"It was Iraq that drove Mr. Lamont into the race and kept him there" [View All]

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A Man of Means, Pushing for Change

By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
Published: August 9, 2006

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Ned Lamont does not seem your typical liberal: a Greenwich blueblood, the great-grandson of J. P. Morgan’s partner, a multimillionaire businessman. Yet liberal he is, and proud of it, having advocated universal health care and a swift withdrawal of American troops from Iraq.

“He’s lived in Greenwich, this very Republican town, for many years,” Mr. Johnson said. “But he had a greater degree of awareness for what’s happening outside Greenwich.”

Those experiences would later become the grist for his United States Senate campaign, as Mr. Lamont traveled around Connecticut to convince Democratic voters that his volunteerism, background as an entrepreneur, and willingness to champion liberal values were credentials enough to replace Mr. Lieberman.

But it was Iraq that drove Mr. Lamont into the race and kept him there. Late last year, he grew tired of seeing Mr. Lieberman defend the war in Iraq. He began to plead with local Democratic officials — he would not say whom — to find someone to contest the senator’s re-election. Then after reading an op-ed article Mr. Lieberman wrote in The Wall Street Journal urging the United States to “stay the course” in Iraq, Mr. Lamont decided he would run himself.


article: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/nyregion/09LAMONT.html?pagewanted=print