LAT: Ned Lamont Went From Zero to Favorite in 7 Months

[DeepModem Mom]

Lamont Went From Zero to Favorite in 7 Months
By Ellen Barry, Times Staff Writer
August 6, 2006


(Bob Falcetti / Getty Images)
Campaigning

....Tom Swan, a veteran progressive political organizer in Connecticut, had just taken a leave of absence from his job to manage Lamont's campaign, "which meant that three-fourths of the Democratic establishment was really hating me."

Here was his candidate: earnest, unguarded, a little goofy, with a political resume that began and ended with town politics in Greenwich. Lamont's statewide name recognition at that point was 4%, or as Swan put it wryly, "within the statistical margin of error."
Seven months later, Lamont is poised to pull off the biggest upset in the state's political history. A recent poll shows he has a 13 percentage-point lead over Sen. Joe Lieberman, a three-term incumbent, among likely voters in the Democratic primary Tuesday.

His success has been driven by several factors, among them Democrats' fury at Lieberman's support of the war in Iraq; backing from progressive bloggers and other activists; and Lamont's personal fortune, which allowed him to enter the race when others could not.

Lamont, 52, still comes off as inexperienced, but voters associate him with Jimmy Stewart, not Admiral Stockdale. In his broadsides against the war, he has referred to it as "this pickle we're in," and said it "really got my goat." He has told audiences he was unfamiliar with blogs or the satirical "Colbert Report" TV show because he was "not really a political junkie" before getting into the race....

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-lamont6aug06,0,968493.story?coll=la-home-headlines

[TheFarseer]

1. good article. thanks for posting n/t

[Cha]

2. Loved the article! Thanks for posting..

"It was around that time he got a call from Lamont. When Orman explained the fundraising challenge, "he said, 'That's no problem.' I sort of laughed."

Orman was perplexed — who was this guy? — but he passed along this advice: Hire Tom Swan, who was then the director of the Connecticut Citizen Action Group; get Connecticut bloggers on your side; connect with the more active Deaniacs, and "you could possibly pull off the most incredible upset in Connecticut history."