Joe Lieberman’s campaign could hardly have scripted this better:
They now say that peace activists sympathetic to Ned Lamont are trying to revoke the senator’s registration as a Democrat in his hometown of New Haven. The argument is that he stopped being a Democrat when he started running as an Independent petitioning candidate.
“This gives the lie to the idea that this is not an effort to purge different ideas from the party,” said Lieberman spokesman Dan Gerstein, who referred to the activists as Lamont surrogates.
Lamont, obviously, can’t be responsible for the actions of all of his supporters. But talk about off-message…
We’re still waiting for a comment from his campaign.
— Jason Horowitz
UPDATE: The Lieberman campaign has just released a statement on this (after the jump), while Lamontblog has a rebuttal, aimed primarily at Gerstein.
Lieberman Campaign Denounces Party
Purge Effort by Lamont Supporters
“Dirty political tricks at its worst”
HARTFORD — Lieberman for Senate Campaign Manager Sherry Brown issued the following statement denouncing the effort launched today by Ned Lamont’s supporters to have Joe Lieberman purged from the Democratic Party rolls in New Haven.
“The purge campaign launched today by Ned Lamont’s supporters is dirty political tricks at its worst, ranking up there with the outrageous tactics that Katherine Harris and the Republicans used in 2000 in Florida to stop all the votes from being counted.
“This kind of ridiculous, partisan game-playing is not going to provide anyone in Connecticut with better jobs, better health care, or better schools. All it’s going to do is deepen our divisions and add to voters frustration with our broken political system.
“Joe Lieberman is running to change that, to builld a new politics of unity and purpose that will bring our state and country together to solve our common problems. We will leave it to Ned Lamont to defend the old politics of partisanship and polarization that he and his supporters want to continue.”
