Ned's Worst Week

(posted on October 13, 2006 - click here to see post with clickable links)

Courant columnist Kevin Rennie has probably the best take yet on the Lamont campaign’s uncivil lies about Joe’s record. It pegs Negative Ned so well we won’t even bother summarizing it — here is the whole piece:

POLITICAL WIRE

Lamont's Worst Week
When Ned Lamont infused another $2 million of his vast fortune into his campaign on Tuesday evening, he probably didn’t have it allocated to damage control. He’ll have no choice if he is to continue to be seen as a contender in the race for the U.S. Senate in Connecticut.

Incumbent independent Joseph Lieberman has maintained a firm lead in polls for the past month. Lamont, who has contributed close to $9 million to his campaign, has run a long series of negative ads against Lieberman but gained no ground of late. He appeared to be trying to alter the focus of his campaign this week with a speech on change and the future, a bow toward adding some substance to his campaign’s scrawny frame. He needed to talk about something other than Iraq. He’ll have no choice now.

His plans were upended by a self-made calamity on Wednesday when Lamont joined prominent Connecticut African-American Democrats to receive their endorsement. In the bitter contest, however, the Lamont campaign cannot resist taking a few whacks at Lieberman instead of featuring a purely positive endorsement event.

The Wednesday press event included another letter from the Lamont campaign to Lieberman (St. Paul didn’t write this many letters) criticizing him for mentioning his support of civil rights as a young man in a television ad. As Lamont stood by, former state treasurer Henry Parker accused Lieberman of lying about his trip to Mississippi in the fraught early 1960s and attending Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.’s August 1963 march on Washington. Wags insisted that the record should note that the press conference was not at the all-white Round Hill Club that Lamont resigned from, after 16 years as a member, before launching his Senate campaign.

Lamont seemed clueless that a vicious slander was taking place in his presence in the name of advancing his campaign. Now we know that the face of an imploding campaign is both impassive and clueless.

Lieberman seized the moment and summoned the press to denounce the ugly attack. The fight dominated the news in the state today as politicos were buzzing that Lamont and his team are looking like amateurs despite the millions showered on the campaign.

Parker recanted by midday Thursday. Lamont himself continues to labor in silence, whether it is stunned or studied, we don’t know. For mannerly Connecticut, the Lamont campaign smear of Lieberman is far out of bounds.

Lamont will have to shape a response by Monday afternoon when he is scheduled to meet Lieberman in their first debate since July. A shrug accompanied by pointing at the aged and addlepated Parker won’t suffice to change the subject. Some crow ought to be on the menu.

With his campaign in precipitous decline, Lamont can look forward to rougher treatment from Lieberman and his team as they smell the chance to put away the Democratic insurgent in the next week. More grainy photos will be gracing television screens.

As the week ends, events give rise to a sentence that may have never been written before: Poor Ned Lamont.

-- Guest contributor Kevin Rennie is a columnist for the Hartford Courant and a former Republican Connecticut state senator.
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Posted by: Eric Blankenbaker on 10/13/2006 at 10:28 PM