Chafee aide lives at son's party house

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) - Governor Chafee's senior advisor acknowledged Thursday he lives on the property where Chafee's 18-year-old son threw a party last month that police say included underage drinking, but the advisor said he has no plans to resign.

The advisor, Stephen Hourahan, said he visited Caleb Chafee and his friends by the pool at the Chafee family's Exeter estate but never saw anyone drinking and was gone by the time the party began. He did say he knew a refrigerator near the pool was stocked with alcohol.

"I was not at Caleb's party," Hourahan told WPRI.com in a short interview Thursday at the State House. "I was at the pool earlier in the day, but I was not at the pool after five o'clock, when the party was taking place."

A severely intoxicated 18-year-old woman was hospitalized on Memorial Day after she attended the party marking Caleb's graduation from Portsmouth Abbey School. A police report obtained by WPRO-AM alleges Caleb told the young woman to leave after she got severely ill, and she was later found along Route 102.

The attorney general's office is now reviewing whether to bring charges.

Hourahan, once described by the governor's office as Chafee's "longtime aide and close personal advisor," said he's been a tenant since November at the sprawling Wee Hoose Farm property owned by Chafee's wife, the heiress Stephanie Danforth Chafee.

Hourahan said he went out to the property's pool area on Memorial Day and talked with Caleb and two young male friends of his but left before the actual graduation party got under way.

Asked whether he saw any signs the young men were consuming alcohol, Hourahan told WPRI.com: "I saw nothing." He said he's never witnessed any incidents of underage drinking at Wee Hoose Farm since he began living there last fall.

Hourahan has been close to the Chafee family for years, working first for the late U.S. Sen. John Chafee and then for Lincoln Chafee when he was a U.S. senator and later a candidate for governor. He's also worked for Bank Rhode Island, the public relations firm Duffy & Shanley and AIDS Project Rhode Island.

Hourahan earned a $145,028 salary during his first year as a senior advisor to Governor Chafee. He joined Chafee's office straight from serving as a senior advisor to his campaign. Hourahan said he has not offered his resignation to the governor; asked whether he plans to do so, he said: "Absolutely not."

State and town records show the property where Caleb held the party is one of six parcels in Exeter owned by Wee Hoose Farm LLC, a limited liability company incorporated in 1998 that lists Stephanie Chafee as its manager. The six properties have an assessed value of $1.6 million combined.

A 1976 report by the R.I. Historical Preservation Commission suggested that Wee Hoose Farm, which it described as "the Danforth estate," should be nominated to the National Register of Historic Places.

"A large estate, predominantly in woods, centered on a 1 ½-story, 18th-century house with a large, stone, center chimney," the report's authors wrote in describing the property as it stood in the 1970s. "Two two-story gambrel-roof additions are attached at right angles at both ends of the old house comprising a large complex."

Last month, Chafee held his annual Kentucky Derby-themed fundraiser at Wee House Farm. The Chafees also own a home in Warwick.

Ted Nesi ( tnesi@wpri.com ) covers politics and the economy for WPRI.com and writes the Nesi's Notes blog. Follow him on Twitter: @tednesi