Champion Spalding Chase (March 20, 1820 – November 3, 1898) was an American lawyer, politician, and pioneer of Wisconsin and Nebraska.

Champion Chase was born in Cornish, New Hampshire, and raised there on his father's farm and obtained his primary education in the a common school.

After two years, he moved to Otsego County, New York, where he was hired as a vice principal at the West Hartwich Seminary.

While studying there, he was appointed by the governor of New York, John Young, to serve as a delegate to the National River and Harbor Convention in Chicago.

[3] In 1850, he ran for Wisconsin Senate, but lost a close election to Free Soil Party candidate Stephen O.

That summer, Chase was a delegate to a Racine County convention which again declared that they would actively disobey and thwart any attempt to enforce the fugitive slave acts, and organizing a vigilance committee to effect that policy.

[10] That fall, Chase was a candidate for Wisconsin State Assembly on the new Republican Party ticket,[11] but he lost the general election to Democrat Thomas Falvey.

In 1858, rather than running for re-election to the Senate, Chase ran for district attorney of Racine County; he defeated Nehemiah H. Joy and won a two year term.

[1] In 1862, with the assistance of his cousin, Salmon P. Chase (1808–1873), who was then the United States Treasury Secretary, he was appointed paymaster in the Union Army with the rank of Major.

He was at the sieges of Knoxville, Mobile, and Vicksburg, and in the later part of the war he was headquartered at New Orleans for nearly two years and would receive a brevet to Lieutenant Colonel from President Andrew Johnson late in 1865, for his meritorious services in the Gulf Campaign.

He was elected to two additional two-year terms in 1879 and 1883, but was impeached and removed from office in June 1884, due to drunkenness impairing his abilities.

Chase later launched quo warranto proceedings in 1887 stating that he had been illegally removed from office, and was unlawfully deprived of the salary of the mayor.

[1] During his terms as Mayor it was recorded of him as having "favoured extensive public improvements" such as parks and boulevards, and direct and gravitational powered waterworks.

As mayor, Colonel Chase received and officially entertained a large number of distinguished people—Kalākaua, King of Hawai'i; Peter II, Emperor of Brazil; the Governor General of Canada; U.S. President and Mrs. Rutherford B. Hayes; President and Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant; Generals William Tecumseh Sherman, Philip Sheridan, George Armstrong Custer, and others.

[1] Champion Chase was identified as being past commander of the U.S. Grant Post of the Grand Army of the Republic and the Sons of the American Revolution.