The Day - Candidates Debate, Crowd Sings

The Day - Candidates Debate, Crowd Sings

Senate debate interrupted by unruly LaRouche supporters

By Ted Mann

New London - Sen. Joe Lieberman was having enough trouble making his position known over the boos. Then came the singing.

In the third and likely final debate of their Senate campaign, Lieberman and his opponents, Democrat Ned Lamont and Republican Alan Schlesinger, were each showered with applause, hissed at in derision, and ultimately delayed, twice, by the singing supporters of a guy who's not even in the race - the perennial presidential also-ran Lyndon LaRouche.

Lieberman, a three-term Democrat who is running as an independent after losing this summer's primary to Lamont, was already being booed by some in the crowd as he answered a question about distorting campaign charges, alleging that Lamont had twisted his record.

The senator raised a finger to his lips to quiet the crowd, when a small clutch of people - who later said they were supporters of LaRouche - stood and began to sing to the senator, over the increasingly angry complaints of the rest of the crowd.

All three candidates, who had been largely exchanging familiar jabs at each others' campaign stances up to that point, seemed stunned.

Lamont, seemingly bewildered, called out to the group to stop, while the debate's moderator - George Stephanopoulos of ABC News - announced that the singing was only detracting from the time allotted the candidates. There was also a second disruption from the group, who passed out LaRouche campaign literature and performed their song (one audible phrases identified Vice President Dick Cheney as a "fat-ass Nazi") for passersby.

Lieberman eventually continued, charging Lamont with distorting his past positions: "No matter how much you distort my record, they're not buying it," he said, referring to the state's voters.

That seemed to get a rise out of Lamont, who has contributed roughly $12 million of his own fortune to his campaign to topple Lieberman, a challenge largely generated by what he has described as Lieberman's unwavering support of the war in Iraq and of the Bush administration's foreign policy.

"Senator, everything we're talking about is your record," Lamont snapped. "You can't run from your record."

That record, Lamont said, also includes a number of domestic issues, including entertaining partial privatization of Social Security, something the senator says he has long disavowed, to vowing not to serve more than three terms in the Senate.

And that charge, in turn, brought a response from Schlesinger, who has trailed far behind in every poll of the race and has used the three debates to both brand Lamont and Lieberman as liberals of a similar sort, and to brush up on his comic relief.

"Now, now, Ned," Schlesinger said. "The senator just simply meant he wanted three terms as a Democrat and three terms as an independent."

Most of the time was spent debating Iraq and the fight against terrorism.

And as in previous exchanges, Lieberman said Lamont's vision for the country was "a recipe for defeat and disaster."

Lamont's retort was just as firm.

When opponents of the Iraq war protest the current policy, Lamont said, "it's Senator Lieberman who questions their motives, suggests they're negative, suggests they're partisan, suggests they're undermining the credibility of the president. ... Joe Lieberman and George Bush's stay-the-course strategy - that's the recipe for failure."

The debate was sponsored by The Day and the Connecticut League of Women Voters and broadcast by WTNH News Channel 8.

t.mann@theday.com

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