New Haven

Staring hard at the women’s draw on an oversized sign at the Pilot Pen tennis tournament last week  read more »

Staring hard at the women’s draw on an oversized sign at the Pilot Pen tennis tournament last  read more »

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 »

Josh Isay may be new to the Lieberman campaign, but not to Lieberman himself.

"I have actually known the Senator's family for almost my entire life," said Isay. "I grew up in New Haven."

Hometown loyalties aside, Isay said he is a great admirer of the Senator, and expressed confidence Lieberman will take on and win against Democrats, Republicans and anyone else going into November's showdown with Ned Lamont.

"I think he is going to do very well with Democrats and unaffiliated voters and Republicans who want to end partisan bickering and who want progress," Isay told me.

Lamont's campaign has already jumped on the Lieberman's campaign hiring of Isay -- who recently worked on the reelection campaign of Mike Bloomberg -- and a Republican pollster as another opportunity to question the senator's Democratic credentials.

"It makes you wonder who the real Joe Lieberman is," Mr. Lamont's spokeswoman, Liz Dupont-Diehl just told us. "He has been Republican, Republican, Republican for some time. Now we are seeing it manifest itself."

But Isay, who helped reelect Republican Mayor Bloomberg, said he was a true-blue Democrat.  read more »

"I'm a Democratic political consultant who represents both elected officials and progressive causes, I believe Joe Lieberman has been a great Senator and is the best choice in this race. And I believe that this is totally consistent with my clients and my beliefs."

--Jason Horowitz

The polls were right about one thing: Ned Lamont's undeniable appeal to people who are well-off and white.

According to the town-by-town returns, Lamont padded his margins over Joe Lieberman in places like Greenwich, where he received 68 percent of the vote, and New Canaan where he got 62 percent.

But most impressive was his performance in Cornwall, a pleasant-looking town of 1,400 up in Litchfield County, where Lamont drew 91 percent of the primary vote.

How does that happen, exactly?

-- Josh Benson

UPDATE: Steve Kornacki has more analysis. From an email:

"Yeah...although Lieberman loses New Haven, his hometown. His best town in the state is East Haven, the lily-white New Haven suburb. And Lieberman owns the Naugatuck Valley...Waterbury, et al. Waterbury was, I think, the only East Coast city (population: 100,000+) to vote for Bush in '04. It's a real throwback town: gritty, but socially conservative and dominated by a GOP machine. Lamont's dominance in Litchfield Co. is interesting too: In theory, those are the kinds of voters who an independent would be counting on in the fall."

UPDATE UPDATE: From Kornacki:

"For what it's worth, I looked up Waterbury's '04 numbers, and Kerry actually eked it out by 161 votes. But the point is still the same."

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

Jason Horowitz just called in with some comments from a couple of randomly sampled voters at Joe Lieberman's polling place in New Haven this morning:

Elizabeth Turner, an 81-year-old retired art professor who voted for Ned Lamont: "I like the idea of a choice and new energy. I have voted in lots of primaries. I've always voted democrat down the line. This time, I got to be selective and I liked it... This time, it was the war issue that eliminated Lieberman. I think that if he loses by a big blast, he will be in big trouble." Marjorie Rosenthal, a 39-year-old pediatrician who voted for Joe Lieberman: "I think he's wrong about the war, but I think there are more issues than just that." She said she liked Lieberman's late attempts to explain his war position over the weekend, but added, "I think it's hard to believe what these people say in the eleventh hour."

-- Josh Benson

In yesterday's New Haven Register, Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a leading management professor at Yale, shows how disaffection with Lieberman isn't some narrow obsession, as David Brooks would have it, but goes to the heart of the misconduct of our foreign policy:

A younger Joe Lieberman would never have condemned citizens as unpatriotic who challenge a bloody war that is built on a false premise that is costing thousands of U.S. lives along with our global reputation.

Wild Turkey!” My friend Nate-Dog shouts, brandishing a bottle of whiskey and flapping imaginary wi  read more »

Wild Turkey!” My friend Nate-Dog shouts, brandishing a bottle of whiskey and flapping imaginar  read more »

Lindsay Davenport loped onto practice court B at New Haven’s Pilot Pen tennis tournament last Sund  read more »

Lindsay Davenport loped onto practice court B at New Haven’s Pilot Pen tennis tournament last  read more »

Sorry, guys, I'm not going. No Yale Class Reunion picnic at the White House for me.  read more »

One reason I love the Yale alumni magazine is that each new issue provides another compelling reason  read more »

Early and mid-August used to be known as the dog days of summer, but in this election season, August  read more »

Of all the follies and horrors that were inflicted upon mankind in the last century, none brought mo  read more »