Major State Union Switches To Lamont

September 18, 2006

By MARK PAZNIOKAS, Courant Staff Writer

One of the state’s largest labor unions has dropped its endorsement of U.S. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman and switched its support to Democratic primary winner Ned Lamont.

The switch by Council 4 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees gives Lamont his biggest boost from organized labor since the primary.

Sal Luciano, the executive director of Council 4, announced the endorsement Sunday, saying that the union wants to see a congressional delegation able to stand up to the Bush administration.

“Since the Aug. 8 primary, we paid close attention to the remarks of both men,” Luciano said. “We saw Joe Lieberman moving closer and closer to Bush, while Ned Lamont held firm in his strong opposition to the direction Bush is taking us.”

Council 4 is a politically active union that represents 35,000 members and is the state’s largest affiliate of the AFL-CIO. Lieberman and Lamont each lobbied for the endorsement in recent weeks, aware that Council 4 was revisiting its Senate endorsement. This culminated in personal appeals to union delegates at their New Britain headquarters Friday.

“In the end, our delegates realized that it boiled down to a simple question: Which candidate will stand up to George Bush and Dick Cheney?” Luciano said. “That candidate is Ned Lamont and only Ned Lamont.”

Luciano said the decision was not easy, given Lieberman’s “distinguished years of public service.”

“This is great news for the Lamont campaign for Senate,” said Tom Swan, Lamont’s campaign manager. “It shows Lamont continuing to gain support while Lieberman continues to lose support.”

Lieberman press secretary Tammy Sun said, “We are disappointed and had hoped for a different decision, but realize party politics played a big role in the outcome.”

“We’re grateful that over a dozen other labor unions withstood the political pressure, put people ahead of politics, and re-endorsed Joe Lieberman based on his outstanding record of results for Connecticut’s working families,” she said.

Lamont has won other significant labor endorsements since the primary, most notably by the Service Employees International Union and the United Auto Workers. Those unions had made no endorsement in the primary.

Contact Mark Pazniokas at mpazniokas@courant.com.

Copyright © 2006 by The Hartford Courant

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Jimmy Carter on Joe Lieberman

Joe Lieberman Misses Key Votes in The Senate

Today News Reports from many Newspapers and Tv talked about the lastest problems Senator Joe Lieberman has.

He missed 31 of 61 votes in the U.S. Senate and most recently did not vote on new resolutions regarding our involvement in Iraq.

SenatorWatch finds this unacceptable for a 3 term Senator who is elected to represent the voters who put him in office.

Its time in our view for Senator Joe Lieberman to step down now.

His campaign people and Joe say Ned Lamont is being negative when in fact he is telling the voters the truth on Liebermans no show on key votes in the Senate.

So Senator Lieberman its SenatorWatch's opinion that you need to be honest with the voters and stop the continued negativity in your campaign that your spokesperson says is coming from The Lamont team.

The truth is your on the attack with Negatives because you cannot deal with the issues and the fact that the voters want our leaders in the Senate to vote to bring the troops home now.

You are showing how out of touch you are with Connecticut voters now and this latest news makes it worse.

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