Former Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman’s death on Wednesday led to many retrospectives about the 82-year-old’s high-profile place in national elections, including his history-making turn in 2000 as the first Jewish person on a major party ticket, his doomed 2004 bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, and his ardent support for Republican John McCain in 2008.
But as is our wont at Daily Kos Elections, we’re closely examining his career in Nutmeg State politics, including the triumphs and setbacks he incurred along the way.
Lieberman, who already was nicknamed “Senator” while a student at Yale, got his start in politics by working part-time on former Gov. Abraham Ribicoff’s successful Senate campaign in 1962. Lieberman served as a summer intern for Ribicoff the following year, which was the same year he traveled to Mississippi to encourage Black residents to register to vote.
Around that time, as a college senior, Lieberman wrote his honors thesis on John Bailey, the powerful state Democratic Party leader and Democratic National Committee chair who would serve as an early mentor. That support would prove crucial in 1970 when Lieberman decided to run for a state Senate seat in New Haven even though he knew he might need to go up against powerful Democrat, state Senate Majority Leader Ed Marcus.
Marcus had launched a bid for the U.S. Senate seat held by incumbent Thomas Dodd, a Democrat who had been censured by his colleagues years earlier for allegedly misusing campaign funds. (Dodd initially announced he would retire but later decided to run as an independent.) However, Marcus also made it clear he’d turn around and seek reelection if he lost the nomination in August, an option he had because the legislative primary was set to take place a month later.
Marcus made good on his word after he finished a distant third in the Senate primary against Joseph Duffy, a former United Church of Christ minister who earned national attention due to his opposition to the Vietnam War. Lieberman likewise ran as an anti-war candidate against Marcus, and he benefited from the efforts of students like Yale Law’s Bill Clinton, who had worked on Duffy’s campaign. (Zeke Miller, in a 2013 piece for BuzzFeed, called Marcus “an advocate for scaled disengagement.”)
Lieberman’s bid also was aided by both institutional Democrats and young people who had never been part of the electorate before. The 28-year-old made use of his ties to Bailey and fundraising support from Ribicoff, and he also took advantage of a new policy that allowed Yale students to take part in local elections for the first time. Black voters also proved to be an important part of his coalition in a seat that the Los Angeles Times characterized in 2000 as “equal parts Jewish, African American and Yalie.”
Lieberman narrowly won the primary by about 240 votes, and he easily prevailed in the fall. (Marcus would later become state party chair and a Lieberman friend.) Local supporters like Clinton didn’t have a great election night overall, though, as Republican Rep. Lowell Weicker defeated Duffy 42-34 in the Senate race while Dodd took 24%.
Once he arrived in the legislature, though, Lieberman quickly showed himself to be anything but a liberal activist. “This bright young university-backed, liberal candidate has the sharp edges rubbed off in the twinkling of an eye,” consultant Morton Tenzer told the Washington Post in 2000, “and gets along and goes along better than virtually anyone else.”
Lieberman, who became majority leader following the 1974 elections, hoped to someday sit in the governor’s office, and he tried to bring that dream closer to reality in 1978 by campaigning for lieutenant governor. However, he decided not to proceed to the primary after convention delegates favored William O’Neill. (O’Neill would ascend to the top job at the end of 1980 following the resignation of Gov. Ella Grasso, who died just six weeks later from ovarian cancer.)
With his gubernatorial dreams apparently over, Lieberman set himself on a different path when he ran for the open 3rd Congressional District in 1980. Lieberman, like almost everyone else, believed he was in for an easy general election in this longtime Democratic stronghold, but state Senate Minority Leader Lawrence DeNardis was determined to prove the conventional wisdom wrong.
Lieberman did not push back when his rival dubbed him a “tax-and-spend liberal,” a mistake the Democrat became determined never to repeat in future campaigns. Lieberman also had the misfortune of running in a terrible year for his party: According to analyst Kiernan Park-Egan, Republican Ronald Reagan defeated President Jimmy Carter 51-39 in the 3rd District while carrying Connecticut as part of his 44-state landslide.
DeNardis, meanwhile, won 52-46, a result that seemed to mark the end of Lieberman’s once-promising career. “He was a mess,” Rep. Toby Moffett would recount to the L.A. Times decades later, describing his breakfast with the just-defeated state senator a few days after Election Day. “He was trying to figure out what happened and what to do next.” It didn’t help that Lieberman’s first marriage was coming to an end at that time.
However, as Kurt Stone would write in his book “The Jews of Capitol Hill,” Lieberman became determined to run for something in 1982—even as he publicly acknowledged he wasn’t sure what. He ultimately settled on the job of attorney general, which had historically been a part-time and little-noticed post. It turned out to be the right move: The Democrat all but locked down the nomination at the Democratic convention and scored a 58-41 victory in the general election.
Lieberman became the first full-time attorney general in state history and a prominent force in state politics. In little time, politicos began speculating that his plans to become governor were back on track. But many Democratic leaders in the state viewed the new attorney general as both an attention seeker and a threat to their influence. “They were terrified he’d run for governor and wanted him out of the state,” former state party chair John Droney told the L.A. Times in 2000.
But Lieberman, who secured reelection 65-35 in 1986, set his eyes on a different job two years later when he challenged Weicker’s bid for a fourth term in the Senate. Weicker, who was one of the last liberal Republicans to serve in the upper chamber, spent most of the contest as the undisputed frontrunner. However, Lieberman ran an aggressive campaign that included ads depicting the incumbent as a sleeping bear who dozed through votes.
The battle was perhaps the last time a Democratic nominee ran to the right of the Republican in a competitive Senate race in the U.S. Lieberman had the support of backing of prominent conservatives like the National Review founder William Buckley, a longtime friend who also detested Weicker.
While George H.W. Bush was poised to carry Connecticut that year, the boos that greeted Weicker at a rally with the vice president foreshadowed that top-of-the-ticket coattails would not save the senator. And sure enough, Lieberman prevailed in a 50-49 squeaker even as Bush’s own 52-47 victory made him the last Republican to take the state’s electoral votes. (That close loss didn’t end Weicker’s career, though, as he won the governorship in 1990 under the banner of his “A Connecticut Party.”)
Lieberman made an early name for himself nationally as a crusader against violence in video games and proved to be popular at home, winning his next two terms with ease. Frustratingly for Democrats, though, the senator continued his 2000 reelection campaign even though a victory for the Gore-Lieberman ticket would have allowed GOP Gov. John Rowland to appoint a Republican replacement.
Lieberman’s final race in 2006 proved to be his most fraught. The incumbent had infuriated Democrats across the country with his full-throated advocacy for the Iraq War, which earned him a primary challenge from wealthy businessman Ned Lamont. Lamont, who had the support of the burgeoning netroots movement, made full use of a photo of George W. Bush appearing to kiss the senator on the cheek. In a major upset, he beat Lieberman by a 52-48 margin.
The incumbent, though, had already laid the groundwork to run as an independent even before he lost the primary, and he appeared on the general election ballot as the nominee of the new Connecticut for Lieberman party. Yet even though Lieberman said he’d remain in the Democratic caucus, he quickly emerged as the de facto GOP nominee after Republicans realized he stood a far better chance of victory than their official candidate, former Derby Mayor Alan Schlesinger.
The senator would reveal in his 2021 book that the Bush White House and the Senate GOP’s official campaign arm worked to make sure conservative donors directed money his way rather than to Schlesinger. Lieberman also claimed White House strategist Karl Rove told him that the Bush team “will help you in any way we can.”
Lieberman still retained the support of a considerable minority of Democrats and led in the polls from the beginning of the general election. He never relinquished that advantage: Connecticut for Lieberman scored its first and only victory when the incumbent beat Lamont 50-40, with Schlesinger taking just 10%.
Lamont, like former Lieberman rivals O’Neill and Weicker, would go on to become governor following his 2018 victory, but 2006 was the final time Lieberman was on the ballot. The senator engaged his party all over again by backing McCain for president, so much so that GOP nominee seriously considered making him his running mate before deciding his base wouldn’t stand for it.
Lieberman also opposed including a public option in the Affordable Care Act, a move that effectively vetoed the proposal, which was especially popular with liberals. With progressives determined not to repeat the mistakes of 2006 (Lamont went on vacation after his primary win, thinking he could induce Lieberman to drop out), the senator’s long record of apostasies ensured he’d be the underdog if he ran again in 2012.
But Lieberman’s many enemies to his left never got the chance. He announced early that cycle that he would retire, and the seat once again had a full-fledged Democratic occupant after Rep. Chris Murphy won the contest to succeed him. Connecticut for Lieberman, meanwhile, was taken over by anti-Lieberman activists following the 2006 election and effectively shut down in 2013, the same year the senator left the upper chamber.