Lieberman Sitting Pretty?
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Elections, Money
Looks like money will not be a problem for Joe. And his defeat to Lamont may have even helped him become more attractive to more Connecticut donors.
In his presidential campaign in 2003-004, Lieberman got nearly 15,000 individual contributions; in his primary campaign this year he had received more than 5,700 individual contributions by July 19, according to the Federal Election Commission. (Lamont had gotten 1,100 individual contributions by July 19, according to the FEC.)That’s a base from which Lieberman can start. If even a third of those donors write his campaign a $1,000 check, he’d have nearly $7 million, enough to mount a robust campaign. That figure does not include new Republican donations which will soon begin to flow in.
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Democrat Mitchell Berger, a Florida lawyer who has given money to the campaigns of Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. John Kerry in the past and who was finance chairman for Lieberman’s 2004 bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, said he will donate money to Lieberman’s independent run and help raise money by talking to other donors.
Interesting…
Maybe Lamont’s win will ultimately put Dems in a better position to bring back political moderates of all persuasions. But that’s only if Lieberman wins. If he doesn’t, and Lamont takes the seat, the Dems are gonna have a harder time reclaiming the middle. However, do I think Lamont’s win in the primary warrants the type of response from pundits like John Gibson?
This entry was posted on Monday, August 14th, 2006 and is filed under Elections, Money. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
August 15th, 2006 at 12:02 pm
It seems to me the moderates chose to elect George Bush and the Republican Congress we have now. How bad can Ned Lamont be if these same moderates think so poorly of him?
August 15th, 2006 at 1:51 pm
You’re right. A lot of moderates chose to elect George Bush. But then again, a lot of moderates chose to elect John Kerry and Al Gore too. We’ve had two of the closet elections in modern times these past eight years, and I think that many moderates don’t feel like they really have a choice. However, security has been the topic du jour since 2001, and so many swing that way.
My thoughts are that a lot of poiltical moderates feel much the same way Lieberman does on a lot of issues, and that’s why he’s such an attractive candidate. Lamont ran on the fact that he wasn’t Lieberman and we should get out of Iraq. That’s fine. But that’s not going to do it for many moderates because I’d imagine that many of them feel that even though Iraq is broken, we just can’t abandon it now. I don’t think we should have gone in there, but I don’t think it’s wise to leave. That’s a very unpopular political position, but there it is nonetheless.
And hey, perhaps Lamont would be a fantastic Senator. But the way he’s run his campaign certainly doesn’t make me hopefully that he’s going to try and change the status quo in the Democratic party and recapture any type of majority. Maybe that’s simply shortsighted on my part, but give me more reasons and scenarios and maybe I’ll listen.
August 15th, 2006 at 8:26 pm
I don’t see Lieberman as the “moderate knight” who is going to slay the extremist elements in the Democratic Party (i.e. Lamont). I really don’t see Lieberman as a centrist at all, despite his membership in the “gang of fourteen.” To me, Lieberman (and Hilary Clinton, for that matter) are the Democratic versions of neo-cons. Their staunch support of the war in 2002-2003 went beyond the usual timid acquiescence to the administration. They were “believers.” They are in complete lock-step with AIPAC and other elements of the Israeli lobby. You can’t be a true centrist if you do not support an independent foreign policy for the US in the Middle East.
I also agree with the two previous comments that now that we are in Iraq we can’t simply cut and run. This utter mess that Bush and the neo-cons have made in Iraq (and now Lebanon) will be an absolute hell to clean up.