A Hartford Democrat who was fined and barred from involvement in absentee ballot activities last year is working for a company hired by Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman's campaign to do voter outreach in the city - including the distribution of absentee ballot applications.

Prenzina Holloway was fined $10,000 in July 2005 and ordered not to distribute absentee ballot applications or to assist voters with the ballots for two years, after the State Elections Enforcement Commission found that she had forged a voter's signature in the 2004 election.

Holloway acknowledges working for Urban Voters and Associates, a company paid $17,550 by the Lieberman campaign since September to do "field work." But she said she isn't involved in the company's absentee ballot operations.

"That is just a no-no," she said. "And I know it is a no-no."

But five people at a Vine Street housing complex for the elderly have told The Courant that Holloway and another person came to their doors to give them absentee ballot applications, and a security worker at another complex on Woodland Street said Holloway tried to get into the building to distribute applications there. Holloway was barred from the building after getting into a verbal altercation with the worker after he made supportive comments about Lieberman's main challenger, Ned Lamont. ...

[Lieberman Campaign manager Sherry] Brown said Urban Voters was hired to help with voter contacts in Hartford, including the distribution of absentee ballot applications.

She said she was under the impression that the company was run by Holloway's daughter, city Councilwoman rJo Winch.

Brown knew Holloway had an elections enforcement issue, but she believed it had been settled. She said the Lieberman campaign did not, however, do any background checks on any company hired to do campaign work..

Mr. Lamont expected to receive a boost to his central campaign theme — that Mr. Lieberman has been too staunch a supporter of the White House’s prosecution of the war — when President Bush singled the senator out for praise in a two-part interview being broadcast this week on the Fox News program “Hannity & Colmes.”

“One man who stood by his decisions is Joe Lieberman,” Mr. Bush said, according to an advance text of the interview. “He understands the consequences. And the Democratic Party ran him out of the party because he stood on principle.”

This week, Mr. Lamont’s aides said, the campaign plans to release an updated version of a commercial it broadcast earlier this year, featuring a boy reading the names of American soldiers killed in Iraq. The new version will include a voiceover by Mr. Lamont arguing that the war’s human toll will continue to rise if Mr. Lieberman is re-elected.

“The Lamont campaign’s effort to re-litigate the decision to go to war is not where most people are now,” Mr. Gerstein, the spokesman for Mr. Lieberman, said. “They want to talk about what you are going to do now. There is a lot of concern about the war not going well, and sectarian violence, and casualties. But at the same time, a lot of people in Connecticut reject Lamont’s solution.”

What are the voters of Connecticut saying if they now re-elect Mr. Lieberman? How can we change course and restore our standing as a great force for justice in the world, escape the Iraq quagmire, begin to direct resources toward crucial issues like the deficit, the environment, Social Security, medical costs and energy independence by voting for Mr. Lieberman?

Lamont, a multimillionaire who has invested nearly $15 million in his own campaign, seemed amused by the endorsement when he spoke to reporters outside a union hall in East Hartford.

"I think Mayor Bloomberg's been a pretty good mayor, but I gotta say Joe doesn't seem to think much of Connecticut millionaires," Lamont said. "And he's got a soft spot for New York City billionaires. That's the difference."...

In East Hartford, Lamont spent an hour with unionized Machinists, a group he needs to help turn out the Democratic base. He is scheduled to greet Machinists today as they leave the Pratt & Whitney plant in Middletown.

Connecticut still has 193,000 manufacturing jobs, but work at Pratt has left the state and, in some cases, the country, giving the impression of an inevitable and continuing industrial decline.

"It's not inevitable. It's because our country is making a lot of bad decisions," Lamont said. "And on Nov. 7, we need to start making some good decisions."

He was frequently interrupted by applause from the crowd of more than 100. Lamont said the U.S. remains a dominant market and should be able to better protect its workers.

Thirty-six PACs have given Lieberman money so far this month, including Boeing, Qwest, the Indoor Tanning Association, Ernst & Young, Deloitte & Touche, Bristol-Myers Squibb, the Bowling Proprietors Association, Air Tran Airways, Citigroup and Mutual of Omaha.

And he continues to attract Republican and conservative money, getting contributions from Joseph diGenova, a well-connected Washington attorney, former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson, former Louisiana Rep. Billy Tauzin, now president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, and Richard Scaife, publisher of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

Lieberman's campaign returned the Scaife contribution. Scaife, an heir to the Mellon fortune, was regarded suspiciously by Democrats in the 1990s when he was said to have helped fund the Arkansas Project, which among other things tried to learn details of President Clinton's extramarital affairs.

The TV ads were simple and generally positive, although he did manage to get in a couple of shots at the "drive-by media" he accused of trying to "hijack the election," as well as a swipe at "limousine liberals."

"We're just trying to get people's attention," Schlesinger said enthusiastically. He said he's counting on people noticing the difference between his positive ads and the tough commercials of Democrat Ned Lamont and Democrat-turned-independent Joe Lieberman.