The three term incumbent’s people concede that he has no effective organization of his own. He has brought in a pro to gin up his ground game with only three weeks left and several million dollars to spend. Lamont manager Tom Swan, an organizing legend in Connecticut, has put together a formidable machine for the challenger.
Kevin Rennie, Hartford Currant, today in Political Wire:
At least two prominent Republicans think that if Schlesinger can be nixed from his spot on the ballot, it should be given to Senator Joseph Lieberman if he loses the August 8th primary to challenger Ned Lamont.
Hmmmm... What do you get if you put those two Kevin Rennie stories together?
Maybe nothing...
But maybe, Lieberman doesn't really need an organization because, if he loses the August 8th primary, he will be running on the Republican line...
[Neither here nor there, but as I wrote that, the sky exploded into thunder and lightning. And evil laughter. Okay, there was no evil laughter.]
UPDATE: By the way, click through both links, the articles are interesting as a whole. My favorite part, from the first article:
Joseph Lieberman is hoping to use fear where work where persuasion has failed.
...
The theme of a Saturday conclave of Greater Hartford Democratic town committee chairs was that if Lieberman loses the primary he will hurt all other Democratic candidates by running as an independent in November. The message was clear: help him now or your favorites suffer in November.
Interesting strategy... Scare people into volunteering for you, that should work!
4 comments:
I've said before that Lieberman is about as likely to run as a Republican as McCain is to run as a Democrat.
Outside of Iraq, he really hasn't taken a firm conservative position on much. Sure he voted to stop the filibuster against Alito. However, the Democrats had to have known that had they succeeded in filibustering Alito, the "nuclear" option would have been invoked.
Lieberman is no Republican. I also doubt sincerely that he'd accept the Republican nomination.
Rennie is as Republican as Kevin Phillips these days... the press just uses their bye-line for the purposes of dissing active Republicans
It makes a lot of sense ideologically for Lieberman to run as a Republican. His voting record and stance on most issues is very much in line with New England Republican Senators like Chafee, Collins and Snow.
(Of course, you could argue that these moderate to liberal Republicans should have switched and become moderate Democrats long ago.)
The practical question is whether it makes sense politically. If Schlesinger withdrew and Lamont won the primary, what would be the fallout of Lieberman switching parties?
Lamont would get a ton of national party money that otherwise (with Lieberman as an Independent) might go elsewhere. The Democrats simply can't afford to lose the seat.
Lieberman and Rell would be formidable one two punch at on top of the Republican ticket.
How would unaffiliated voters react? I'd love to see some polling on that question...
Generally Rennie's reporting is prone to error as was the case when he reported on the Justice Sullivan matter. The Courant had to print several lines of corrections so much so that it called his whole piece into question. Maybe Rennie will get this one right but his track record isn't great.
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