It's not clear whether there's bad blood between Chafee and The Providence Journal, the largest paper in Rhode Island, or whether they're just short on resources and don't make much of his tenure as governor. But on Friday, when POLITICO broke the news that Chafee would announce on June 3, the paper ran a 300-word Associated Press item. They ran another AP item on Wednesday, about how Chafee's bid was "puzzling longtime allies." Edward Fitzpatrick, the paper's columnist, has only tweeted links to AP and NPR coverage.
Debbie Rich, a Chafee spokesperson, declined to comment on the matter, suggesting we put the question to the Journal instead. The Journal's editors did not initially respond to requests for comment. Hours after the initial publication of this post, however, editorial page editor Edward Achorn emailed: "There is no bad blood on our part, certainly. We have simply expressed the view that Mr. Chafee was not a particularly successful governor. Well, you can read what we have written."
The Journal's most notable contribution to the Chafee news is an editorial from April 12, which states that Chafee "had such staggeringly low approval ratings that he could not even run for re-election as governor of Rhode Island last year. His administration was marked by his persistent refusal to understand or address the state’s economic problems; a bizarre crusade against the use of the words 'Christmas tree' to describe the state’s Christmas tree; prickly denunciations of people who challenged his policies; his hustling of a top aide, Richard Licht, into a judgeship, in violation of the spirit of the state’s revolving-door law; and a series of actions that seemed designed only to make life harder for the state’s struggling middle class."
