Lieberman’s Rival Lamont Widens Lead in Latest Poll

Political novice Ned Lamont, whose candidacy centers on opposition to the war in Iraq, surged to a commanding lead over Sen. Joe Lieberman less than a week before the Democratic primary, a poll released Thursday shows.

Lamont was the choice of 54% of likely Democratic voters in the Quinnipiac University poll. Lieberman, a three-term incumbent who has been criticized for his support of the war, was backed by 41% of those polled.

The Connecticut Senate race has emerged as a bellwether in a nation whose politics increasingly are being driven by U.S. involvement in Iraq. A Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll released this week found that more than 3 in 5 liberal Democratic voters -- 63% -- said they would be less likely to back a candidate who supported the war.

At an afternoon visit to a diner in Meriden, Lamont shook hands with 90-year-old Marshall Jamison. The former Air Force lieutenant colonel had driven up from Virginia to offer Lamont assistance in the last days of his primary campaign. Jamison carried posters listing the names of troops killed in Iraq, and was handing them out.

“Why am I here? Because these men should still be alive,” he said.

Lamont also met Richard Goodstein, a friend and supporter of Lieberman’s who had waited in the diner for the chance to confront him. As Lamont greeted supporters, Goodstein loudly accused him of unfairly smearing Lieberman.

“I take this all very personally -- A, because of my affection for Lieberman; and B, because of my commitment to the prospects of Democrats nationally,” said Goodstein, 57, a lawyer.

“I think Ned Lamont has the potential to do grievous harm to the Democrats.”

Lieberman, 64, is a centrist who six years ago was the Democratic Party’s vice presidential nominee. He has received strong support from voters on a laundry list of traditional Democratic issues, such as labor and the environment. He also has supported the war in Iraq; in June, he was one of only six Senate Democrats to vote against a resolution calling for troops to begin returning this year.

Lamont, 52, has little political experience beyond serving as a selectman in the affluent community of Greenwich. The millionaire cable executive decided to run for the Senate in November, he has said, after reading an opinion piece that Lieberman wrote in the Wall Street Journal endorsing a “stay-the-course strategy” in Iraq.

Alma Rutgers, a Democratic activist in Greenwich, said that when Lamont announced his candidacy, she wished him well and promised to support him. But the race, she said, seemed more than a little quixotic.

“I just couldn’t believe that it could be doable at that time, because Ned didn’t have name recognition beyond the town,” Rutgers said. “It was hard to take seriously.”

Support for Lamont has surged in the weeks leading up to the primary. On Wednesday, the Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton campaigned for him in the basement of Mount Aery Baptist Church in Bridgeport, urging voters to treat the Senate race as a defining event in national politics.

“This is about the Bush policies and the people’s priorities,” Sharpton said. “Any time you have a president that can find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that aren’t there but couldn’t see a hurricane in New Orleans that was there, it’s time to stand up.”

Marion Steinfels, a spokeswoman for Lieberman’s campaign, said Thursday that the senator was undaunted by the new poll. He has been “taking this [challenge] seriously from the get-go and planning for a competitive race,” and has hundreds of canvassers going door to door in the state, she said.

“The only poll that matters,” Steinfels said, “is the one that’s going to happen next Tuesday.”

If Lamont does win the primary, he still may have to run against Lieberman in November. The incumbent has said he will run as an independent if Democrats don’t nominate him. During a CNN interview in early July, Lieberman said he had “a loyalty higher than that to any party. That’s to my state and my country.”

Thirty percent of Connecticut voters are registered Democrats, 20% are Republicans and 50% independents. A July 20 Quinnipiac poll showed that if Lieberman were to run as an independent, he would get 51% of the vote to Lamont’s 27%. The Republican challenger, Alan Schlesinger, registered 9% in that poll.

“There’s a sense that Lamont is taking the state by storm, and that’s just not true,” said Kenneth Dautrich, a political scientist at the University of Connecticut. “When you open it up and extend it to all the voters in the state, Lieberman is a really popular senator.”

Still, an independent Lieberman run would pose a painful dilemma for elected Democrats, union leaders and party loyalists who already have endorsed him. Brian Petronella, president of Local 371 of United Food and Commercial Workers, said there would have to be “a serious sit-down” with the different unions in the state if Lieberman went forward as an independent.

Tom Wilkinson, president of the Fairfield County Labor Council and an officer in Local 371, said the senator’s record on labor issues was “as good as anybody’s.” Still, he said: “I certainly would have difficulty sitting down with right-wing Republicans” to battle Lamont in the general election.

Dautrich said that Lamont may have hurt his chances in a November race by positioning himself on the left wing of the party throughout the primary season.

“A lot of the things he’s saying and a lot of the advertising is going to come back to haunt him in the general election,” Dautrich said, adding that Lamont may have “put himself into a bit of a corner.”

Douglas Schwartz, Quinnipiac University’s poll director, said it was difficult to predict what would happen in a three-way race because a loss for Lieberman in the primary could affect voter perceptions.

Tom Gaffey, a Democratic state senator who came out to greet Lamont in Meriden, scoffed at the notion that Lamont or his followers represented a “lunatic fringe.”

“There is a deep undercurrent of sentiment in the state against Washington and against the administration. People basically have had enough,” he said. “Anyone who says Ned Lamont is a radical should get their head checked.”

Times staff writers Peter Wallsten in Washington and Lianne Hart in Houston contributed to this report.