In Connecticut, Lieberman is on the brink

Who do the numbers favor?
The voter registration numbers would seem to be on Lieberman’s side, if he attracts support in November from Republicans such as Schmidle.

There are a total of about 1.3 million active Republican and independent voters in Connecticut, twice as many as the number of Democratic voters.

(But will Republicans be willing to overlook Lieberman’s liberal views on the environment, abortion and gay rights?)

The prospect of a Lamont victory Tuesday causes acute pains for pro-Lieberman liberal Democrats such as Rep. Rosa DeLauro, who represents New Haven.

“Joe knew my dad and knows my mother very well,” DeLauro told me Wednesday as she, Lamont, and Lieberman appeared at an anti-Wal Mart rally in Bridgeport. “I knew his mom very well. She was an indomitable woman. For me it’s both a personal and professional friendship.”

Asked whether she’d support the winner of Tuesday’s primary, DeLauro said, “I will not speculate on the outcome of that primary.”

The dilemma facing DeLauro could be faced as well by two more famous Democrats, Sen. Hillary Clinton and her husband.

If Lamont is their party’s nominee, how could the Clintons reject his plea for them to come to Connecticut and campaign with him?

Bill Clinton has endorsed Lieberman and campaigned with him last week; Hillary Clinton’s fund-raising committee has given money to Lieberman. (Lamont himself donated $500 to the Lieberman campaign last year.)

“I do believe that some of the senators you mentioned (i.e, Clinton) are going to come on board and support the winner and I hope that winner is Ned Lamont,” Lamont told me Thursday.

The two candidates continued exchanging fire as the campaign headed into its last few days.

Lieberman said that Lamont was wrong to say in his new TV ad that American soldiers were being “shipped off to war,” since the soldiers in fact volunteered to serve.

Lieberman is coping not just with the formal Lamont campaign but with a brigade of bloggers and activists. At each of his campaign stops Lieberman is shadowed by single-minded critics such as Keith Crane who toted a sign reading “Phony diner tours are no substitute for genuine public debate,” as Lieberman stopped at a diner in Wallingford Wednesday.

“In the last six years, he’s basically become a Republican apologist, a lapdog for George W Bush,” Crane complained.

Another disenchanted Democrat is Cynthia James of Windsor, who opposes the Iraq war and has voted for Lieberman in the past.

“For years I thought he represented the people of Connecticut until he voiced his opinions and I started looking at his voting record. I’ve come to realize that he no longer represents what I represent.”

This weekend, James will be making phone calls to help get out voters for Lamont.

On Friday morning with dark clouds looming over downtown Hartford and a hail storm about to start, Lieberman gathered hard-hatted laborers around him as he appealed for union votes at the construction site of the city’s new science center.

“This is crunch time,” said Charlie LeConche, president of the Hartford/New Britain building trades union. “This is about taking care of our friends like Joe Lieberman who has fought the fight for organized labor and for working people on the state of Connecticut.”

LeConche said the building trades unions had 55,000 members in the state and some of them will be phone-banking and giving voters rides to the polls for Lieberman next Tuesday.

“Unions, especially the building trades, have never forgotten their friends,” he added, telling reporters that his union would support Lieberman as an independent. “We don’t care how he gets there. We want to get him there,” LeConche said.

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