Chafee, 57, was appointed to the U.S. Senate  in 1999 to replace his late father, John Chafee, also a former governor.

Often described as one of a handful of  moderate Republicans in the Senate, the younger Chafee was defeated by Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse in a 2006 election widely viewed as a referendum on the policies of former President George W. Bush.

Following the election, Chafee decided it was no longer fitting for him to be tethered to the GOP label. He disaffiliated from the Republican party and took a breather from politics, serving as a teaching fellow at Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies for more than two years. He also wrote a book, "Against the Tide," in which he excoriated Bush's White House for diminishing America's stature as the world's moral compass.

A onetime mayor of Warwick, Chafee would further cement his reputation as the sort of politician who defies easy pigeonholing were he to become the states' first independent governor. No other state currently has a governor unaffiliated with either of the major parties, and there have rarely been more than a few at any one time in recent decades.

"We sure do need a change," said Linda Salisbury of Woonsocket, who mingled with Chafee at The Cakery pastry shop on Main Street.

Salisbury said she is an organizer for the "Coffee Party," a fledgling group which she described as a liberal-progressive answer to the conservative Tea Party movement. Though Salisbury said she helped arrange Chafee's "meet-and-greet" at the restaurant after conferring with him on Facebook, she isn't sure who she'll support in the governor's race.

"I haven't decided yet," she said. "I've always liked him. He's a man of integrity."

The way things are shaping up, Chafee may find himself in a three-way race against Republican John Robitaille and whoever wins the Democratic primary between Caprio and Attorney General Patrick Lynch, all of whom say they are candidates for governor.

If elected, Chafee says his unaffiliated status would not be a political liability, but an asset.  He would not be trussed to the yoke of either party, enabling him to work more freely   for practical solutions with representatives of both parties, a bridge rather than a wedge.

Speaking on the day after President Barack Obama signed into law the most sprawling expansion of health care since Social Security, Chafee called the reform "long overdue." But he stopped short of saying he would have supported the bill were he still in the Senate.

Chafee said he would have liked to see the cost of health reform "paid for" by extracting the nation from its ill-advised, and exceedingly costly, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Chafee was one of the few Republicans who voted against giving President Bush the authority to embark on those military ventures.

Chafee says he still opposes the wars, which he says are achieving little but further destabilization of the Middle East, with no net gain in national security for the U.S. If anything, says Chafee, the escalation of conflict against the Taliban in Afghanistan only heightens the risk for America, possibly the world.

"We're destabilizing Pakistan, a nuclear-armed country, and we're empowering radicals," he said.

Though he has taken flak for advocating new taxes, Chafee said a small broadening of the sales tax is the least onerous option for raising revenues the state so desperately needs. He said there must be some antidote for the massive cuts in general revenue sharing that have been passed down to the cities and towns from the governor and state lawmakers - cuts that are, ultimately, de facto hikes in property taxes.

"We should not pass down our state problems" to Woonsocket, Pawtucket, Warwick and the other cities and towns, said Chafee. "The hardest tax to pay" is the property tax, and also the most regressive, because the economy is further weakened as it increases, he said.

While city officials have criticized the elimination of business-friendly tax incentives in Gov. Carcieri's proposed budget, such as "enterprise zone" perks,  Chafee said he would have to examine the program more closely to see if it is worth saving. But he said he disapproved of the Carcieri administration's top-down management style of creating policy without communication.

"I'd work with the mayors," said Chafee. "Traditionally that has not happened. Having been a mayor, there would be a new partnership. I'll work very hard to listen to what the mayors are telling me, and the town managers."

Chafee zealously jumped into one of the hot-button issues of the day - immigration - saying that if he is elected governor his first official act would be to repeal Gov. Carcieri's executive order calling on state agencies to enforce e-Verify. Bills under consideration in the legislature would expand the mandate to private businesses, forcing them to confirm the residency status of prospective employees before hiring them.

Proponents portray e-Verify as a jobs bill that will stop illegal immigrants from filling positions that U.S. citizens need. But Chafee says e-Verify's most salient effect is to  split apart constituencies with divisive posturing at time when more bipartisanship is what's needed. More importantly, he says, "It doesn't work."

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