Sen. Lincoln Chafee (RI), the moderate Republican who represents a crucial swing vote on the Senate Environment & Public Works (EPW) Committee, is facing a grass-roots rebellion from some Rhode Island conservatives seeking to derail his bid to win another term in the chamber. The conservatives are trying to recruit Stephen Laffey, the Republican mayor of the Rhode Island city of Cranston, to challenge Chafee in the GOP primary next year, in what could be the only Senate race in the 2006 midterm elections where a moderate Republican incumbent faces a legitimate challenger in the primary. The conservatives say the campaign underscores the vulnerability of congressional Republicans who side with Democrats on key votes, which Chafee often does on the narrowly divided environment committee, much to the consternation of Republicans, including the panel's chairman, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK). Most recently, he was the only Republican to vote with all the committee Democrats in rejecting by a 9-9 tally the Inhofe-sponsored Clear Skies bill, which is an industry-supported plan to regulate power plant pollution that environmentalists have called a rollback of the Clean Air Act.
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