New Haven Independent

Answer One: Lamont, a millionaire cable-company founder, is running a longshot campaign to topple three-term U.S. Sen. Lieberman — from within the Democratic Party. He’s driving anywhere he can find liberal activists or local party regulars to urge them to help him win delegates at the state party convention in May or round up votes in the Aug. 8 primary. It’s a quest resonant of Eugene McCarthy’s campaign against then-President Lyndon Johnson, in which a principled outsider seeks to harness popular outrage over a quagmire of a foreign war to push out a seemingly invulnerable incumbent from his own party. Organizers of this evening’s Killingly event invited party leaders and moveon.org-type activists (some of them fitting into both categories) from 10 surrounding towns in northern Connecticut. You rarely find a U.S. Senate candidates up around this stretch of what’s called the state’s “Little Appalachia.”

Answer Two: Grossman uses the Internet. So does Lamont’s staff. A staffer found Grossman there.

Grossman, 39, lives in the town of Pomfret. He teaches English at UConn and, as he separately made sure to note to both me and Lamont before the night was through, has written nine books. (He’s best known for his work on the Boston Red Sox, he added.) Like the other middle-aged and older folks gathered this evening in the small cafeteria of a brick schoolhouse-turned-community center, Grossman is mad about Joe Lieberman’s support for the Iraq war. He’s mad about President Bush’s illegal eavesdropping on the phone conversations of U.S. citizens. He’s mad about Lieberman imitating Tom DeLay in grandstanding to the Christian right on Terry Schiavo. He’s mad about Bush’s appointment of far right-winger Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court — and Lieberman’s failure to vote against Alito when it counted, on a measure to close debate on the nomination.

At least I think Grossman’s mad about all that. In the echo chamber of righteous Lieberman-bashing in the Killingly Community Center’s basement caf, the outrage melted into one gelatinous mass of grievances. It was difficult, and at some point irrelevant, to try to keep track of who was mad about what.

Grossman vented some of these frustrations one day on a national liberal blog called the Daily Kos. A Lamont staffer read his post, contacted him, told him about the Lamont campaign. The staffer invited Grossman to see Lamont up close at the event at the Killingly Community Center.

The jacket to his charcoal gray suit off, his sleeves rolled up to his elbow, Lamont stood in his loafers by the back exit door and gave voice to Grossman’s and his compatriots’ complaints in an energetic 10-minute spiel. He knew people already agreed with him on the issues. He needed to confirm he stood with them — and give them reason to devote their time to helping him slay a Goliath with a disarming just-folks personality.

Lamont, who’s 52 and the product of inherited wealth, prep schools, Harvard, Yale School of Management, and Greenwich, didn’t match Diner Joe’s backslapping charm on the stump. He didn’t exude warmth. But he did stand around talking to every single person afterwards. And in his talk, he did deliver fire — on the issues. He showed that, like his audience, he’s outraged at the Republican ways of his “Democratic” senator and determined that someone take him on. He also connected with an appeal for Democrats to be Democrats.

Call him Howard Dean Without the Scream. And even though he didn’t scream in Killingly, he at least endorsed the idea of screaming.

“If you’re not screaming from the rafters that this is wrong,” he told the crowd in reference to the Iraq war and neglected priorities at home, “you’re part of the problem.”

A listener noted that some party leaders have rallied people around Lieberman by warning that Democrats could lose a crucial Senate seat if Lamont wins a primary.

“We’re a blue state,” Lamont responded. “You’re not going to lose a senator. You’re going to gain a Democrat.”

The small cafeteria erupted in applause. OK, not erupted. But, yes, you could definitely hear it.

“Put that in your ads!” one woman called out.

Others questioned Lamont about criticism that he’s a one-issue candidate focused on the Iraq war.

On the one hand, Lamont noted his strong differences with Lieberman on universal health care (Lamont’s for it; Lieberman has hindered it); tax cuts (Lamont opposes cuts geared to the rich which Lieberman has supported); domestic spying; and the right to dissent. (Lieberman’s Wall Street Journal article casting aspersions on the loyalty of Bush’s critics provided the final push for Lamont to run.)

On the other hand, Lamont argued that those issues — as well as neglected domestic needs like transportation, development of alternative energy sources — are linked to the Iraq war.

“At $250 million a day,” Lamont said, “Iraq is sucking a lot of energy out of the political debate.

“The people who got us into this mess should be held accountable. It’s high time Iraqis take control of their own destiny. We’re just getting in the way.”

A New World

Lamont didn’t pander, though. He didn’t give Leigh Grossman the precise answer he was looking for on eavesdropping, for instance.

Grossman asked Lamont if electronic eavesdropping by the federal government is necessary at all. Yes, Lamont said. His beef with Bush is that Bush has done it illegally, with contempt for safeguards meant to protect people’s privacy rights.

“I’m afraid in this world we are going to have to have a higher level of intelligence,” Lamont said. “But darn it, the president is not going to have that authority” to make decisions about intelligence without checks and balances.

Grossman begged to differ. “In the middle of the Cold War with nuclear weapons staring at both sides, we didn’t need to do this,” he said. “How have we all bought into this idea that this is a more dangerous world?”

Because, Lamont responded, it’s now easier for smaller groups of people, independent of states, to obtain weapons of mass destruction. “It doesn’t mean you throw out the Constitution,” he added. “It doesn’t mean you sacrifice what this country is all about.”

You could look at a long night’s journey into the middle of nowhere to meet 16 people as a discouraging sign for a campaign to overtake Joe Lieberman.

Too Engaged to Nosh

But you could also find hopeful signs in the evening. Like the trays of sliced pineapple and crudite and brownies and Fritos at the back of the room. As the evening wound down, hardly anyone picked at the food (beyond a stray web reporter with a professional antenna for free dinner). People were more interested in lining up to talk to Lamont. And he stuck around to listen.

This is the early stage of the campaign, the time to ignite sparks among an activist core, not yet the time to bring out hundreds or thousands of people to rallies or the polls.

“I’m impressed,” said Tim McNally, 62 year-old chairman of Pomfret’s Democratic Town Committee, the kind of person Lamont needs to spread the word to fellow local party leaders responsible for turning out voters and choosing convention delegates. “He’s got serious answers beyond talking about Iraq. He’s a serious candidate — not just an antiwar candidate, which I was afraid of before coming her. He has more than one string on the guitar.”

And then there was Grossman. After hearing Lamont, he said he would probably volunteer for the campaign. That was probably the night’s most promising sign for the fledgling Lamont express. Not because one more volunteer enlisted. (It’ll take a lot more Grossmans and McNallys to mount a serious challenge.) But because of what it said about the campaign’s tactics.

Lamont made his money figuring out the future of technology, first at Cablevision, then developing closed-circuit TV systems for colleges and gated communities through his company Lamont Digital Systems. In the car ride to Killingly, I listened to his end of a conference call about the use of technology and media in this campaign. While none of it was original, it certainly bespoke a comfort and sophistication with the changing playing field of political competition. (I agreed not to report on the specifics.)

Similarly, the staffer who spotted Grossman on the Daily Kos exhibited a savvy about modern-day campaigns reminiscent of the early, heady days of the Dean for President drive. The web site is solid, too, and it’s drawing volunteers and cash from around the country among Dean-style Dems.

Add that to the money Lamont can afford to throw into his campaign, and it’s clear that, while his quest is a longshot, it’s also hard-headed and credible. Or at least worth the time of antiwar activists and liberal party volunteers from places like Killingly.