Dan Gerstein

Republicans are having some trouble finding a candidate to run for the Congressional seat Vito Fossella is planning to vacate at the end of the year.

Could they find a solution by turning to … Fossella?

A couple of political consultants I talked to think the idea is at least theoretically plausible. He has, they point out, managed to get through the worst of the press coverage without disappearing entirely from the public eye. (He has been maintaining a surprisingly unremarkable presence at parades.) And he'd sort of be operating, if he chose to renew interest in running on the Republican line, in a vacuum. As Dan Gerstein put it, Fossella “may be able to get the G.O.P. nomination since they can't seem to give the seat away on that side.” (This, in a district in which George W. Bush won 55 percent of the vote in 2004.)  read more »

Dan Gerstein, who wrote Christine Quinn’s $12,000 State of the City speech--and before that waged a spirited  read more »

In a speech that will inevitably be viewed through the lens of her mayoral ambitions, Christine Quinn has embarked on a State of the City address touching on her ability, as Council Speaker, to get involved in parts of the city outside her home borough of Manhattan. “Instead of governing from City Hall, we've gotten knee-deep in our neighborhoods,” she said.

(Her father Larry had introduced her moments earlier by saying that his goal was to be a “five-borough father of the Speaker before I’m term-limited.”)  read more »

Eliot Spitzer formally signaled his support today for building a casino in the Catskills.

Senator Al D'Amato may push for online poker.

The late John Lavelle's Assembly seat may go to his son.

Dan Gerstein agrees with Matt Stoller about the netroots.

Mitt Romney has an explanation for a 1992 vote that angered conservatives.

Can anybody say Senator Bill Clinton? If you missed it, Politico wraps up the Sunday morning talk shows.

And pictured above are most of the candidates in tomorrow's special election for the City Council seat in Brooklyn.

-- Azi Paybarah

With word circulating that an exit poll has Ned Lamont leading Joe Lieberman, Dan Gerstein, Lieberman's campaign press secretary, says he's not surprised. "We expect this will be a two or three point race," he said shorty after 7:00. "It's going to be close." There is anecdotal evidence, Gerstein said, of higher-than-expected turnout -- "but not necessarily in places where Lamont is supposed to be strong and we're supposed to be weak."

For whatever that's worth.

-- Steve Kornacki

Running as an independent has offered Joe Lieberman the advantage of broad, bi-partisan voters. The downside, of course, is that his name doesn't appear until way down on the ballot.

Dan Gerstein, Lieberman's spokesman, says that 1,200 volunteers have been dispatched to outside polling stations to hand out information to inform voters know where to find the Senator.

He said that some anecdotal feedback he has heard suggests that voters already know where Lieberman's name appears.

"It looks like that message got through," he said.

He said that the campaign's latest internal polls show Lieberman ahead by about nine points. But, given the tempestuous nature of Connecticut politics, he conceded that anything could change.

"If certain things go Lamont's way," he said, "we could lose this race." --Jason Horowitz

MoveOn.org hasn't been friendly territory to Joe Lieberman for some time, but some of the criticism of the hawkish "independent" Senator on its website has now drawn the attention of the Anti-Defamation League.

Lieberman's spokesman Dan Gerstein forwards this letter from the ADL, denouncing the tone of some of the comments on MoveOn's message board.

"Specifically, we would urge you to exercise your own First Amendment rights and issue a statement making it clear that your organization finds such message abhorrent."

-- Azi Paybarah

The Ned Lamont campaign says that the accusations from the Joe Lieberman camp -- charging Lamont supporters with trying to strip the Senator of his Democratic registration -- sound a lot like the never-proven claims during primary night that Lamont supporters were responsible for the collapse of their overburdened campaign website.

"The Lieberman campaign should get some grip on reality before they start making baseless charges against our campaign," said Lamont campaign manager Tom Swan. "We had nothing to do with this. We don't condone it or encourage it. We saw this with the hacking accusations -- they continue to make baseless charges."

Swan added that the only name he had heard in relation to the effort to strip Lieberman of his Democratic registration was Henry Lowendorf, a member of the New Haven Peace Council who he says is unaffiliated with the campaign.

We asked Lieberman spokesman Dan Gerstein if he knows anything more than that. We are waiting for his reply.

--Jason Horowitz UPDATE: Dan Gerstein sends along Exhibit A about the Lamont supporters they're accusing of trying to kick Lieberman out of the party, with the following explanatory note:

Tom Swan asked for evidence that Lamont supporters were behind today's effort to purge Joe Lieberman from the New Haven Democratic Party rolls. Here is one cite we found from an online radio interview with Henry Lowendorf of the Greater New Haven Peace Council, which we are told was responsible for the complaint to the New Haven registrar. We will send others as we find them.

FURTHER UPDATE: More from Gerstein:

According to a report from the New Haven Independent:

Other activists signing Lowendorf's letter to Ferrucci included veteran activists Paul Hodel and Tom Holahan, a former Democratic alderman.

According to this posting on myleftnutmeg.com, Hodel was campaigning on behalf of Lamont in New Haven in July.

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.  read more »

We can probably draw two conclusions from the news that Dan Gerstein has just been named Joe Lieberman's communications director:

1) Gerstein is being rewarded for his tireless advocacy on behalf of Lieberman throughout what was a very rough primary campaign.

2) Gerstein has concluded that serving as a consultant to Tom Suozzi's campaign is no longer the most productive use of his time.

Here's what he told us about his decision to join Lieberman full time -- and to leave Suozzi:

"I feel bad about it. I really enjoyed working with him."

And, he added, "I was very much looking forward to going back to help Tom after the primary, under the assumption he was going to win. The results turned out otherwise."

The decision was made this morning. According to Gerstein, it was Lieberman who called Suozzi this afternoon to deliver the news.

Full announcement after the jump.  read more »

-- Jason Horowitz

According to sources in the Lieberman and Lamont camps, turnout in Connecticut is exceeding 35 percent. Conventional wisdom is that the higher numbers bode well for the incumbent Lieberman, but the Lamont campaign seems convinced that the numbers simply account for voters excited to vote the senator out of office. And as far as the whole Lieberman website goes, it's still down, and now, according to Dan Gerstein, the FBI is involved.

"The FBI has begun to interview people on our staff. They are taking this very seriously," said Gerstein.

--Jason Horowitz

The Lieberman site is still down. Complaints have been filed on the state and federal level. And now, the FBI is getting involved.

"The FBI has begun to interview people on or staff. They are taking this very seriously," said Dan Gerstein.

At this point, nobody knows who is to blame. But this guy was causing trouble at Lieberman's polling station this morning in New Haven.  read more »

--Jason Horowitz

A new Quinnipiac poll on the Connecticut primary for Senate shows Joe Lieberman still trailing Ned Lamont, this time by 45-51 among likely voters. (It's an improvement, at least, from the result of a poll released last week that had Lieberman behind by 13 points.)

The new poll did show a continuing disparity between Lamont's support among higher income, college-educated voters and among those of more modest means.

Lieberman actually leads the race among those with no college degree (49-46) and among respondents making between $30,000 and $50,000 a year (49-45). Lamont, on the other hand, leads by the widest margins among college-educated voters (38-59) and those making more than $100,000 (39-60).

For what it's worth.

-- Josh Benson UPDATE: Lieberman advisor Dan Gerstein, clearly in a good mood, just sent over the following interpretation of today's poll results: "People are now fully paying attention, realizing what's at stake, seeing Lamont is unqualified, and our speech last night will help make them comfortable coming home."

You might think that the Suozzi campaign would want to focus at this point on the decent performance of their candidate at the debate last night, rather than harping on a nearly incomprehensible dispute over the rules.

But you'd be wrong.

Here are a couple of (trimmed!) excerpts from an email Dan Gerstein sent out today criticizing NY1, which hosted the debate, for not being explicit enough about banning written notes, and for "changing the rules" at the behest of the Spitzer campaign. The email also condemned Eliot Spitzer for threatening to back out of the debate and then "openly lying" about it afterwards.

The Spitzer campaign spread a lot of misinformation last night about the Attorney General's threat to storm out of the debate last night right before it started, and the falsehoods are continuing today. We would like to clarify a few important points.

• In NY1's initial invitation and other written communications to our campaign about the debate rules, we were told that the candidates could not use "visual aids, props and charts."

• If NY1 wanted to ban private notes, as opposed to materials meant for public consumption, why wouldn't they say something explicitly about candidate notes?

• Tom was objecting because he thought it was wrong for the Spitzer campaign to bully NY1 into changing the rules as we understood them at the last minute.

NY1's Bob Hardt sent over a response:

"We have never allowed written materials to be used in any of our debates and we weren't going to make an exception to our longstanding rules. If the Suozzi campaign was unclear about what constitutes a visual aid, they had plenty of time to ask NY1. Finally, if there were any uncertainties about that rule, it was made very clear to the Suozzi team more than four hours before the debate that their briefing book wouldn't be allowed on the podium. We told them that we were providing both candidates a pad of paper and two pens."

The full Gerstein email is after the jump.  read more »

Say what you will about Dan Gerstein, but he's a pro.

Here's what he told us a little while ago about the state of the race:

"It's an unfortunate reality in political journalism today that polls are a big driver of coverage and there is just no denying the gap we are facing in the polls. The good news is that most people aren't paying attention."

And here's what he said about the significance of the upcoming debate:

"In my view this is like opening night of the campaign. This is the first time of the two of these guys are side by side. If you discount the meeting in Mineola."

"There is a lot of pressure here for [Spitzer] to nip this in the bud."

This?

-- Jason Horowitz

For evidence of all the anger and emotions swirling around Joe Lieberman's re-election campaign, one need look no further than the nastly little spat playing out in the blogosphere (where else?) between political strategists David Sirota and Dan Gerstein

First Gerstein responds to Sirota's op-ed in the Hartford Courant arguing that Lieberman is an "out-of-the-mainstream" Democrat.

To my knowledge, the closest he's come to spending any meaningful time in Connecticut is interviewing for a job in Joe Lieberman's Senate office (with yours truly) and in his Presidential campaign in 2003.

Yes, that's right: the same guy who is viciously attacking Joe Lieberman as the great Satan of the Democratic Party actually sought not one but two jobs from the target of his hatred, and did so at time when all of the supposed sins that Sirota is attacking Lieberman for now were well known. The polite term for that would be chutzpah. Some one less charitable might call Sirota a fraud.

Sirota responds:

"Instead of actually having a debate over Lieberman's record, Lieberman is having his consultant blast out lies about me personally, disparage progressive heroes like Bernie Sanders and try to paint Jews opposing Lieberman as anti-Israel or anti-semitic."

And then Gerstein, again.

Sirota did not take himself out of the running for that job, but was rejected by the campaign, something that was confirmed to me by a person with firsthand knowledge of the interview. That same person noted that when Sirota was asked why someone who seemed so liberal wanted to work for Joe Lieberman, "he specifically said that he was excited to have a Jew in the White House."

This is the sort of thing that could go on ad infinitum. In fact, Gerstein just pointed out to us that the same blog has a report on Bill Clinton's remarks in Aspen last week, which seem supportive of Lieberman.

- Jason Horowitz

Today's lesson from the Suozzi campaign trail: be prepared for questions.

Suozzi appeared in front of Eliot Spitzer's office to ask why he hasn't returned a donation by the state teachers union after vowing not to accept contibutions from organizations investigated by the Attorney General's office.

But the point became somewhat muddled when Suozzi said he would have no problem accepting contributions from the union. The issue, he said, was purely one of a "conflict of interest" for Spitzer, and had nothing to do with accepting money from organizations under investigation.

The problem with that argument, is that ethically, at least, it suggests Suozzi has set lower standards for himself than Spitzer has.

When reporters pressed Suozzi on the point, he argued that he would accept all "legal" donations, and finally added "it's a moot point -- the teacher's union is not endorsing me."

Not exactly an ideal message of the day.

- Jason Horowitz UPDATE: Suozzi aide Dan Gerstein writes in to clarify that the reason for Suozzi's visit to Spitzer's office today was to point to the "double standard" of in his handling of the union, and not to urge him to return the contributions, which became the focus of the subsequent Q&A with reporters.

Tom never said the teacher's union was dirty or their contributions were tainted, all he said was Eliot violated his own standard when it was politically expedient for him and that raises a real question about his independence and integrity.