In October 1975, a 23-year-old man from Potowomut, Rhode Island, drove to Bozeman to attend the winter session of the Horseshoeing School at Montana State University.
He had just graduated from Brown University, but he respected craftsmen and wanted to work with his hands. The life of a blacksmith appealed to him.
That man, Lincoln Chafee, 62, announced last week that he is now seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination for president of the United States
“I’d always grown up with a horse, and saw the shoer do his work,” Chafee told the Chronicle on Thursday.
Chafee is the fourth major politician to enter the 2016 Democratic nomination race, joining former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley.
It’s a unique past for a presidential candidate.
“To my knowledge, there never has been a farrier to occupy the White House,” said Jeff Cota, associate editor of the American Farriers Journal. “However, it wouldn’t surprise me if a president who lived an agrarian lifestyle in the 18th or 19th centuries shod his own horses.”
When he showed up in Bozeman, Chafee slept in his car, then at a hostel. He poured concrete for cash until the 11-week school began in January. On occasion, he dined at the Western Cafe with his instructor Scott Simpson, who founded the MSU Horseshoeing School in 1971.
He remembers the Haufbrau bar and having a season pass at Bridger Bowl, the ski area north of Bozeman. “We used to hike up to the ridge,” he recalled. “Quite a hike, straight up, but boy you got super snow if you traversed the ridge.”
After graduating the horseshoeing course, Chafee found work at the Red Mile horse track in Kentucky, then shoed harness-racing horses in Canada. He stayed their for seven years before going home.
His horse shoeing days were over, and his career began to look more like his father’s. John Chafee, Lincoln’s father, was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1976 after serving as Secretary of the Navy for President Richard Nixon.
He was a moderate Republican known for his work on environmental protection laws and support for a universal health care system. When he died in 1999, Lincoln was appointed as his replacement.
Chafee, who had by then been elected mayor of Warwick, Rhode Island, continued his father’s tradition of center-right stances on policy issues and was the only Republican in the Senate to vote against the 2003 war in Iraq. His vote is an important point of contrast with the Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton who voted yes and supported the “neocon” Republicans who planned the invasion of a sovereign nation on false pretenses, Chafee said.
“It was a test of judgement…. She was there and looking at the same evidence that I saw,” Chafee said.
Carroll College political science professor Jeremy Johnson knows Lincoln Chafee. While studying at Brown University in 2012, Johnson regularly saw Chafee at Blue State Coffee, talked to him often and interviewed him for his doctoral studies.
Chafee left the Republican Party in 2007 after losing his 2006 reelection to a Democrat. Becoming an independent, Chafee was elected governor of Rhode Island in 2010 but decided against a reelection after one term.
Johnson said he was surprised at Chafee’s candidacy for president.
“He’s not that well-known nationally,” he said. “He doesn’t have a natural constituency in the Democratic Party. He was a Republican senator who only recently became a Democrat.”
Johnson said that he thinks Chafee’s motivation to run, and disapproval of Hillary Clinton, goes beyond the Iraq War vote to a 20-year-old health care debate.
In 1993, as head of the national health care reform task force, Clinton failed to pass a health care reform bill backed by a coalition of moderate Republicans. Sen. John Chafee led a group of 23 Republicans and was the sponsor of a bill to achieve universal coverage through an individual health insurance mandate.
Chafee told the Chronicle Thursday that it was a personal sore point.
“The First Lady, Hillary Clinton, just did not work with those Republicans. It was once again, my way or the highway,” Chaffee said Thursday. “That arrogant approach that Mrs. Clinton is known for doomed a chance to do something good. (My dad) was crushed after all that work. That it fell apart. He was crushed.”
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