Speaking of Chafee’s re-election bid, his opponent Sheldon Whitehouse is running quite a few ads on the air here in RI. As the positions held by Chafee and Whitehouse are virtually identical, Whitehouse’s thrust has been “elect me and I’ll vote for a Democrat to be Senate Majority Leader”. And I’m still getting very annoying Democrat telemarketing calls telling me to vote Democrat to defeat Bush’s failed policies.
The response from the Chafee camp – nothing. No ads, no interviews, no calls for debates, nada. And nothing from the 'notorious' National Republican Senatorial Committee, either. Chafee has an interesting problem – he can’t run a positive campaign on issues that can be supported with a straight face by the NRSC. And he can’t run negative ads against the positions of his opponent because they share the same views. The only real difference between them (aside from the vote for Majority Leader) is support for Israel – it looks like Whitehouse is more mainstream while Chafee seems to relish taking some virulently anti-Israel positions (se Bolton, John). I’d love to see Chafee try to attack Whitehouse’s Israel position without appearing to be anti-Semitic (hint – he won’t be able to pull it off).
It appears that if the race continues to poll in Whitehouse’s favor Chafee will again have to rely on very nasty personal attacks while simultaneously running “Hey, I’m a really reasonable nice guy” media ads – a tactic that worked against Steve Laffey but would cancel themselves out in a race against Whitehouse. Based on several of the Democrat ‘get out the vote’ calls that I received during the primary which highlighted the negative Republican primary campaign, I would imagine the Dems have a series of ads ready to go as soon as the first negative Chafee ad airs – all decrying the Republicans’ “politics of personal destruction”. Which is too bad, because Whitehouse is a very beatable candidate, even in Rhode Island. He lost his last race, a primary for Governor of RI, after being the early favorite and far out in front of the eventual winner Myrth York. Hint – Sheldon’s personal style makes Chafee appear flamboyant. Consider Whitehouse a dull pre-2000 Al Gore.
An example - I have a close friend who is pretty much a far left Democrat, and really has his finger on the pulse of street-level Rhode Island Democrats - the real voters, not the media campaigns. He was approached at an event by a Whitehouse staffer. She started the "pitch", and my friend interrupted her by saying that he was voting for Whitehouse because he wanted a Democrat Senate Majority. He then looked her straight in the eye and told her that that was the only reason why he was voting for Whitehouse - that as a candidate Whitehouse doesn't impress him at all. She replied along the lines of "Well, that's what I thought too before I started to work for him, and now I've learned that he's a really smart, warm, kind, and funny person...". My friend cut her off again, said that he wasn't impressed by Whitehouse at all, and walked away.
Even against such a uninspiring candidate, Chafee’s tactics during the primary have painted him into quite a corner for the General Election. He was able to survive the primary solely because of his negative campaigning against an opponent with real opposing views. It will be interesting to see how the next few weeks unfold against an opponent with whom he has much in agreement.
