| Looks like it's official, or as close to official as it gets in this sort of thing. Millionaire Edward "Ned" Lamont will challenge Joe Lieberman in a Dem primary.
Among the tidbits that are out there now, including at the hyper-influential DailyKos:
• Lamont is committed to dropping a million of his own money on the race.
• Lowell Weicker has said he'll back Lamont.
• Branford's own Kiki Kennedy, Ted Kennedy's daughter-in-law, is flacking family friend Lamont to the in-crowd.
• CCAG is backing Lamont.
Speaking of CCAG, Tom Swan would be an excellent pick for campaign manager. He took a leave of absence to helm Ed Meyer's state senate campaign here in my own back yard and, since I was active in the campaign, I can vouch for his skills. Is it too much to hope that he could take another chunk of time off?
To those, who'd like to back a credible alternative to Joe -- and $1 million spells credibility in anyone's books -- there are some important things to know about the process going forward.
If the nascent Lamont campaign is smart (and the scuttlebut I'm hearing suggests there are or will be very shortly), they will want to make a Lamont-Lieberman primary fight a done deal going into the State Democratic Convention in May.
That means one of two things, getting 15% of the delegates to the convention to vote for Lamont OR getting the signatures of 2% of registered Dems in the state. (As far as I know, that means somewhere areound 25,000 names.) My guess is the Lamont campaign will try to do both.
Signatures can only be collected starting 14 days before the convention. (The convention will be sometime in May, although the exact date has yet to be determined thanks to some labor disputes preventing the party from choosing its preferred location in Hartford.) That's going to mean some concentrated effort on the part of the anti-Joe crowd, so if that's you, start clearing your May calendar.
The 15% of convention delegates is also doable, especially given the likely positive effect of the Manchester Resolution on Joe's Iraq war stance.
Remember, too, that delegates to the state convention are drawn from the ranks of the Democratic Town Committees (DTC). Yet another reason to get on your DTC. |
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