Laffey and Me
One of the more closely watched races in this coming Tuesday's smattering of primaries will be the Republican match-up for the Senatorial seat in Rhode Island. Lincoln Chafee, the moderate GOP incumbent who is often a bleeding thorn in the side of the Bush White House, faces a tough challenge on his right from the once-unknown Mayor of the town of Cranston, Steve Laffey.
I spent an entire day with Laffey in Mexico last year before he was officially running and therefore take some extra interest in the race.
Some background:
Chafee has opposed the Bush administration on the Iraqi war, tax cuts, civil liberties and other issues, making him sometimes a key swing vote for Democrats as well as a hated target of conservatives who believe he is really a RINO (Republican in Name Only).
Irony is that the national GOP is now pouring resources into R.I. to bolster Chaffee in Tuesday's election. They worry that if elected, his challenger Steve Laffey will be too conservative for the state and will -- in November-- guarantee the election of likely Democratic rival Sheldon Whitehouse (what is it about R.I. that almost everyone there has two last names?).
Laffey, a former stock broker, sort of came out of nowhere and is attempting to pose as the Republican analog to Ned Lamont, a tough-talking, down-to-earth, giant-killer populist. He rails against special interests, oil companies, and Big Pharma and even to liberals he sounds great on issues like enegry, the environment and campaign finance, but Laffey is also the candidate of the very conservative Club For Growth.
If nothing else, Laffey is ambitious, tenacious and very hard-to-read. I ought to know.
By pure serendipity last year, he and a small entourage were tacked onto a one-day group visit south of the border I did with an Arizona humanitarian group. We went down to the Mexican town of Altar, which is a central staging ground for much of the illegal occupation in the Southwest.
Mayor Laffey came along with a local latino activist from Cranston as well as a videographer who kept the camera rolling on Hizzoner. The other ten or twleve of us on the trip found Laffey to be a bouyant presence, like hanging out with a Boston Irish firefighter after a few beers. Not only was he affable and personable, but he seemed to really "get" the immigration issue. As Mayor he had just approved the legal recognition of Guatemalan and Mexican consular cards as valid I.D. in Cranston -- a way to give the undocumented some documents. And he professed great sympathy for the Mexicans he saw heading north through the desert. At the urging of local Latinos, he was now taking a first-hand look at the border -- and beyond.
Maybe he was just yanking our chain. But I don't think so. He spoke boldly on the record to me in sympathy with the immigrants. And to his own camera crew for a program that would later air on his local TV channel.
Here's what I wrote about him at the time:
Mayor Laffey is a 43-year-old former Wall Street investment banker – now a self-described “populist†Republican – who’s come all the way from home with a couple of his own local Latino activists to get a firsthand look at the border and what lies below. “I’m very lucky,†Laffey says as we walk across Altar’s central plaza. “I lost one brother to AIDS. One is in a locked psych ward. A lot of politicians are just talk, they don’t come up with solutions. This border is just too far away from people’s lives. They have all these people who clean for them and take care of their yards and their kids, but don’t know who they are or care. My whole thing is that everybody has to have the opportunity to live the American Dream.â€After we visited one of the squalid tenement motels that house the transient immigrants on their way to the U.S.. Laffey also told me he recognized the need for some sort of comprehensive immigration reform plan that would go beyond border enforcement:
“If you had a hundred U.S. senators come down here and spend only a day in one of the flophouses or a morning talking to these people, you’d have this immigration issue solved in less than a week, says Cranston’s Mayor Laffey as we roll out of Sasabe. “But it isn’t gonna happen. Not yet.? "And apparently not even if Laffey himself becomes Senator. For the effects of his campaign, he seems to have forgotten what he said as recently as a year ago. So much so that Laffey has now been endorsed by an aggressive anti-immigration reform lobby. Laffey has been running hard to the right on immigration, now saying his frirst priority would be "to secure" the U.S. border and to make sure illegals don't get amnesty. This is hogwash and Laffey knows it is. He was there. He saw the border. He knows the only real way to secure it is not by blockading it or sounding like a bully, but rather by much of the pressure off the border by providing for expanded legal immigration. Too bad Laffey pooped out. We'll see who poops on Tuesday. For Non-Republicans this is kind of a tough call. Do you want to keep Chafee in place and have him continue to screw up his own party. Or do you want Laffey to beat Chafee so that Laffey gets beaten by the Dem? Too hard me for to figure out.
September 10th, 2006 at 3:26 pm
Oh Marc you poor naive thing you! Of course Laffey was all for the “immigrants” last year. What do you think the Club for Growth (by the way do they have a treehouse where the club meets?) thinks of this? Same as the WSJ which wants a Constitutional Amendment stating that there should be open borders. These people want an unending stream of peons to do the work that can’t be shipped overseas. A Reserve Army of the Unemployed (now who said that?) that will keep the proles in their place. And if he is saying mean things now its only because their focus groups tell them the base is hoping mad and might vote for a hardliner on this.
What is really interesting about this is the fact that the GOP is pouring real dough into Chafee’s race and said today that Laffey can’t win and the loss of RI could cost the party the Senate next year. Its really amazing how the MSM agonized over the Lamont – Lieberman Primary (Oh so divisive) which will not affect the initial next to the name (still be Dem) but has paid no attention to next door where the red hots in Republican Party are prepared to commit ritual suicide in the name of purity.
Make no mistake about it. We are seeing the same sort of meltdown that occured to Dems in the late sixties as the Cold War Liberalism of the party leaders was wrecked on the shoals of a place called Vietnam. Now it is the Republican’s turn and it won’t be pretty for them but it will be great fun – as well as cosmic justice – for me.
September 10th, 2006 at 3:44 pm
It’s not so much that Chafee is a RINO (or not) but that he is a political pussy. He lacks the courage of whatever convictions he may actually possess. His position on the issues and his votes are well documented transparent efforts to pander to the voters. Funny thing is he gets that wrong plenty of time too.
The GOP needs to support Chafee because, as an incumbant, he has the best chance of winning the seat and, thereby, helping to maintain the majority. It ain’t about the issues.
September 10th, 2006 at 5:33 pm
Cooper says As Mayor he had just approved the legal recognition of Guatemalan and Mexican consular cards as valid I.D. in Cranston — a way to give the undocumented some documents.
That sounds so kind and helpful, doesn’t it? Of course, when you actually look into it you’ll see that it’s quite a bit more sinister.
Those cards don’t just “help” the “undocumented”.
And, they don’t just encourage more illegal immigration.
They also help the Mexican government by making it easier for illegal aliens to send money home. That, as has been pointed out by others here many times, makes it easier for the Mexican government to avoid reforms and it gives them a strong incentive to send us even more people.
But, wait, it gets much worse.
There are U.S. companies that profit from that flow of money that was earned illegally.
And, those U.S. companies then donate to corrupt politicians who make it easier for those corrupt companies to make money by not doing anything about the flow of illegal aliens.
So, those who (awww) “give the undocumented some documents” are encouraging illegal immigration, making Mexican reforms less likely, and encouraging political corruption here in the U.S.
And, for the Democrats: as pointed out at the link, the Dems’ response to the Laffey ad shows just how incompetent your leaders are.
September 10th, 2006 at 6:47 pm
Well it look’s like ABC and the Disney Corporation’s with stupid. This 9-11 “Path to Lies” is a love letter to the ruling party, just in time for the elections, elections where we could hold them accountable if we take back the house and senate. This swift boating of the 9-11 facts reeks of Rove. see my cartoon on this 9-11 pack of lies at my website;
http://www.whatnowtoons.com/#058
you won’t see it in the paper
September 10th, 2006 at 10:51 pm
More generally, assumptions that the Democrats are sure to take over the House may be premature, if some of the warning signs reported in this NYT piece are correct–I have excerpted just the first few graphs below. In Congressional races, voters will be considering individual candidates rather than an entire party, and may not always follow the throw the rascals out logic Democrats are hoping for. No room for complacency here, clearly.
September 11, 2006
For Democrats’ Hopes, Less Promise in New York
By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ
In a year when Democrats hope to take control of the House of Representatives, New York would appear to be fertile ground for toppling Republican incumbents. Democrats have a statewide edge in enrollment, and a popular incumbent, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, is at the top of the party’s ticket.
In fact, just a few months ago, Democrats envisioned significant gains in New York, perhaps picking up as many as four seats, possibly even five. But that goal now seems increasingly remote, and there is an emerging consensus among political analysts that the party’s best chance for capturing a Republican seat is the battle to succeed Representative Sherwood L. Boehlert, one of the most liberal Republicans in Congress, who is retiring.
At the same time, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee plans to spend roughly $50 million on advertisements for races around the country, according to Republican estimates. But none of that money has been set aside for New York races, except for Mr. Boehlert’s seat in the 24th District in the Utica area, according to Democrats involved in the races.
The shifting local fortunes for Democrats could have serious political implications beyond New York. The party needs 15 seats to take control of the House. Even one victory in New York would be an important step toward that goal, giving the Democrats a cushion if they lose elsewhere in the nation.
The situation in New York is particularly surprising given the state’s reputation as a Democratic bastion. National and state party officials have spent months trying to create buzz around those races. But Republican incumbents, in New York and elsewhere, have been trying to shift the focus of the races away from hostility toward the Bush administration to more local concerns, like the potential loss of federal aid to their districts if they lose veteran congressmen.
September 11th, 2006 at 9:45 am
Having a majority makes a difference in areas unrelated to the individual senator’s voting behavior. For one thing it affects the composition of committees. The party affiliation is important, even for mavericks. It’s true that these mavericks can (theoretically) help forge inter-party coalitions or (more theoretically) moderate their party’s policies, but those seem like vestigial concerns now that reaching across the aisle is a thing of the past. Since I’d like to see a Democartic majority, I consider this an easy call.
September 11th, 2006 at 1:08 pm
Michael the NYT may not be the best judge. See Charlie Cook or HOTLINE. But, better yet, take a look at where the K-Street Community is placing their bet. Right now the bulk of lobbying money is going to the Democrats. And that isn’t because they have suddenly decided that Nancy Pelosi would make a keen speaker. Its because they want to be on the winning side.
September 12th, 2006 at 8:59 pm
Laffey lost…