Ned Lamont: Son of Privilege Takes Baby Steps on Political Proving Ground

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: A Son of Privilege Takes His Baby Steps on the Political Proving Ground
By SARAH KERSHAW and ALISON LEIGH COWAN
Published: November 1, 2006


Fund-raiser: Ned Lamont and his wife, Ann, joined other Democratic contributors in Greenwich with the candidate Bill Clinton in 1992.

HARTFORD — He seemed to sprout from nowhere to topple the establishment. In his stunning upset in the August Senate primary, he defeated a three-term incumbent and turned Connecticut politics upside down. He instantly became a favorite of the left-leaning blogosphere and his own political brand, with “Ned Lamont Democrat” surfacing on television programs and the Web as code for antiwar outsider.

But since that heady and sudden rise, Mr. Lamont’s political star has fallen, as the cable television executive from old money and a cocoon of privilege has faced the cold reality of a more conventional general election campaign, with more fickle voters and a formidable opposition.

The Connecticut race has been eclipsed by the frenzy of national Congressional elections. And Mr. Lamont, a relative neophyte whose previous foray into politics consisted of eight years on three local and state boards and a failed bid for State Senate, has struggled amid a brute force response from a seasoned candidate, trailing in the public opinion polls for weeks.

The antiwar message that won him the primary has not been, alone, enough of a selling point to the much wider audience of more moderate, less-motivated fall voters, and Mr. Lamont’s efforts to broaden his issues portfolio only muddled the differences between him and Senator Joseph I. Lieberman.

The man whose campaign was run out of a coffee shop in Hartford for the first several months lacks Mr. Lieberman’s polished prime-time campaign persona; he is far more comfortable at a town committee meeting in the country than on television repeating talking points....

***

While Mr. Lamont’s arrival on the political scene is often portrayed as a last-minute, spontaneous protest over foreign policy, he in many ways has been preparing for this moment for a long time. Raised in a well-connected family where politics was discussed at dinner and schooled in the nation’s training grounds for power, he has been flirting with the possibilities of major public office for at least the past decade....

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/01/nyregion/01lamont.html

[JI7]

1. "Son of Privilege"

will the whore media ever refer to Bush as such ?

[beltanefauve]

2. Ugh!

What a piece of shit smear story this is! This belongs on the editorial pages, because that's exactly what the authors are doing: editorializing. This has nothing to do with facts, and everything to do with their opinions of Ned Lamont. These people are trying to tell us how to think!