15 things about Lincoln Chafee
1. His ancestors are among Rhode Island's earliest settlers.
2. Chafee was named for Abraham Lincoln.
3. His father, John Chafee, was elected governor when Lincoln was 8 years old.
4. Jeb Bush and Chafee were classmates at Phillips Academy, a boarding school in Andover, Mass.
5. He was the captain of the wrestling team at Brown University.
6. He graduated from Brown in 1975, earning a degree in classics.
7. Chafee wanted to learn a trade so he could go anywhere and make a living. So he attended a 12-week course in horseshoeing at Montana State University and became a farrier at harness racetracks in Kentucky and Florida.
8. He then went to Canada to work at tracks in Edmonton and Calgary.
9. Returning to Rhode Island in 1984, Chafee worked as a machine shop planner for General Dynamics Corp.
10. In 1992, he became the first Republican mayor of Warwick in 32 years.
11. In August 1999, he admitted using cocaine while a student at Brown University during the 1970s.
12. After his father died in October 1999, he became only the second son ever appointed to the Senate to succeed his father.
13. Frog-gate: During Chafee's 2000 re-election campaign, his opponent made hay out of a $6,000 slush fund that Chafee used as mayor to buy four frogs for his office fish tank; toboggans for city worker's families; and theater tickets and to make charitable donations. His predecessors had also used the funds; Chafee was the first to make his expenditures public.
14. In 2001, he was one of two Republican senators to vote against Bush's tax cut bill.
15. Chafee was the lone GOP senator to oppose the congressional resolution authorizing the use of military force in Iraq.
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