Lieberman to Stay in
Race After Defeat
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Robert Stolarik for The New York Times
Ned Lamont announces his victory over Joe Lieberman
in the Democratic primary for United States Senate from his campaign
headquarters in Meriden, Conn. |
By PATRICK HEALY,
NYTimes on the Web, August 9, 2006
Ned Lamont, a Connecticut millionaire
whose candidacy for the United States Senate soared from nowhere on a fierce
antiwar message, won a narrow victory in the Democratic primary last night over
the incumbent, Joseph I. Lieberman.
Senator Lieberman, a national party leader and the Democratic nominee for vice
president in 2000, conceded defeat in a phone call to Mr. Lamont shortly before
11 p.m. But then, in a combative speech to supporters in Hartford that was
carried live on television news, the senator declared that he was not dropping
out of the race, but would instead run for re-election as an independent this
fall.
“As I see it, in this campaign, we’ve just finished the first half and the
Lamont team is ahead — but in the second half, our team, Team Connecticut, is
going to surge forward to victory in November,” Mr. Lieberman told cheering
supporters.
The senator said he was staying in the race because Mr. Lamont had run a primary
campaign of “insults” and “partisan polarizing” that relentlessly blamed Mr.
Lieberman for President Bush’s wartime policies, which the senator has supported
and defended but also criticized at various points.
“For the sake of our state, our country and my party, I cannot, I will not let
this result stand,” Mr. Lieberman said of the Lamont victory.
Mr. Lieberman’s determination to remain in the race may soon collide with the
will of many Democratic leaders in Washington and Connecticut, however. The
Senate minority leader, Harry Reid, and Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York,
who is leading the effort to elect more Democrats in November, planned to
announce this morning that they were supporting Mr. Lamont and that the party
should unite around the nominee, according to Democrats close to both men. A
spokesman for Mr. Schumer said a statement would be forthcoming, but declined
further comment.
“Reid and Schumer will back Lamont, but the big question is if they will
approach Joe about dropping out, because they don’t want to get his back up
against the wall,” said a senior Senate Democratic aide who was involved in the
Reid-Schumer discussions but was not authorized to discuss them publicly.
Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, Mr. Lieberman’s Democratic ally,
privately congratulated Mr. Lamont last night and was expected to appear at a
“unity press conference” with Mr. Lamont and other candidates at state party
headquarters this morning. Two Lamont advisers said that they expected Mr. Dodd
to help smooth Mr. Lieberman’s exit from the race; a spokeswoman for Mr. Dodd,
however, said he would not play a go-between role to broker the senator’s exit.
A spokeswoman for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, meanwhile, restated Mrs.
Clinton’s announced intentions to support the Democratic nominee in Connecticut
— now Mr. Lamont. A spokesman for former President Bill Clinton, who campaigned
for Mr. Lieberman last month, did not return a phone message late last night.
Unofficial returns this morning showed that Mr. Lamont won with 51.8 percent of
the vote, with 98 percent of the electoral precincts reporting.
Even before Mr. Lieberman conceded last night, Lamont advisers were making plans
to pressure him to drop out if he did not do so on his own. Tom Swan, Mr.
Lamont’s campaign adviser, said last night that the candidate would appear on
television morning talk shows to call on Mr. Lieberman to respect the will of
the Democratic majority, and then send the same message at the unity event this
morning. Mr. Lamont also intended to call national Democratic leaders in
Washington, including Senate colleagues of Mr. Lieberman, and ask them to speak
to the senator about dropping out, Mr. Swan added.
Mr. Lamont said that former Senator John Edwards, the Democrats’ vice
presidential nominee in 2004, was the first Democratic leader to call him last
night. Mr. Lamont also gave a prominent spot at a rally last night at his
headquarters in Meriden to several African-American supporters, including the
Rev. Al Sharpton and the Rev. Jesse Jackson.
“We think that Joe should respect the will of the Democrats,” Mr. Swan said. “We
will seek and welcome help from any Democratic leaders in making sure that Joe
respects the will of Democratic voters.”
Advisers to the senator said last night that Mr. Lieberman was emboldened to
continue in the race because of the narrow margin of Mr. Lamont’s victory. Yet
the advisers said he might still drop out if the next round of opinion polls
showed Mr. Lamont well ahead of Mr. Lieberman in the fall general election.
The Connecticut race drew national and even international attention this summer
as a barometer of the mood of American Democrats over the Iraq war. Among
political insiders, too, it was seen as a test for liberal bloggers to affect a
major election, instead of merely commenting on politics in cyberspace.
Mr. Lieberman, a leading moderate Democrat, drew scorn from members of his own
party for supporting the war and for forcefully defending President Bush’s
foreign policy. Some voters also felt that Mr. Lieberman had lost touch with
Connecticut after 18 years in the Senate, a period in which he was influential
in national affairs, a vice-presidential nominee in 2000 and a presidential
candidate in 2004.
Many liberals never forgave him for his friendly manner in a vice presidential
debate against Dick Cheney in 2000, and they were further angered when Mr.
Lieberman said on national television last year that he would have kept Terri
Schiavo on a feeding tube against her husband’s wishes.
Mr. Lamont, a former Greenwich selectman who, at 52, has never held statewide
office, capitalized on the disaffection by spending at least $4 million of his
own money on hard-edged television commercials, like one in which Mr.
Lieberman’s face changed into President Bush’s as an announcer said the senator
“talks like George W. Bush and acts like George W. Bush.”
Mr. Lamont battled the perception that he was a multimillionaire pawn of the
bloggers, trying to broaden his antiwar message with a liberal load of proposed
federal programs, such as universal preschool and expanded health insurance.
The returns showed Lamont narrowly winning such cities as Danbury and New London
and having a commanding edge in Norwalk and his hometown of Greenwich, where he
captured 68 percent of the vote. He also held the edge in incomplete returns
from New Haven. Mr. Lieberman was ahead in Stamford, which is in Mr. Lamont’s
home county, Fairfield.
Douglas Schwartz, director of the Quinnipiac University Poll, said last night
that a Lamont victory would scramble Mr. Lieberman’s current edge in polls
forecasting the general election.
“Lamont is going to get even more positive news coverage from his win, and
Democrats will likely rally around their party’s candidate,” Mr. Schwartz said.
“Lieberman will be viewed differently Wednesday — he will be viewed as the
losing candidate.”
The hard-fought contest took an especially bitter turn this week as Lieberman
advisers denounced the collapse of their campaign Web site, which disrupted
communications among supporters on the final day of the campaign. The Lieberman
camp blamed unnamed “political opponents.”
Yet it was not clear who was at fault. The Lieberman advisers said they had no
evidence implicating the Lamont campaign and could not explain the precise
nature of the problem, except to say that the campaign server’s bandwidth had
been overwhelmed.
Nicholas Confessore contributed reporting for this article
from Meriden, Jennifer Medina from Hartford and Avi Salzman from Stamford.
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