It looks like we could have two independent candidates winning governor’s races tonight. Eliot Cutler is clinging to a lead in Maine and now Lincoln Chaffee, a Republican-turned-independent, is now holding a 2% lead in the race for governor of Rhode Island.
Chaffee, a former U.S. Senator and Republican, leads GOP nominee John Robitaille by 36%-34% with 88% of the votes reported.
A Rhode Island native educated at Brown University, Chafee entered state politics in 1985. He was a delegate to the Rhode Island State Constitutional Convention, a member of the Warwick, Rhode Island city council, and later the mayor of Warwick. Chafee was appointed to the United States Senate in 1999 upon the death of his father, Senator John Chafee, and was re-elected in 2000 for a full six-year term, before being defeated in 2006.
Chafee was a supporter of Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential bid.
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