sigridsmith has posted a
great diary on myleftnutmeg on how we've managed to have a terrible senator like Lieberman for the past 18 years. It traces the background of Lieberman's four Senate runs, starting from 1988 where Lieberman ran against Weicker from the right, through the 1994 election where the GOP put its effort into the CT-Gov campaign of John Rowland instead of the Senate race, only to have Rowland resign and go to jail for corruption, through Lieberman's 2000 run against Phil Giordano (who is now in prison for a sex crime involving a minor) while concurrently running for VP (which if successful would have led to the CT-Sen seat being handed to a Republican). Finally, it describes the legislative accident that let Lieberman file petitions for an independent run in 2006
after losing the Dem primary.
With sigridsmith's permission I'm posting the entire diary here below the fold. It's one of the better diaries I've seen in a while and it's worth reading the whole thing.
How Joe got 18 Safe Years
by
sigridsmith at My Left Nutmeg
We should continue to make it clear how Lieberman was able to stay in the Senate for 18 years.
1988: He pushed Lowell Weicker out of his seat because it was thought that Weicker was too liberal and the Republicans were still mad at him for his role in the Watergate hearings. The R's voted for Lieberman and put him in office. I, a birthright democrat, voted for Weicker for his honesty and bravery. Embarassingly, the only other republican I ever voted for was Spiro Agnew for governor of Maryland [the first vote I ever cast]. Agnew's opponent was George Mahoney who was a racist Dixiecrat.
1994: The republican party of Connecticut did not put any support behind their nominee [Dr. Jerry Labriola] and, instead, put most of their cash behind John Rowland, their candidate for Governor who now stands convicted in a corruption scandal. Many Republicans crossed over and voted for Lieberman in the Senate. The democrats held their noses and voted for him as well, myself included. It was during this term that he stood up in the senate and castigated Bill Clinton for unzipping his pants.
2000: Lieberman ran concurrently as vice presidential candidate and senate candidate, putting at risk the Democratic 'ownership' of that seat in a year when were at risk of losing the senate to the republicans. He did not appear for any votes in the senate during that campaign. According to Senate rules, he was AWOL because he did not ask for permission from the Senate to be absent. The republicans offered as their candidate Phil Giordano of Waterbury who is now in prison for soliciting an underage [14] daughter of a prostitute. Many republicans voted with the democrats to re-elect Lieberman. I left that line with no vote cast in that election. It was during this term that he was literally and figuratively kissed by George Bush, supported the war in Iraq, voted to keep poor Terri Schiavo alive, supported public school vouchers, and said that rape victims could just take a short trip to another hospital if they were refused treatment with Plan B. He has supported all trade agreements that guarantee the shipping of jobs overseas.
2006: We are asked to support this man who has won only because the circumstances above saved his seat for him. He has never run in a serious primary and now that he has, he rejects the results. He complains that Ned Lamont has spent a lot of his own money on the campaign while he is raking in cash from lobbyists, PACs and out of state supporters. Give me a person who is willing to put his own money where his mouth is, any day, over someone who takes money from a crowd of influence peddlers. He boasts of having brought jobs to Connecticut but that is only because we have a large number of military suppliers here and his support of the war in Iraq has probably bolstered their orders.
There is a "quirk" in Connecticut election law that allowed Lieberman to run in the first place. The final paragraphs of a New Haven Register article [08/22/2006 Some Dems want Lieberman out of party by Gregory B. Hladky, ] says:
"[Secretary of State, Susan] Bysiewicz said she believes the General Assembly should consider closing a loophole in state election law that would prevent such situations in the future.
"Lieberman's ability to both run in the Democratic U.S. Senate primary and the general election is the result of a quirk in election law timing. When lawmakers moved the primary voting date from September to Aug. 8, they failed to change the Aug. 9 deadline for a candidate to file his or her petitions to run as an independent. That allowed Lieberman to run in both, Bysiewicz said."
A version of this was posted as a comment on Sirotablog on Tuesday, August 15, 2006 and in the Buzzflash Mailbag on Aug 22, 2006.