Lincoln Chafee, who served as a U.S. senator for eight years and as governor of Rhode Island for four, on Sunday registered his campaign committee, “Lincoln Chafee For President,” with the Federal Election Commission.
Chafee and his wife, Stephanie, began spending more time in Jackson Hole after they purchased property in Teton Village in 2016, he said. The Teton County Clerk’s Office confirmed that he registered to vote in the county as a Libertarian in March.
Over the years he has also held office as a Republican and Independent. But when he was registering to vote in Teton County, he said, he surveyed the Libertarian platform and found it meshed well with his own beliefs.
Chafee was something of an outsider as a Republican senator, often siding against overwhelming majorities in his party, particularly on matters of social policy like gay marriage and abortion. He earned an endorsement from the Sierra Club for his environmental record, another rarity for his party at the time.