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Democrats pushing Langevin for Senate in Rhode Island against Chafee
United Press International ^ | 1/19/2005 | UPI

Posted on 01/19/2005 2:59:18 PM PST by PDR

Democrat leads in party R.I. Senate poll

PROVIDENCE, R.I., Jan. 19 (UPI) -- Rhode Island voters polled by the Democrats favored U.S. Rep. James Langevin, D-R.I., over Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee in the 2006 Senate race.

The poll, which was conducted for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee by the Mellman Group, showed Langevin leading liberal Republican Chafee 52 percent to 32 percent among the 500 registered voters surveyed. Seventeen percent of respondents said they were undecided.

The Providence (R.I.) Journal said Wednesday that Mellman also also tested Chafee's strength against two other Democrats who are considering U.S. Senate bids -- Secretary of State Matthew Brown and former Attorney General Sheldon Whitehouse -- but that the DSCC would not release the results. An unnamed Chafee staffer told the paper they understood the results to show the incumbent, "with a big lead over Whitehouse and an even larger margin over Brown."

The poll was conducted Jan. 11-13 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.


TOPICS: News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; US: Rhode Island
KEYWORDS: 2006; chafee; democrats; election; electionussenate; langevin; liberals; poll; upi
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1 posted on 01/19/2005 2:59:22 PM PST by PDR
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To: PDR

RINO Chafee will win comfortably, polls this far out are ridiculous.


2 posted on 01/19/2005 3:01:41 PM PST by RWR8189 (Its Morning in America Again!)
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To: PDR

Are theree any actual Republicans in Rhode Island?


3 posted on 01/19/2005 3:02:22 PM PST by SoDak (I am a raindog too)
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To: PDR

This goes in the who cares file.


4 posted on 01/19/2005 3:05:04 PM PST by boomop1
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To: SoDak

Actually, the governor of Rhode Island is a Republican.


5 posted on 01/19/2005 3:07:58 PM PST by LdSentinal
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To: LdSentinal

probably another RINO.

they can have a Democrat replace the Chaffing dish....it doesn't really matter does it.....


6 posted on 01/19/2005 3:10:43 PM PST by Vaquero
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To: LdSentinal

But is he or she an actual Republican?


7 posted on 01/19/2005 3:12:02 PM PST by SoDak (I am a raindog too)
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To: PDR

Chafee look ill in the Condi hearing. It looked to me like he may have some kind of nueromuscular disorder.


8 posted on 01/19/2005 3:12:16 PM PST by shubi (Peace through superior firepower.)
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To: SoDak

For Rhode Island he's pretty conservative. Moreso than Chafee, Romney, Snowe, Collins, and perhaps even Judd Gregg from NH.


9 posted on 01/19/2005 3:13:21 PM PST by LdSentinal
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To: LdSentinal

Ok, so perhaps there are some.


10 posted on 01/19/2005 3:24:17 PM PST by SoDak (I am a raindog too)
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To: SoDak

I'm way too right wing to be a republican, but I live in Smuggler's Cove.

The Governor, Carcieri is a pub and not a bad guy, even well liked.
There's a good guy name of Laffey who is presently mayor of Cranston who might have a future.

As for Chuffhead, we'd all be ahead if he was gone. He's just a commie.
Langevin is a monster but if he was out of the house, we might have a chance for a decent republican to snag his seat.

Most likely, the nursing homes will have to die off and the cemetaries dug up and moved out of state before you would ever break the commie stranglehold here, behind the quahog shell curtain.


11 posted on 01/19/2005 3:25:58 PM PST by the gillman@blacklagoon.com
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An interesting twist on the race is that Langevin is pro-life (except for stem cell research I believe) while Chafee isn't even close. Of course, they're both big time liberals on all other issues.


12 posted on 01/19/2005 4:12:03 PM PST by ChuckK
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To: JohnnyZ; fieldmarshaldj; Kuksool; Clintonfatigued; Coop

"The poll, which was conducted for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee by the Mellman Group, showed Langevin leading liberal Republican Chafee 52 percent to 32 percent among the 500 registered voters surveyed. Seventeen percent of respondents said they were undecided."



OK, cue Randy Quaid saying "I've been sayin' it. Ain't I been sayin' it?"

While pundits kept mentioning several of the statewide officeholders as the Democrats most likely to run against Lincoln Chafee, I've been saying all along that Congressman John Langevin, who is pro-life and wheelchair-bound, would wipe the floor with the religiously pro-abortion Chafee in the heavily Catholic state of Rhode Island. The fact that this poll was taken in the first place leads me to believe that RI Democrats understand what I've long understood, and will clear the field for Langevin to run against Chafee. (BTW, I know that Lincoln Chafee beat pro-life Democrat Congressman Bob Weygand in 2000, but (i) Langevin is a former Secretary of State and more popular than Weygand and (ii) Rhode Islanders didn't know just how much of a tool Lincoln Chafee was back in 2000.

I think Chafee's only chance to be reelected is if Patrick Kennedy decides to run for the Senate and buys his way to the RAT nomination (after his dad calls Langevin a misogynist cripple), since as terrible as Chafee is even he could kick Patrick Kennedy's butt in a statewide general election. So what options do we have? We could have somebody run against him in the GOP primary---former Congressman Machtley, a liberal but patriotic Republican, comes to mind---but the only Republican who would be favored against Langevin in the general election would probably be pro-life Governor Don Carcieri, and we need him to run for reelection (both the Senate seat and the governorship are up in 2006). A better solution might be to kick Chafee off of a sub-committee chairmanship or something so that he makes it official and finally leaves the GOP. I assume that the Democrats would discourage Langevin from running in the RAT primary against someone who recently switched parties in order not to discourage other RINOs from switching, and I think that a Republican Senate candidate with decent name ID would have a good chance of defeating Lincoln Chafee in a general election, especially one in which Governor Carcieri is running for reelection.


13 posted on 01/21/2005 12:06:45 PM PST by AuH2ORepublican (Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.)
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To: AuH2ORepublican

So pretty much you want an Almind-Chafee race.


14 posted on 01/21/2005 1:09:19 PM PST by JohnnyZ ("Thought I was having trouble with my adding. It's all right now." - Clint Eastwood)
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Comment #15 Removed by Moderator

To: JohnnyZ

Well, I'd rather have an Almond-Chafee general election than an Almond-Langevin general election, since I don't think Almond would beat Langevin in an open-seat Senate race but I think that Chafee, even if he ran as a Democrat, would lose to a good Republican candidate. But given that Almond chose not to take on the relatively vulnerable Patrick Kennedy in 2002, and I believe he said in 2004 that his wife would kill him if he ran for office again, I don't think Almond would run for the Senate. But heck, *somebody* has to be willing to run against Judas Chafee if he finally switched to the RATs. And in the meantime. we'd have some truth-in-labeling with Chafee as a RAT and we'd be able to add a real Republican to all of the committees in which he sits (dropping to 54 Senators would not reduce our partisan advantage on each committee) while Chafee would be taking some Democrat's spot, so it would be like a 2-vote gain on each of Chafee's committees.

Our best chance of winning a Senate seat from RI is to run a moderate, pro-life, Catholic Republican against a pro-aborion liberal Democrat with an annoying personality. So basically, we can beat either Patrick Kennedy or Lincoln Chafee, and Chafee should be easier to beat than Kennedy because (i) Chafee is an upper-class WASP and thus will not do well among blue-collar Catholic voters, and (ii) Chafee is even more pro-abortion than Patches, since he even voted against final passage of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban (Patches hypocritically voted for final passage after having voted to strip the bill of all force of law by voting for Greenwood's sham substitute amendment). So I say we throw Chafee to the curb (which would also have the ancillary benefit of warning the other RINOs not to press their luck) and watch him win the RAT nomination against the wishes of most RI Democrats, and we'll beat him in the general.


16 posted on 01/21/2005 1:28:33 PM PST by AuH2ORepublican (Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice, moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.)
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To: PDR; AuH2ORepublican; fieldmarshaldj; Kuksool; JohnnyZ

It would be interesting to see a pro-life Democrat elected to the Senate from New England. However, Chafee's last opponent was pro-life, and he won a large liberal crossover vote.

I have a question: how do Stephen Laffey's prospects look at this time? Don Carcieri is my first choice, but he doesn't appear interested.


17 posted on 01/21/2005 9:26:41 PM PST by Clintonfatigued
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To: Clintonfatigued

Gov. Carcieri probably should stay put until his 2nd term ends in 2011 before taking a shot at Congress. As for Mayor Laffey, unless the GOP is prepared to seriously make an attempt to take down Chafee (a la NH's Bob Smith in '02), he'll probably still be renominated (because of all the dimwits still thinking he's his dad). Another scenario, however very unlikely, could be Laffey perhaps attempting a 3rd party Independent bid against Chafee and Langevin (something like the 1970 NY Senate contest that saw Conservative Jim Buckley defeat the incumbent liberal GOP Sen. Chuck Goodell and the 'Rat nominee, Rep. Dick Ottinger).


18 posted on 01/21/2005 10:00:50 PM PST by fieldmarshaldj (*Gregoire is French for Stealing an Election*)
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To: Clintonfatigued

Chafee should survive re-election. I expect the MSM to go all out to save the NY Times's favorite Republican.


19 posted on 01/22/2005 6:24:16 AM PST by Kuksool
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To: AuH2ORepublican

The RATS say they will attempt to soften their pro-abortion stance. I'll believe it if they do adequately fund the campaigns of Pat Casey and Langevin. Although I really doubt it. With the upcoming battle over judges, the proabort forces will whip the DNC into submission.


20 posted on 01/22/2005 7:13:28 AM PST by Kuksool
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