Lincoln Chafee to announce presidential run on June 3

Former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee will officially enter the presidential race on June 3, a source with knowledge of his plans told POLITICO.

He’ll make the announcement in a speech he’s scheduled to deliver next Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. at the George Mason Center for Politics & Foreign Relations in Arlington, Virginia. Following the announcement, Chafee will travel to New Hampshire on June 4 for a previously scheduled event with local Democrats in Grafton County.


Chafee, who became a Democrat in 2013, has made Hillary Clinton’s support for the invasion of Iraq the chief rationale for his primary challenge to her. As a senator and member of the Republican Party in 2002, Chafee voted against authorizing the war.

In April, Chafee surprised the political world by announcing that he was exploring a presidential run.

Since then, he has been polling in the low single digits in the Democratic primary and is considered an extreme long shot. He left the Rhode Island governor’s office in January after declining to mount a reelection bid that many believed he could not have won.

Chafee’s family has a long and storied history in Rhode Island politics. Chafee himself served as the mayor of the city of Warwick until he was appointed after his father John Chafee’s death to replace him in the Senate. Chafee was elected to the seat in 2000 but lost it to Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse in 2006. He endorsed Barack Obama in 2008 and was elected Governor of Rhode Island in 2010 as an independent.

In recent weeks, Chafee had indicated that he was leaning strongly towards running. He will likely become the fourth Democrat in field, which includes the front-runner Clinton and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley is all-but-assured to enter the race at an event in Baltimore on Saturday.