Lamont Financial Problems?

Ned Lamont has had to dig into his own pocket for another half a million bucks. This comes about a week after his last transfusion of 3/4 of a million a week or so ago. It would appear that Lamont is having a bit of trouble getting contributions.

Greenwich Democrat Ned Lamont on Monday invested $500,000 more in his campaign to unseat U.S. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, bringing the cable company executive's total contribution since last winter to $6.75 million.

Lamont's campaign spokeswoman, Liz Dupont-Diehl, said the candidate's latest personal contribution - which came on the heels of a $750,000 contribution he made only a week earlier - was intended to "equalize spending in a race where his opponent outspent him nearly two-to-one in recent weeks on television advertising."

"Ned is not going to let Senator Lieberman's negative allegations go unanswered," she said.

Meanwhile, nationally syndicated columnist Robert Novak reported last weekend that a Lieberman campaign fundraiser held last week in Washington, D.C., shows that President Bush has "moved a step closer" to Lieberman's re-election bid.

A Lieberman campaign spokeswoman, Tammy Sun, had told the Journal Inquirer that the fundraiser - which she said netted the three-term incumbent $400,000 - was organized by the campaign itself and had no prominent sponsors. 

Novak's column is actually pretty misleading from the sound of it, or is being interpreted pretty badly. The people involved here are lobbyists. Contributing money to campaigns is, like it or not, what they do for a living. To try and say they are close to the Bush camp is pretty disingenuous. Of course they contribute to the party in office.
But Novak says its sponsors included Tom Kuhn, a close friend and college roommate of Bush, and Rick Shelby, a longtime Republican operative and executive, "who pressed fellow Republican lobbyists to pay a minimum of $1,000 a ticket."

Kuhn, the president of the Edison Electric Institute, an association of U.S. shareholder-owned electric companies, raised more than $100,000 for Bush in 2000 and 2004, according to Novak.

Shelby is executive vice president for public affairs at the American Gas Association, which represents 197 energy utility companies.

A top Lieberman campaign aide, Dan Gerstein, said today that he didn't know whether Novak was correct to identify Kuhn and Shelby as sponsors of the fundraiser.

"I don't know the terminology," he added, noting that certain individuals often are described as members of a "host committee" on invitations to such events.
Gerstein referred questions about the fundraiser to Sun, who stood by her previous statement.

"Novak is incorrect," she said. "There were no hosts, no sponsors or co-sponsors, no host committee, no names on the invitations. Everybody came as a guest, and it was a very bipartisan crowd with a lot of Democrats there as well as Republicans."

Both of those lobbying groups have been around for a long, long time. Both give out money to either party. They do so all the time. That they are contributing means that they think they have spotted the winner of the race. Judging from Lamont's financial woes, they probably have.
UPDATE: Financial woes will get worse as this momentum continues.

categories Politics | Gaius Thursday, 5 October , 2006

  • By Joab, Thursday, 5 October , 2006 @ 5:56 am

    I’m sure there will be those willing to help Neddy out once the election is over and he’s lost. You know, help setting up a “charitable trust” ala Bill Clinton, or speaking engagements for a six-figure amount, etc. Never mind that the guys loaded to begin with.

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