The hurdles to a Frank Caprio political comeback are many: the "shove it" comment will be forever attached to his name and the progressive base of the state's Democratic Party seems unlikely to warm up to a candidate who essentially ran as a moderate Republican.

But if Caprio, the former state treasurer, runs for major office again - and I think he could, perhaps as a Republican - he could face another hurdle.

Dear readers, N4N will be out on a little mini-vacation for the next couple of days. But fear not. A new edition of the Phoenix drops tomorrow. My cover story looks at the winners and losers from the November elections - not the pols, but the interest groups. With a new governor set to take office and a new General Assembly in place, who will triumph? And who will not? Whither gay marriage, education reform, and the labor agenda?

The ProJo's Political Scene has a fun bit today on a recipe for "a new way forward" that governor-elect Lincoln Chafee doled out to legislative leaders at a recent reception. Among the ingredients: "a 10-pound satchel of honesty" and "a gallon of listening."

It's not an entirely new concoction, though. This reporter saw a very similar recipe from an earlier period in Chafee's career - a political ad from his days in Warwick city politics - posted on the wall in his gubernatorial campaign headquarters a couple of months back.

The Phoenix that hits newsstands today: our look back on the year that was. There is plenty on the best in local arts and a piece I penned on the most stunning - and underreported - political story of the year: Republican John Robitaille's near-victory in the gubernatorial race. How did he get so close? And why did the media catch on so late?

This is how it works for most politicians: promise the world during the election, then scale down expectations afterward and deliver on what you can. It is another measure of the quixotic nature of Lincoln Chafee's bid for governor that we are seeing something like the opposite: propose an enormously unpopular idea during the campaign - a one percent sales tax on exempt items like food, clothing, and medicine - and then signal afterward that you might drop it.

Lincoln Chafee made New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg a symbol of his push for an independent style of governance. But it was a two-way exchange: Bloomberg's endorsement of dozens of candidates across the country was widely viewed as an attempt to build a national brand in preparation for a possible presidential run, even if the mayor has said he is not weighing a White House bid.

I've got a piece in today's Phoenix about Governor-elect Lincoln Chafee's prospects on Smith Hill.

It should be interesting to watch: on the one hand, he takes the office with a rather weak mandate - just 36 percent of the vote and broad public opposition to his signature campaign proposal, an expansion of the sales tax.

And the shift from campaigning to governance begins. From the Chafee camp:

I have been informed that the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation (RIEDC) has closed its financing package with 38 Studios.

I would have preferred that the EDC honor my request to defer the closing so that I would have had a chance to formally contribute to the process.

There will, doubtless, be those who read some shift in local or national politics into Lincoln Chafee's election as Rhode Island's first independent governor. But Chafee was, for all intents and purposes, the Democratic candidate in this race. And the party swept the state's other major offices and gave up little ground in the General Assembly.

The split among Democratic voters in the gubernatorial race was, for the most of the campaign, viewed through the prism of the Chafee-Caprio clash: Could Caprio hold onto enough Democrats? How deeply could Chafee cut into the Democratic base. Now, just past 10 p.m. on election night, with GOP candidate John Robitaille neck-and-neck with Chafee, a different question: will the split propel a Republican into office?

In another sign of the national reach of Rhode Island's gubernatorial tilt, the New York Times has endorsed Lincoln Chafee for governor. Chafee is one of eight gubernatorial candidates outside of New York and Connecticut endorsed by the paper - and the only one who is not a Democrat. Among the others: Deval Patrick of Massachusetts, Ted Strickland of Ohio, and Jerry Brown of California.

The results of the recent WPRI-TV poll, when reviewed in detail, show just what a climb Democratic gubernatorial candidate Frank Caprio faces on Election Day. The survey, most of it conducted before his "shove it" comment, showed him just a slight edge on independent Lincoln Chafee among Democrats - we've known that was a problem for awhile.

Rhode Island political observers are well acclimated, at this point, to Lincoln Chafee's appeal to the left. But in the long view, there is something remarkable about his transformation, in the space of a few years, from biggest name in the state GOP to progressive darling. That hit home when N4N saw this glowing talk out of lefty standardbearer The Nation:

The Phoenix endorses Lincoln Chafee for governor in the issue that hits stands today:

Many Rhode Islanders are still undecided about the governor's race. Until this week, the Phoenix, too, was torn. Democratic Treasurer Frank Caprio, an undeniably able official, offers a focused, business-based plan to revive the ailing state.

In-state, Frank Caprio has been seen as the aggressor for his "Shove It" remark. But outside the state, where the White House political operation is coming under the inevitable fire that accompanies a bad campaign season, the imbroglio is being pinned on the president. Witness this piece on Politico:

Amid the flap over President Barack Obama’s nonendorsement of the Rhode Island Democratic gubernatorial candidate, a pollster for both politicians is defending the White House’s political operation.