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 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.

Lincoln Almond appointed the younger Chafee to serve out the term.

His son, Lincoln Chafee, was appointed to serve the remainder of his term, and then won a full term in the 2000 election.

Republican Lincoln Chafee was seeking re-election to the seat he had held since 1999, when he was appointed to fill the vacancy created by the death of his father John Chafee.

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 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 ".

In November 2006, immediately following the midterm elections, Chafee joined key Democrats in opposing President Bush's renomination of John Bolton as United States Ambassador to the United Nations.

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

Harvard's Professor Zechariah Chafee paid tribute to Lowell's defense of Harvard's teachers and students by dedicating his 1920 study Free Speech in the United States to Lowell, " whose wisdom and courage in the face of uneasy fears and stormy criticism made it unmistakably plain that so long as he was president no one could breathe the air of Harvard and not be free.

Chafee argued in Free Speech in the United States that a better analogy in Schenk might be a man who stands in a theatre and warns the audience that there are not enough fire exits.

Laffey announced on September 8, 2005 that he would be running for the United States Senate, challenging incumbent Lincoln Chafee in the Republican primary.

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.

" Freedom of Speech in War Times ", by Z. Chafee, ordered into the Senate record by La Follette in 1919

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.

" 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.

After the death of Senator John Chafee on October 24, 1999, a seat opened up on the Senate Finance Committee and Coverdell relinquished his seat on the Foreign Relations Committee to fill the seat.

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 ).

In the meantime, Sen. John Chafee ( R-R. I .) had died and thus the chairmanship of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works had reopened.

The NRSC generally avoids supporting Republicans in primaries against other party members, though the 2006 Rhode Island Senate primary between Lincoln Chafee and mayor of Cranston Steve Laffey is a notable exception.

After an unsuccessful candidacy for the Senate in 1972 against Democratic incumbent Claiborne Pell, Chafee was elected to that body in 1976, the first Republican to win a Rhode Island Senate election since 1930.

On social issues, Chafee was among the most liberal members of the Senate.

Chafee sat on the U. S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and was chairman of the Senate Finance Committee's Subcommittee on Health Care, but his biggest imprint was on environmental concerns.

In 2005, Brown declared his intention to run for the U. S. Senate in 2006, challenging incumbent Republican Senator Lincoln Chafee, but withdrew from the race and endorsed another Democratic candidate, Sheldon Whitehouse, who went on to win the general election.

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.