Reflections From The Campaign Trail
Ned Lamont, NedLamont.com, August 8, 2007
I wanted to use this anniversary as an opportunity to thank you again for your support in the election last year and reflect a bit on what was an extraordinary journey. -Ned
It is easy to float a trial balloon; in my case, Daily Kos, a liberal blog, posted a rumor that a primary challenge to Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman was in the offing. Ours was a spicy one day story, usually playing off of the Greenwich stereotype: unknown millionaire challenges 18-year institution. Then the press disappeared, the Hartford Courant ran a cartoon of a wide eyed ingenue sporting a “Ned who?” button, and the first poll showed a 55% deficit. I figured this could get very embarrassing very quickly. I bought myself the most politically correct car in America, the Ford Escape Hybrid, and started driving the state: local editorial boards, Democratic Town Committees, coffee klatches and church socials.
During the early months of my campaign it was more likely that I would be followed by a blogger with a webcam than a newspaperman with a pad and paper. Before our salad days, the mainstream media had quickly lost interest – but the blogs were the accelerant for our grassroots effort. One post read: “I don’t know anything about Lamont but I know a ton about Lieberman so go hear Ned at Naples Pizza in New Haven next Thursday”; over 100 folks showed up to hear the former third selectman and we were off to the races.
As newspaper newsrooms cut back, the blogs are the new stringers, sourcing story ideas which filter over to print. Still, the in-state newspapers offer up pretty good reporting, with seasoned reporters and subtle commentary which cuts through the message of the day pap. We’ll miss their local commentary if they are replaced by national chains in the next round of newspaper sales. The national media grab a story line and don’t let go; leftist Ned challenges centrist Joe was a popular refrain. The national reporters (NY Times/AP) turn over with some frequency and there’s a sense that their reporters would rather have root canal than a beat in the Connecticut colonies.
Cable news is more attitude and less news. The schedule shows an interview with Hardball’s Chris Matthews at five. No face time but via teleconference – I am perched on a stool staring at a camera sitting in front of a showcase window in New Haven with curious passersby making funny faces on their walk about outside.
“3-2-1 we are back with insurgent candidate Ned Lamont who is challenging historical icon Joe Lieberman. Ned, the polls shows that nobody has ever heard of you. What’s your strategy?”
“Go on shows like yours, Chris.”
“Good answer,” at which point Chris does all the talking for a few minutes and I smile agreeably… “we’ll be back with our long shot candidate after this break.”
Off the air Chris is bellowing into my earpiece with a stream of campaign scuttlebutt and advice… 3-2-1, “So, are you willing to bomb North Korea and if not why not?”
Local television news seemed guaranteed to be silly and irrelevant. Local TV lurched from one sideshow to another – did Lamont bloggers hack into the Lieberman web site (no), did you support a blogger’s portrayal of Joe in blackface, you have released one year’s tax returns, how about ten year’s of returns? A press conference on healthcare would generate five questions about the latest poll. Why bother preening for a mention on the evening news; let’s go with a few more thirty second ads and call it a day.
Better yet, skip the local news shows – go on the Colbert Report. It may showcase on Comedy Central but thousands are watching and paying attention since the faux news show has punch and humor. I am fidgeting in the green room awaiting my turn, when Stephen Colbert marches in, warns me that our segment is on soon and he will play the role of an idiot, so prepare accordingly. The veteran Colbert consultants told me to stand up as Stephen came prancing over, in order to establish my spacial strength, and then keep on smiling no matter how uncomfortable the grilling. I spent the next two days high-fiving the voters who enjoyed that I had gone toe to toe with the mighty Colbert.
Our first big test was the May 20th Democratic convention, where our campaign needed to win 15% of the delegates in order to qualify for a primary. At the annual Democratic dinner a month earlier the Lamont campaign table was prominently located between the bathroom and the kitchen door, but a fair number of diners were quietly showing me their Lamont campaign buttons which were hidden inside their jacket (I was never sure whether they also had Joe buttons on their other side of their coat). I took the surreptitious support as a positive. I spent the next month calling every delegate and I ended up with a close personal relationship with about 500 answering machines.
At the convention a month later, more delegates were sporting their buttons publicly. I rounded the bend expecting to meet with the usual press, maybe ConnecticutBob.com or Paz from the Hartford Courant, instead the heart of the Washington press corps had decided to visit Hartford for the day and I found myself in the middle of a scrum enjoying my thirty seconds of fame: how do you define victory, how much are you worth, what’s your favorite vegetable, answer the second question first. That evening Joe had the state’s senior Senator and the Mayor of Bridgeport introduce him – I had a member of the Bridgeport Board of Ed and my wife Annie introduce me.
The roll call vote gave delegates an opportunity to crow about their home town, or maybe just get in a dig: “We’re a little town with three big votes,” the tiny but mighty Warren, Connecticut casts three proud votes for Led Namont… or was it Ed. Southbury was agitated since they had invited Senator Joe to visit their town but had not heard back, so rather than await his call they were casting their votes…
Politics is a game of expectations; I lost the convention 2-1 but the press covered our upset victory, delighted that they had a real political race to cover during the dog days of summer. We had ten weeks until primary day and I had a lot of catching up to do.
Sure the race was about the war, but everybody hated the war for their own reason. At the community meeting in East Hartford, parents wanted to know why were spending $250 million a day in Iraq and could not afford preschool – or public transit funds or affordable healthcare – you fill in the blank. At UConn the students were hanging from the rafters, incensed that the war was bringing out the worst in America – be it Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo. Many of the doyens of Fairfield County were livid that America was in hock to the Chinese to pay for this war. For some the war was a proxy for their animus towards the President. A few even worried that the war was making America less safe.
The Senator’s team responded that the war was just a single issue and that, except for that one itty-bitty issue, the Senator had a purer Democratic voting record that Hillary Clinton or Harry Reid. Joe’s TV ads contrasted his 90% Democratic voting record with my record on the Board of Selectmen when I had voted with Republicans “over 80% of the time!” I suppose that I should have pushed harder to place the stop sign on the left hand side of the road. I was portrayed as the white wine-sipping, Lexus-driving, Republican-cavorting Greenwich millionaire who couldn’t find his way to the Congressional men’s room; fairly true but nobody gave a damn.
The war got me in the room, but as Woody Allen once stated, just showing up is half the game and I was showing up where nary a Connecticut politician had showed up in decades. We did a radio ad stating that Joe no longer knew his Ashford from his Haddam – and that’s what the national media missed. With help from GPS, we were in Ashford and Haddam over and over talking about jobs and health care and Aunt Millie’s impacted molar. The first symptom of Potomac fever is bloviating on Meet the Press about the insurgency in Anbar province, which means you are in a Washington TV studio and not in Haddam on Sunday morning. The incumbents spend too much time on Face the Nation and not enough on Face the State.
So as we got closer to our August primary the polls got closer and the Senator agreed to one debate. I watched the Lieberman-Cheney vice presidential debate from 2000, which was full of salutations right out of the House of Lords – “my worthy adversary… my esteemed colleague.” I studied up on my facts and was ready to recite the G8 summiteers in reverse alphabetical order to show I was ready for prime time. Instead, the debate jumped out as a bar room brawl, with the Senator accusing me of this and that and my trying to figure out which camera was turned on (probably the one with the tech waving his arms to look his way). We all settled down and the debate was a wash, but just showing up I exceeded expectations and shot up in the polls (the Courant portrayed me as a deer in the headlights exclaiming “I can’t believe I’m ahead!”).
We won the primary and overnight I seemed to morph from feisty outsider challenging the status quo to entrenched partisan Democratic incumbent.
True, I did have a lot of new best friends. The state Democrats invited me to their picnic and as I arrived in my Ford Escape hybrid, parking next to me was congressional candidate Diane Farrell, in her Ford Escape Hybrid, and then the Senator Dodd arrived in his, you guessed it, a Ford Escape Hybrid – memo from Howard Dean: drive the official car of the DNC.
To the beltway Democrats I was still a hot potato. At their fall fundraising luncheon for Senate candidates, while the endorsed Democratic candidates spoke for dollars, I was invited to wave from the floor for no dollars. I didn’t mind, except that I seemed to carry all the baggage of a career incumbent with none of the perks.
The attacks changed overnight: I went from being portrayed as Republican light to Trotsky’s grandson and the national press lapped up the press releases. Vice President Cheney noted that the Al Qaida types had gained comfort from Lamont’s victory in Connecticut and the Lieberman campaign agreed. The dog days of August were defining, and many of the issues which had resonated during a primary seemed off key in a general. The war was no longer about foregone domestic priorities, rather it was about national security. We spoke with with Iraqi veterans and retired generals and asked why we were spending $250 million a day in Iraq and could not afford to finish the job in Afghanistan or screen the cargo coming into New Haven harbor. Joe said he could see bringing some troops home by the end of the year and suddenly our issue was losing resonance.
During the primary I had railed against the earmarks as the currency of corruption on Capitol Hill, little pieces of pork which were slowly bankrupting the system. To an incumbent, earmarks were the fruits of seniority which Connecticut should not jeopardize. I had argued over and over that career politicians did not have the type of experience we needed in Washington. In the general election experience was seniority was longevity was familiarity. Our telephoners told us that we were doing well with younger voters, the younger the better – but we were getting crushed by older voters who were much more likely to vote. If the respondent referred to “Joey,” we knew that we were shot.
My parents went to every senior center, my Dad talking about fiscal conservatism and my Mom speaking Spanish. Paul Newman went on TV calling me “spunky;” he did our one and only robocall which was short lived. Paul wanted to write his own piece, and then he test drove the text by calling six would-be voters. He called me with the results: two no answers, two answering machines, and one guy who shouted to his wife, “hey Marge, there’s some kook on the phone pretending to be Paul Newman!” He worried what we had was a failure to communicate.
Towards the end, the polls did not look good and the media had moved on. As we walked a street in Bridgeport meeting with entrepreneurial immigrants who had started up businesses there, we were followed by one camera, from Kazakhstan TV. “Where’s your army of supporters,” the cameraman asked. Thankfully at that moment a group of students ran up to meet us. They briefly shook my hand before asking the cameraman breathlessly, “Do you know Borat?”
We ended the campaign with the obligatory bus tour of twenty towns in four days. In every town there would be a gaggle of supporters holding their signs and cheering their hearts out for a better tomorrow. They were not demanding an immediate pullout, they weren’t isolationist – none of the false choices that clutter our political landscape. They just felt that our country could do a little better, both at home and abroad, and they reveled in the chance to say so.
At the end of twelve months on the trail, you cannot help but be impressed by the quality of citizenship in our country and the number of Americans ready to stand up and pitch in… if only their leaders would lead.
(Photos 2-7 by Fletcher Fischer.)