Bass: "Lieberman Lies"

Paul Bass doesn't like Joe Lieberman. We know that already. But today his ire towards the senator was made much worse by the feeling that the Lieberman campaign had used something he had written as a source for a nasty, inaccurate attack on Ned Lamont.

Ask Ned Lamont Why..." the back page begins.

One of the "ask whys" read as follows: "... He Hired The Former Republican Party Chairman To Run His Senate Campaign."

Not true. Connecticut's leading left-leaning Democratic Party activist, Tom Swan, runs the Ned Lamont campaign.

The flyer is referring to someone else, Tom D'Amore. D'Amore ran the state Republican Party in the 1980s. He quit in 1990 to help Lowell Weicker defeat the Republicans and win the governor's office as an independent. D'Amore is a registered independent.
He in no way "runs" the Lamont campaign. The Lamont campaign did hire his firm, Doyle, D'Amore & Balducci (the third named partner being the former Democratic speaker of the Connecticut House of Representatives), to do consulting work.
The Lieberman flyer cites me as a source for this lie: "Source: Paul Bass column, Hartford Courant, 3/26/06."

Actually, my column in the Courant that day made no mention of D'Amore working for Lieberman. I did mention in a March 5 Courant column that D'Amore might do consulting work for Lamont.(Update: Bass made a correction on his site--the corrected sentence follows) Actually, my column in the Courant reported that D'Amore had signed on as a consultant, not that he would "run" or "manage" or in any way direct the campaign. (Apologies: Those particular columns are no longer available on the Courant's web site.) On March 13, the Independent did report the fact that D'Amore agreed to sign on as a consultant.

The relevant point is that nowhere was it ever reported that D'Amore would run the campaign. That's a crucial distinction.
...
"For the record," [Lamont campaign manager Tom] Swan said Monday, "I have never been chairman of the state Republican Party." (Bass)

I really hate to break it to Lieberman, but primary voters just aren't going to accept the idea that Lamont is somehow a tool of the Republican Party. Anyone who actually goes to the polls on a beautiful, hot August day to cast his or her vote for the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate is more politically aware than this.

Try something else. But do it quick, you're running out of time. And for heaven's sake, don't make Paul Bass any angrier.

Source

Bass, Paul. "Lieberman Lies, Leaps Into Gutter." New Haven Independent 26 June, 2006.