At minimum, in a state where grasping legislators provide a regular source of scandal, Rhode Islanders can at least take some satisfaction in the strength of the two choices to continue a tradition of public service personified by such Senate stalwarts as Pastore, Claiborne Pell, John H. Chafee, and Jack Reed.

A democratic breeze is blowing
The challenge facing Chafee was evident during a WPRI/Providence Journal-sponsored TV debate on October 19, when the ProJo’s Mark Arsenault ticked off a number of issues on which the GOP senator is at odds with his own party — ranging from the war in Iraq, tax cuts for the rich, and a ban on gay marriage to the minimum wage, stem cell research, an amendment to outlaw flag-burning, and drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. To the audible amusement of some in the audience at Warwick’s Toll Gate High School, Arsenault asked Chafee where he differs from the Democratic platform.

All Chafee could do was mildly trace how, despite the wholesale switch in allegiance of the American South from Democrat to Republican, more liberal members of the GOP still hold the mayoralty in New York City and the governor’s office in New York, Massachusetts, and California. “Us moderate Republicans are still alive and kicking,” Chafee said. “I’m hoping the pendulum will swing back to the Republican Party that I know and like.”

This amounted to lobbing a slow-moving softball to Whitehouse, and he didn’t miss the opportunity to smash it. “The Republican leadership in Washington has completely lost its connection to American families,” the Democrat said in his response, “and they are not pursuing policies that are helpful to American families.”

Describing Chafee’s vote for GOP leadership in the Senate as the catalyst that helps to set the “train” of misguided Republican policies in motion, Whitehouse argued — in a rebuttal to Chafee’s description of the value of a bipartisan Congressional delegation — that the junior senator effectively undercuts 40 percent of Jack Reed’s votes. When Chafee responded by noting how some Senate Democrats helped to support the invasion of Iraq and tax cuts for rich, before renewing his criticism of Whitehouse’s prosecutorial record, it seemed like a losing argument.

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Little wonder, then, that Democrat Senatorial Campaign Committee has sounded a constant mantra in TV commercials of how voters must change the Senate — where a gain of six seats would give them control of the chamber — to change Washington.

Chafee, whose genuine genial quality is more pronounced in person, was far better prepared for Whitehouse than he was during his two televised primary debates with Laffey, although he still seemed a bit fuzzy at times. Whitehouse generally came across as smart and sharp, although it was striking, particularly given the recent sniping on the issue, that he didn’t remember the name of the lawyer he dealt with on the Roger Williams’ issue.

Chafee’s counter-attack
The national context of the race explains why the Chafee camp aggressively went on the attack against Whitehouse, starting around the time of an October 13 debate on The Dan Yorke Show on WPRO (630 AM), trying to redefine it as a more local campaign.

Pointing to the influence-peddling conviction that day of Robert Urciuoli, the former president of Roger Williams Medical Center, Chafee has repeatedly noted how it took a federal prosecution — not coincidentally by Robert Clark Corrente, his appointee as US attorney — after doctors had brought concerns about wrongdoing at the hospital to AG Whitehouse in 1999.

After having run a hard-hitting commercial about this in recent weeks, the Chafee camp this week ramped up the intensity with a new spot, which asserts in part, “Sheldon Whitehouse didn’t have the guts to go after political insiders . . . and he won’t have the guts to stand up for Rhode Island in the Senate either.”

As part of his attack, Chafee has suggested that Whitehouse was not sufficiently aggressive in going after hospital executives because of connections between Democratic insiders and Roger Williams; former lieutenant governor Richard Licht is a past board member of the hospital, and Urciuoli is related through marriage to former Providence mayor Joseph R. Paolino Jr.

While this strategy has a tinge of desperation, it might also resonate for some of those Rhode Islanders who question why federal prosecutors, rather than their state counterparts, routinely play a bigger role in rooting out public corruption in the state.

Yet Whitehouse has mostly declined to engage with Chafee on this issue, striving to keep the focus of the race firmly fixed on George W. Bush. Although part of this came down to practical politics, it also led some of those watching the October 19 debate on Channel 12 to wonder why the Democrat didn’t make a more direct response.

Responding to Chafee’s charge that he had exhibited “willful blindness” to corruption, Whitehouse, during the debate, said it was his opponent who was blind to his own role in empowering “a Republican Senate that won’t investigate anything, won’t demand any accountability, and won’t get our troops home.”