I was at Fenway in 2009 when Jacoby Ellsbury stole home
against Andy Pettitte and the New York Yankees. One moment we’re waiting for
the next pitch and then a huge roar rises up as 38,000 fans (and Andy Pettitte)
realize that Ells is steps from home. Fenway exploded and I found myself
jumping up and down screaming in celebration with the guy next to me (I think
his name was Sully) and reveling in the greatest baseball moment I’d ever
witnessed firsthand.
We saw an attempted steal of our own in Little Rhody last
week as Governor Chafee tried to get from second to third in his reelection
campaign by switching his party affiliation.
He was born a Chafee (that got him to first) and is a self-funded
incumbent, getting him to second base and into scoring position for 2014. From
that vantage point he surveyed the political landscape and realized that
staying an “I” did not have the inherent political advantages of being a “D” and
decided to change parties in hopes that it gets him around third in deep blue
Rhody.
Chafee’s thinking is politically astute. He sees his
approval ratings and knows that to survive, he needs to be judged only by the
people who see him most favorably and only under circumstances under which he
has most control over voter turnout.
His relationship with President Obama will also be more
impactful in a D primary. In 2010 Chafee
used this friendship to keep the White House machine from supporting Frank
Caprio in the race for governor. Chafee has since realized that if he were a D,
the White House and fellow D governors could prove very useful in raising money
and garnering support from the party faithful. You’ll note that Chafee had a
private meeting with the President a week before the “leak” and that the first
communication out of the White House was a “welcome to the party” along with a
fundraising solicitation. John Chafee
didn’t raise a fool.
With no reelection of his own, President Obama can spend
plenty of time on fundraising for 2014 and could enjoy several visits to Rhode
Island to help his friend. With our
$1,000 fundraising limits, the biggest help Obama can give could come through
guiding independent expenditures and the use of the super-charged voter ID
system that his billion-dollar campaign employed. It’s a tad ironic that
someone who has party-bucked and party-surfed as much as Chafee has would now try
to leverage others’ party loyalty for his own benefit. Today that “Trust
Chafee” logo from 2010 looks like a misprint to some Rhode Islanders who
thought he was truly independent.
What Governor Chafee cannot control or calculate well is how
other likely competitors in the Democratic primary are going to perform. If
Mayor Angel Taveras decides to run, he and Chafee will split the left side of
the party. Taveras will do well among Latinos and Chafee will have the backing of
the public employee unions. If Treasurer Gina Raimondo joins the fray, she’ll
do well with the more fiscally conservative Democrats and will attract
independents to the race. And for more irony - by joining the Democratic Party,
Chafee is giving them the governor’s office for the first time since 1995 but
may also create a fierce primary that prevents them from keeping it into 2015.
This is in spite of the fact that the most popular officeholders in the state –
Taveras and Raimondo – are Democrats and appear willing to run. Maybe Chafee is
a Republican after all.
Some readers might have seen Ellsbury’s milestone last week
– in Philadelphia he stole five bases in one night, setting a new Red Sox team
record. To commemorate the feat, the Phillies good-naturedly gave him second
base to take home. While I am certain that Chafee would like Democrats to take
his conversion at face value and let him take third base and the primary win
for his trophy case, it’s more likely that he’ll be in a rundown until the
primary on September 9, 2014. And of course, if he manages to get around third,
there will be a Block – and a Fung – in front of home plate.
CMC
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