HISTORICAL NOTE

John Hubbard Chafee served Rhode Island as State Representative (1957-1962), Governor (1963-1968), and as United States Senator (1977-1999). He also served as Secretary of the Navy under President Richard Nixon for three years (1969-1972). He died on October 24, 1999, two days after his 77thbirthday, after having spent most of his working years in public service.

Born in Providence, Rhode Island on October 22, 1922, John Chafee was descended from one of the original six families to settle Rhode Island and came from a family long prominent in politics. Two relatives on his mother’s side had served as governors of Rhode Island, great grandfather, Henry Lippitt (1875-77) and, great uncle, Charles Warren Lippitt (1895-97). Another great-uncle, Henry Frederick Lippitt (1911-17), had been a United States Senator from Rhode Island. Zechariah Chafee, Jr., an uncle, was a noted Harvard law professor.

John H. Chafee obtained his early education in the public elementary schools of Providence, the Providence Country Day School, and Deerfield Academy, Deerfield, Massachusetts. After graduating from Deerfield Academy in 1940, he entered Yale University, but left Yale in his sophomore year to enlist in the United States Marine Corp. He served first as a private and landed with the first assault troops at Guadalcanal. In November 1943, he attended Officers Candidate School and was commissioned as second lieutenant, United States Marine Corps Reserve, in June 1944. The following January he went to Guam and served with the Sixth Marine Division in the battle of Okinawa in April 1945; he left active duty in December 1945.

Chafee returned to Yale University in 1946 and graduated with a B.A. in 1947. He continued his studies at Harvard Law School from which he graduated in 1950, in the top quarter of his class. He married Virginia Coates of Bayville, New York, shortly after graduating. He passed the Rhode Island bar and was practicing in Providence when the Korean War broke out. Recalled to active duty by the Marines in 1951, he served as a Rifle Company commander with the First Marine Division in Korea. In June 1953 he was released from active duty and he returned to civilian life—after nearly six years of active duty with the Marines in two wars.

Newly returned from Korea, Chafee helped in the successful campaign of Christopher DelSesto–then the Republican candidate for Mayor of Providence in 1952. Chafee became campaign manager in 1954 for Camilo Rodriquez, a council candidate for the Republican ticket in the 9th Ward in Warwick. In 1956, Chafee won the endorsement of the third district committee for Rhode Island House of Representatives and went on to win in the general election by a margin of 2 to 1. He was reelected in both 1958 and 1960. At the start of his second term in the General Assembly in 1958, he was chosen by the Republican members of the House to be the House Minority leader (1959-62). Working closely with DelSesto, now Governor of Rhode Island (1958-1960), Chafee shepherded a Republican program through an overwhelmingly Democratic assembly.

Chafee was elected for a third term in 1960 and was again chosen as House Minority Leader. He served as a member of the Judiciary Committee, Secretary of the Commission to reapportion the House of Representatives and Secretary of the Legislative Council. The election of 1960, however, saw the defeat of Governor DelSesto–who had been the only Republican in 22 years to win a statewide election–to the Lieutenant Governor, John A. Notte Jr. (Democrat). A small group of Republicans began holding a series of meetings to select the best possible gubernatorial candidate to represent the party in the next election. Despite his young age–he was only 39 at the time–John H. Chafee was chosen to be a candidate.

In February 1962, Chafee officially declared his candidacy and began campaigning. He personally sought the vote of each delegate to the Rhode Island Republican State Convention which was held in June. The Convention gave the endorsement to John Chafee over Louis Jackvony after three ballots (by a margin of 59 to 54—a 57 vote total of the 113 committee members was required for endorsement). Jackvony had led on the first ballot with 55 votes to Chafee’s 52 and Joseph O’Donnell’s 5, but on the second vote Chafee went into the lead with 56 votes, Jackvony dropped to 53 and O’Donnell dropped to 3. O’Donnell then released his votes and with only two candidates left, a decision became certain on the third ballot. Despite Chafee’s win, Jackvony informed the committee that he was not convinced it had picked the right man and announced that he would run in the state primary on September 11. Chafee won the Republican primary with 18,624 votes to Jackvony’s 11,156, carrying Providence, Cranston, Pawtucket and 23 towns. The Republicans then chose Joseph O’Donnell, whose withdrawal made Chafee’s nomination possible, to be their nominee for Lieutenant Governor.

Immediately after the convention, Chafee’s “Meet-the-People” campaign rolled into high gear and he spent up to 18 hours a day stumping the state, taking a firm stand principally against Governor Notte’s attempts to establish a personal state income tax. Chafee promised that if he were elected he would impose no new taxes and would bring more jobs and higher wages to Rhode Islanders. By Election Day, November 6, 1962, it was estimated that he had met nearly 100,000 of the approximately 860,000 people in the state. When the votes were finally tabulated from the more than 1200 voting machines, John Chafee was leading by 66 votes. On November 30, 1962, the Board of Elections declared John Chafee the winner by 398 votes.

During his first two-year term, Chafee pushed though important legislation, including a comprehensive medical aid program for the aged, an expanded state vocational training program, authorization for the acquisition of land for state woodlands and waterfront parts, and provision for the establishment of a new state junior college. He remained adamant against a state income tax, but he did request a rise in the state sales tax from 3 to 3 ½ percent. Despite Democratic opposition to his plan and its eventual defeat, Chafee’s personal popularity rose. In 1964 he easily won the election for governor again over his Democratic opponent, Lieutenant Governor Edward Gallogly, by capturing 61.1 percent of the vote, the greatest plurality of any Republican governor in the history of the state. The election was won by a record margin of 87,336 votes during a presidential election in which the Democrat, Lyndon Johnson, won in a landslide victory over the Republican, Barry Goldwater. Johnson won in Rhode Island by the highest plurality (82%) of any state in the United States.

Although still faced with a Democratic-controlled Legislature, Governor Chafee worked with the General Assembly and managed to get a majority of his programs accepted. He worked for state health programs, vocational education, fair housing, and school construction bills. He was also able to get the state sales tax increased to 4 percent. He fought for fair housing laws and fair employment practices well in advance of any federal initiatives along these lines. He also fostered the establishment of the Rhode Island Public Transportation Administration and was instrumental in the construction of Route 95 through Rhode Island.

As the election of 1966 came closer, Governor Chafee declared his intention to run for another term as governor instead of attempting to unseat Claiborne Pell in the US Senate, as many thought he might. The Washington Post on Mar 17, 1966, had reported that “Gov. John H. Chafee, a Republican phenomenon in a heavily Democratic state, has his own Party as well as the Democrats guessing as to whether he will seek re-election this November or run for Democrat Claiborne Pell’s Senate seat.” Chafee ran for governor in 1966 and easily won (by 63.3%) against the Democratic candidate, Warwick mayor, Horace Hobbs (36.7%), with a plurality of 88,340. For the first time in 28 years, the Republican candidates for Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General were also victorious.

Following his victory in 1966, Chafee began to garner national attention. With the presidential election looming in 1968, many speculated that Chafee might be nominated as a “favorite son” delegate at the national convention. He had many qualifications to capture the nomination. He had a reputation as a young, vigorous, conciliatory, and wildly popular politician. As Time magazine wrote about him in July 14, 1967, “Chafee has steered through a Democratic legislature a dazzling assortment of programs to improve education, health, transit and recreation services.” Chafee’s major disadvantage was being from such a small state with its attendant shortage of delegates and electoral votes. Barring a possibility of a presidential nomination, Chafee, however, did not disallow the possibility of accepting a vice-presidential nomination. He astonished an audience of reporters by replying to a convoluted question about his willingness to be considered for the vice president by bluntly saying, “Oh, sure.” (Washington Post, Jan. 7, 1969).

Chafee’s political popularity and executive ability also led him to become prominent in the movement among Republican governor’s to take some of the policy-making power away from Republican Congressional legislators. In 1964 the Republican Governors’ Association was set up in Washington, DC, and in 1966, Chafee ran for chairman of the Association, although it elected Governor John Love of Colorado. Both Love and Chafee wished to attain the chairmanship of the committee for the national attention they would gain. They compromised by accepting Love as chairman for a year, with a promise that Chafee would succeed to the chairmanship of the Association the following year beginning in December 1967. During the strife-torn summer of 1967, Chafee was one of eight Republican governors who issued recommendations for the control of racial riots and the alleviation of the causes behind urban unrest. He continued to take unpopular, and often unsuccessful, stands on the Republican civil rights platform and on having a governor appointed vice-chairman on the platform committee for the 1968 national convention which nominated Richard Nixon to be their candidate for president.

Chafee’s run for re-election as governor in 1968 should have been easily accomplished. He was a very popular governor and had never lost any election he had run in. He was often referred to as “the winningest GOP governor” by the press. In fact, the campaign was plagued by personal tragedy, as well as unpopular, but pragmatic, political decisions. His 14-year old daughter was killed in a horse-riding accident a month before the election. After running strenuously on the ticket that he would oppose any state income tax in 1962, 1964, and 1966, he took the stand in 1968 that an income tax was imperative to the running of Rhode Island’s government. His opponent, Frank Licht, just as strongly took up the position that he would not initiate a state income tax and that position probably won Licht the election in a surprise upset. Interestingly, Chafee had won his first term as governor as an anti-income tax candidate.

Not only had Chafee backed unpopular political agenda, he had backed unsuccessful political nominations on the national scene. Chafee was an early supporter of George Romney for the 1968 Republican presidential nomination and then switched to Nelson Rockefeller when Romney dropped out of the race. Once Nixon was nominated at the convention, Chafee organized the abortive floor fight against the choice of Spiro Agnew as Nixon’s running mate. Chafee’s relations with Melvin Laird were equally as stormy. In 1964, Chafee was one of the liberal Republicans who rebelled against the platform Laird, as head of the GOP convention’s resolution committee, had drafted; Chafee spoke on behalf of stronger civil rights, a plank the Goldwater delegates turned down. Laird had also turned down Chafee’s demand for the co-chairmanship of the platform committee in 1968.

Chafee’s chances in 1968–after his gubernatorial defeat in Rhode Island–at being appointed to a position in the Republican national government, once so bright, were at that point dim. His appointment as Secretary of the Navy under the presidency of Richard Nixon came as something of a surprise to insiders, but some believed that his appointment was an appeasement to Eastern liberal Republicans. Not only had he sided with the losing side in the presidential campaign, he had antagonized Melvin Laird, the controversial and conservative chairman of the 1964 Republican platform committee, who as Secretary of Defense, would be Chafee’s superior in the Navy Department. The Washington Post noted that Chafee “has been at odds with the President-elect and the Secretary of Defense-designate more often than he has been allied with them” (Jan 7, 1969). Nonetheless, it was Agnew who called Chafee to ask him if he would be interested in a job with the Nixon administration and it was Laird who urged him to take the Navy post instead of the post on the domestic side of the government in which Chafee was originally interested.

Chafee went on, after his appointment as Secretary of the Navy, to run for the United States Senate representing Rhode Island. He was defeated by Claiborne Pell–the popular and incumbent Democrat–in the election of 1972. After working for a private law firm for four years, he launched a successful election campaign in 1976 for the seat of the retiring Senator John Pastore. After 1976, he never lost an election. Despite the lasting impact on national government which Chafee effected as Senator, he tellingly wrote in a letter to Deerfield Academy in 1990, “tell your children and grandchildren that being Governor is the best of all jobs.” (John H. Chafee to Deerfield Academy, February 12, 1990.)

For a Historical Note on Chafee’s tenure as Secretary of the Navy, 1969-1972, see Historical Note: Secretary of the Navy.

For an Historical Note on Chafee’s Campaign for the Senate in 1972, see Historical Note: Senate Campaign, 1972.

Information taken from Richmond Viall’s May 14, 1963 statement, Current Biography 1967, various Chafee news releases, and from accounts in theProvidence Journal.