Lamont Scrambles His Jets

Who’s that candidate on your television screen?  Linda McMahon? Tom Foley? No, it’s one of the other Greenwich millionaires, Ned Lamont, Democrat running for governor.  The 2006 Democratic Senate nominee will soon hit the airwaves with expensive 60 second ads touting this year’s bid for statewide office.

Lamont, who got a late start in the race, needs to gin up his game in the competition for delegate support at the May 21st-22nd Democratic state convention.  It’s one thing to be an insurgent against Iraq war-supporting Senator Joe Lieberman.  (There are still over 100,000 troops in Iraq, how come Ned, Joe Courtney and Chris Murphy are not still railing against that?) The contrast isn’t as vivid in a race for governor against Stamford’s Dan Malloy, who’s been working the party trenches for years.

Lamont, who supported public financing of elections before he didn’t, has a decisive money advantage until Malloy reaches the $250,000 threshold and the state convention.  It may be the scion’s only effective weapon in the long tussle over delegates in a ho0hum campaign.  This race is generating none of the heat that the 2006 epic struggle against Lieberman featured.  Lamont was the vessel for a determined movement then.  He’s not this year.  Winning delegates is a grind and some important corners of activist support 4 years ago have slipped away.

Delegates can have malleable notions of what it means to be committed, so conventions are fertile ground for stampedes.  If Lamont does no better (or even worse) than he did at the electrifying 2006 convention, he’ll be deflated.  Rich, but wounded in a dreary campaign.  So Lamont will start pressing his advantage in a day or two with a barrage of ads that show delegates he’ll spend and try to tamp down those worrisome unfavorable ratings left over from Lieberman’s fall 2006 slice and dice.  The independent Democrat showed no mercy as he clawed his way back into the Senate for a 4th term.

The Rasmussen poll showing a surging Republican Tom Foley blowing past Lamont also needs to be addressed, so it’s good news indeed for the state’s television stations and cable franchises.  Ads and bonuses for everyone, Ned’s writing checks again!