Amos Chafee Barstow, mayor of Providence, was named chairman of the meeting.

( Chafee was defeated in 2006 general election after an expensive primary fight with a more conservative Republican financed in large part by the club.

Warner was among ten GOP Senators who voted against the charge of perjury during Clinton's impeachment ( the others were Richard Shelby of Alabama, Ted Stevens of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, Olympia Snowe of Maine, John Chafee of Rhode Island, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, Jim Jeffords of Vermont, Slade Gorton of Washington and Fred Thompson of Tennessee ).

Chafee was appointed to the United States Senate in 1999 upon the death of his father, Senator John Chafee, and was elected in the 2000 Senate election for a full six-year term.

Chafee was a supporter of Barack Obama's 2008 presidential bid and is currently a co-chair of Obama's re-election campaign.

Chafee was born in Providence, Rhode Island, the son of Virginia ( née Coates ) and John Chafee.

His great-uncle, Zechariah Chafee, was a Harvard law professor and a notable civil libertarian.

The Chafee family was among the earliest settlers of Hingham, Massachusetts, before moving south to Rhode Island.

Laffey was considered a formidable challenger, as he was much more conservative than Chafee.

Chafee was defeated by Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse in the general election.

In response to a question at a news conference on November 9, 2006, Chafee stated he was unsure whether he would remain in the Republican Party after serving out the remainder of his term.

In December 2006, Chafee announced he was accepting a fellowship to serve as a " distinguished visiting fellow " at Brown University's Thomas J. Watson Jr. Institute for International Studies.

as the incumbent Governor Donald Carcieri ( a Republican re-elected the same day Chafee lost his Senate re-election bid ) was term-limited at the time.

In November 2011, it was reported that Maryland Governor Martin O ' Malley, the Chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, had asked Chafee to join the Democratic Party.

When asked if he was considering it, Chafee responded, " I ’ m happy where I am for now.

In 2003, Chafee was one of the three Republican Senators to oppose the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act.

While Senator, Chafee was a member of the Republican Majority for Choice and Republicans for Choice.

Chafee was one of the few Republicans to vote against allowing drilling in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and was a member of the Republicans for Environmental Protection.

Chafee was the only Republican in the Senate to have voted against authorization of the use of force in Iraq.

Incumbent Senator Lincoln Chafee was one of the most liberal member of the Republican Party in the Senate by 2006, and was challenged for the Republican nomination by Laffey who had criticized Chafee for his liberal voting record in the Senate.

Cianci clashed behind the scenes with John Chafee, trying to talk him out of his Senate run so Cianci could get the Republican nomination instead.

During 2001 and 2002, when liberal Republican senators from New England like James Jeffords and Lincoln Chafee threatened to ( and in Jeffords ' case, did ) leave their party over ideological disputes, rumors abounded that Miller would become a Republican in order to return control of the Senate to that party.

Prior to his election as governor, Chafee served in the United States Senate as a Republican from 1999 until losing his Senate re-election bid in 2006 to Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse.

In September 2005, Steve Laffey, the mayor of Cranston, Rhode Island, announced his intention to run against Chafee in the Republican primary.

In the summer of 2007, Chafee officially left the Republican Party, changing his affiliation to independent.

In September 2008, Chafee received media attention for describing Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska and the Republican vice-presidential nominee in the 2008 United States presidential election, as a " cocky wacko ".

On October 31, 2010, electoral analysis site FiveThirtyEight. com gave Chafee a 63. 8 % chance of victory, compared to Democratic opponent Frank Caprio's 26. 2 % and Republican opponent John Robitaille's 10. 0 %.

" The National Journal has rated Chafee as the least Conservative Republican in the Senate, and placed him to the left of two Democrats, Nebraska's Ben Nelson and Louisiana's Mary Landrieu, the only Republican to the left of the latter.

Known for often disagreeing with the Republican Party leadership, Chafee says he did not cast his ballot for President George W. Bush in the 2004 election, instead choosing to write in former president George H. W. Bush as a nod to the Republican Party of his father.

On May 23, 2005, Chafee was one of 14 bipartisan senators to forge a compromise on the Democrats ' use of the judicial filibuster, forestalling the Republican leadership's implementation of the so-called " nuclear option ".

Chafee was the only Republican to oppose Bush's nomination of Samuel Alito to the United States Supreme Court.

Conservative author and radio talk-show host Hugh Hewitt argued that Chafee is one of the greatest roadblocks to creating a permanent Republican majority in the country because of his unwillingness to conform to the party's social goals.

Yet the Rockefeller Republican label is sometimes applied to such modern-day politicians as Senators Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins of Maine and Governor Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island.

In her 2006 re-election campaign, she was one of two Republican Senate candidates endorsed by the prominent gay rights organization, the Human Rights Campaign ( the other was Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island ).

On fiscal issues, she has voiced support for cutting taxes as economic stimulus, although she joined fellow Republican senators Lincoln Chafee and John McCain in voting against the Bush tax cuts in 2003.

In 2008, Chafee joined the advisory board of J Street, a lobbying group that promotes diplomatic relations between Israel and its neighbors, and supports an independent Palestinian state.

Chafee is now involved in the J Street project, a liberal Jewish group that calls for Israel to withdraw from all occupied territories and advocates for a " two state " solution to the Israeli-Arab conflict.

Chafee favors increased federal funding for health care and supports an increase in the federal minimum wage.

Chafee opposes the death penalty, and has consistently voted against limiting federal death penalty appeals, has favored including racial statistics in death penalty appeals, and a prerequisite of DNA analysis for all federal executions.

Chafee opposes eliminating the federal estate tax.

Chafee also voted against both the 2001 and 2003 federal tax cut bills.

Chafee also Cosponsored the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005, which expanded federal jurisdiction over class-action lawsuits, and voted against a wholesale ban on gifts from employees of lobbying companies.

$ 20M of federal funding was earmarked by former Rhode Island senator Lincoln Chafee in the 2005 SAFETEA transportation bill.

The CBRA enacted a set of maps depicting the John H. Chafee Coastal Barrier Resources System ( CBRS ) in which federal flood insurance is unavailable for new or significantly improved structures.