Waterbury Republican-American - Lieberman Hit on Missed Votes Lamont Says Senator has Become Hibernating Bear
Waterbury Republican-American - Lieberman Hit on Missed Votes Lamont Says Senator has Become Hibernating Bear
Friday, September 15, 2006
BY PAUL HUGHES
Democratic rival Ned Lamont is taking a page straight out of the Lieberman campaign playbook, hitting U.S. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman for missing votes.
Lieberman famously used a cartoon of a hibernating bear to call attention to then-U.S. Sen. Lowell P. Weicker Jr.'s record of missed votes in the 1988 campaign. The cartoon bear ad is still celebrated 18 years later as Lieberman seeks a fourth Senate term.
This week, the Lamont campaign has been hammering Lieberman for missing votes, asking if he's become the missing bear today.
"I noticed back in 1988 he made the same case against his opponent, Lowell Weicker, and he made a big deal out of it and said votes count, votes matter," Lamont said Thursday at his Meriden headquarters.
"I am showing 18 years later that maybe we have a senator who has grown a little distant from the people he is supposed to be fighting for. You fight for them by being in the U.S. Senate and casting votes that count," he continued.
Lieberman said in a conference call to reporters that Lamont and his campaign are missing the point that his storied TV ad was making in 1988.
"It wasn't just that Lowell Weicker was missing votes. He was missing votes to accept honoraria, which is to say money that went into his pocket," he said.
Honoraria are fees paid for an appearance, speech or article. Today, members of Congress may not accept such payments, though senators may designate a charity to which an honorarium of up to $2,000 may go.
"What is at work here is Ned Lamont's hypocrisy and his willingness now to do anything and say anything to get elected," said Lieberman, who is running as a petition candidate after having lost a Democratic primary to Lamont last month.
The Lamont campaign contends Lieberman is the one being hypocritical 18 years after he effectively made Weicker's missed votes a campaign issue. It says Lieberman missed as many votes as he criticized Weicker for missing in half the time.
According to its count, the senator missed more than 300 votes since 2003roughly the same number of votes that Weicker missed in the seven years preceding the 1988 election.
The Lamont campaign concentrated on the last 3ý years for good reason: Lieberman was running for the Democratic nomination for president at that time.
Lieberman said he had a 93 percent voting record through this yearroughly the same percentage as Lamont's voting record for six years on the Greenwich Board of Estimation and Taxation.
"I am proud of the record we had there," Lamont said in response. "We weighed in on the issues. We weighed in on the votes, and I was there for the important decisions of the day."
He did say that Lieberman had a good voting record.
"It is really in the last term that he has been missing. He is one of the most absentee senators we have of late," Lamont said.
He also acknowledged that his campaign was tweaking Lieberman on the question missing votes.
"I think we sort of having some fun based upon the bear ad that Sen. Lieberman himself had," Lamont said.
Lieberman even brought back the cartoon bear earlier in the campaign. An Internet ad during the Democratic primary showed Weicker as a beat up, patched up bear and Lamont as a little bear cub, a play on Weicker's endorsement of Lamont.
Lamont isn't relying on any cartoon characters to get his point across to voters about Lieberman's missing votes.
"I think it resonates a lot," he said. "These are people that work. They know they have a job. They know they have got to show up. They have got to be counted. That is what is expected of them. I don't see any reason why we have a different standard for our senators."
Lieberman said Lamont's latest attack, like his campaign style, is going to backfire with voters.
http://nedlamont.com/news/1448/lieberman-hit-on-missed-votes-lamont-says-senator-has-become-hibernating-bear