"Since the Aug. 8 primary, we paid close attention to the remarks of both men," Luciano said. "We saw Joe Lieberman moving closer and closer to Bush, while Ned Lamont held firm in his strong opposition to the direction Bush is taking us."

Council 4 is a politically active union that represents 35,000 members and is the state's largest affiliate of the AFL-CIO. Lieberman and Lamont each lobbied for the endorsement in recent weeks, aware that Council 4 was revisiting its Senate endorsement. This culminated in personal appeals to union delegates at their New Britain headquarters Friday.

"In the end, our delegates realized that it boiled down to a simple question: Which candidate will stand up to George Bush and Dick Cheney?" Luciano said. "That candidate is Ned Lamont and only Ned Lamont."

HARTFORD, Conn. -- Republican New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg will host a fundraiser for U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman at the mayor's Upper East Side town house, Lieberman's campaign announced Saturday night.

Lieberman, who lost the Democratic primary to Greenwich businessman Ned Lamont, is running for re-election as an independent, a move that has alienated many Democrats.

Dan Gerstein, a spokesman for Lieberman's campaign, said the fundraiser will be held on Nov. 1 and will be co-chaired another Republican, New York Sen. Alfonse D'Amato, and former Democratic Mayor Ed Koch.

He may have arrived late, but Democratic senatorial candidate Ned Lamont impressed the patient crowd and talked with all who stayed after a town hall meeting at Camp Cochipianee Sunday....

"What (Lamont) has been able to do is take the war in Iraq and make it an overriding issue," Kelley said. "It's not just the war per se, but what the war is doing."

Jan Dudek, Sharon, will also be voting for Lamont and said that she is "sick" of what the Bush administration is doing.
"I really like the way (Lamont) speaks honestly about everything," Dudek said....

Dudek was infuriated by Lieberman's support of Bush with regard to the Plan B emergency contraceptive, where women have to go to certain hospitals to get the pill. She said that many people, who live as much as an hour away from the nearest hospital, cannot travel to that hospital.

George Rolfe, a resident of Torrington since 1971, said Lamont's campaign was part of an opportunity to "save America." Rolfe said that Lieberman forgot his constituents when he ran for vice president in 2000.

"I am looking for a representative that is going to fill that title," Rolfe said.

LIEBERMAN LEADS EFFORT TO BLOCK UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE: In the 1990s, Lieberman spearheaded the effort to shut down any congressional debate over health care. On 8/20/94, Knight Ridder newspapers reported that the "dream of guaranteed, cradle-to-grave health insurance for all Americans appeared to be dead Friday" after Lieberman introduced legislation designed to effectively undermine and kill major health reform being debated in the Senate. Since that time, Lieberman has not pushed any serious plan to expand health care to all Americans. This is likely the reason that when Lieberman was campaigning in Arizona during the 2004 Democratic presidential primary, the state’s largest newspaper noted Lieberman "do[es] not favor universal health care." [Knight-Ridder, 8/20/94; Arizona Republic, 1/22/04]