his strong record of protecting the environment by voting against Judge Alito's confirmation," said Jennifer Tuttle, program coordinator for the Rhode Island Sierra Club. ''Senator Chafee clearly doesn't follow the Republican leadership, and is willing to think for himself. This is the most important decision a senator can make."

Chafee's primary opponent, Mayor Stephen Laffey of Cranston, said he's inclined to support Alito, and said Chafee is on the ''far, far left" when he speaks of using abortion as a ''litmus test" for the Supreme Court. Chafee, he said, pretends to be an independent voice even while accepting help from the Republican establishment and special interests.

''His message is one of failure, that he's the only Republican who can win because he's not really Republican and there's a lot of Democrats in the state," Laffey said.

In recent years, Chafee has flirted publicly with the possibility of abandoning the Republican Party, but he now calls that ''inconceivable" because of his long association with the state party. He is confident that he can help move the party back toward the political center, but concedes that he is worried about getting caught in a national wave of anger at Republicans next year.

''Waves are dangerous," Chafee said. ''The wave is going to be there -- it possibly could be there. But I think my record is well-known, and then I just have to make the argument that one of the four [members of the Rhode Island congressional delegation] should be in the majority party."

Though he is trying to be polite, Chafee barely conceals his disdain for Bush. There's the ''assault on environmental laws," the ''belligerence overseas," the ''fog of fear" he accuses the Bush administration of generating to make its case for war in Iraq.

Last year, he let it be known that he wouldn't vote for the president. Instead, he cast what he called a protest vote for the president's father.

For now, Chafee is trying to be diplomatic. Asked if he would have preferred that Senator John F. Kerry, a Democrat, won the election, Chafee deflected the question by saying Kerry ''ran a horrible campaign." Asked if that means he prefers Bush to Kerry, he was equally circumspect. ''I didn't say that," Chafee said with a smile.

Shortly after Chafee talked with the third-graders about rain forests, a local television reporter cornered him to ask him whether he thought the president has been truthful about progress in Iraq. He paused for a beat and lowered his chin toward his chest, a trademark Chafee gesture.

''Certainly that's open to debate," said Chafee, the only Republican senator who voted against giving Bush the authority to invade Iraq.

But moments later, with the cameras off, the senator offered a blunt assessment. ''You know that John Lennon song, 'All I want is the truth'?" Chafee said, quoting a lyric from ''Just Gimme Some Truth." ''If we could go back to the beginning with that, we'd be a lot better off."

Rick Klein can be reached at rklein@globe.com.