A reader passes along word that Steve Laffey, the rock-ribbed conservative former mayor of Cranston, R.I., who unsuccessfully ran for U.S. Senate in 2006, is rethinking his decision to not run for governor.

It’s a heavily Democratic state, but there’s likely to be a three-way race, with Lincoln Chafee — you remember him, he was the Republican senator who never voted with Republicans, whom the National Republican Senatorial Committee spent a small fortune trying to reelect – thinking of running for governor as an independent. Laffey challenged Chafee in the primary, and all that NRSC money was key to Chaffee’s short-lived survival.

A big question is whether Chafee’s third-party bid is a real factor, or whether his support withers like Christopher Daggett’s did in New Jersey this year.