Connecticut’s most consistent maverick, Former Governor Lowell Weicker, is tinkering with running against Senator Joe Lieberman — and it won’t be the first time:
Former Gov. Lowell P. Weicker Jr. on Monday criticized Senator Joseph I. Lieberman’s continued support of the war in Iraq and said that if no candidate challenged the senator on the issue in the 2006 election, he would consider running.
“When you’ve become the president’s best friend on the war in Iraq, you should not be in office, especially if you’re in the opposing party,” Mr. Weicker, 74, said in a phone interview from his home in Essex, Conn. “I’m going to do everything I can to see that Joe Lieberman does not get a free pass.”
He said that Mr. Lieberman, a Democrat, currently had no challengers, either from within his party or from Republicans, in his campaign for a fourth term. Mr. Weicker said he believed that no Republican would challenge Mr. Lieberman on the war.
“If he’s out there scot-free and nobody will do it, I’d have to give serious thought to doing it myself, and I don’t want to do it,” added Mr. Weicker, an independent, who said he had been opposed to the war from the beginning.
In 1988, Mr. Lieberman, a Democrat who was then Connecticut’s attorney general, narrowly defeated Mr. Weicker, then a Republican United States senator, in Mr. Weicker’s bid for re-election. Two years later, Mr. Weicker ran for governor as an independent and won. He served one term before retiring in 1995, but his stature as a maverick political voice in the state has endured. In 1999, Reform Party supporters encouraged Mr. Weicker to run for president in 2000, but after flirting with the idea, he ultimately declined.
Love him or hate him, Weicker is the real thing. And yours truly who is originally from Connecticut loved him during the height of his career.
In 1973, after the Watergate break in, Weicker took a lot of heat within his state and his own party for raising tough questions and demanding answers from the Nixon White House. He was nearly alone in his party on this stance early in the scandal. I was then in journalism school and wrote him a strong letter of support because he seemed that rare individual: someone whose principles trumped his party affiliation. I got an appreciative letter right back.
Weicker upset some members of his own party but still enjoyed an extremely loyal following. As governor he enraged many Republicans (and some Democrats) because of his stance on increased taxes. But when he left, he left with his integrity intact — not quite in the same mode as John McCain in terms of imagery, but definitely someone who had great credibility in terms of his earnestness.
If he runs against Lieberman (who remains highly respected in Connecticut), it’d be the ultimate irony: perhaps if it looks like Weicker is serious about running the rumors swirling around will become reality — and Joe Lieberman will opt to serve in the Bush cabinet as Defense Secretary rather than face a bruising fight in which Lieberman would have to battle the GOP, some Democrats angry over his war stance….and Connecticut’s quintessential independent.