The senator ducked a question about the Lamont campaign’s complaint to the Federal Election Commission about more than $387,000 in petty cash spent during the primary, and following a report in The New Haven Register that some Lieberman workers said they had been paid twice as much as the campaign reported to the FEC.

“Well, I decided a long time ago in my political career that I couldn’t be both campaign manager and the candidate,” Lieberman said. “So, I’m the candidate.”

And Mr. Lamont filed a second complaint with the Federal Election Commission about how the Lieberman campaign accounted for an unusually high $387,000 in petty cash spending.

His campaign continued to call on Mr. Lieberman to account for his petty cash primary spending after an article in The New Haven Register raised new questions about whether Mr. Lieberman properly reported payments to canvassers last summer.

The campaign has declined to release details of its petty cash spending, which federal rules require to be disbursed in amounts of less than $100.

The Register article said several of Mr. Lieberman’s canvassers collected more than $200 each, a threshold that requires itemization in public reports. Two consultants employed by the senator also told The Register that they got only half the payments Mr. Lieberman listed, in his last campaign finance statement, as going to them.

As the Iraq fiasco deepens and change swirls across the country, U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman campaigns on, convinced that we won't notice.

In Southington, I listened with fascination and incredulity as Lieberman explained Iraq to a chamber of commerce breakfast.

There was no mention of the much-hyped weapons of mass destruction. The reason for war was to take out Saddam Hussein.

"We went in to liberate them from him and to liberate us from him," Lieberman told the crowd.

If that's the case, what are we doing now? Bipartisan Joe should pay attention to what a truly great Republican, U.S. Sen. George Aiken of Vermont, once said about ending the Vietnam War: "Declare victory and go home."

No, Lieberman said, we should stay until the Iraqis "take over their own security so we can leave." This is Nixon's "Vietnamization" all over....

"The political shots taken here at home endanger those on a real battlefield," Lieberman told Hartford senior citizens at a press conference to introduce a "Hee Haw" radio jingle. He's even giving us a lovable dog in his "closing argument" television commercial.

It's a sweet and phony diversion from reality. The election isn't about bipartisanship or slobbering dogs. It's about the biggest question of our day, a costly, botched war. Lieberman would have you believe that questioning his role in this colossal squander is "partisan" - or worse.

There was no empty chair, like the one Stephen Colbert left for Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman on the set of "The Colbert Report" last summer, when Lieberman steadfastly refused to appear on his satirical news show.

There was no life-size cutout of Lieberman, like the one that Phil Giordano debated on the stage of a nearly empty Garde Arts Center one memorable night in 2000, when Lieberman refused to acknowledge the candidacy of Giordano, a Waterbury mayor and future federal felon....

Only 2 minutes and 25 seconds elapsed before Lamont needled their absent opponent, Lieberman, who is running as a petitioning candidate after losing the Democratic primary.

"Alan, I'm happy to see that you're here," Lamont said. "In the interest of bipartisanship, we've got the Republican and Democratic nominee, reaching across the aisle. I wish that Sen. Lieberman was here as well to answer the questions of the people of Connecticut."...

The show segued to a tongue-in-cheek commercial reminding voters that they will have to look hard to find Lieberman on the ballot. It seemed to be a comment on his absence at the debate.

"Go, find him! Find Lieberman! Find Lieberman, boy," a voter says in the ad, leading a bloodhound. "Find him, boy. Go find Joe."

Senator Lieberman’s rejection by his party in 2004 foreshadowed his stunning loss in August to Ned Lamont, a little-known businessman with an antiwar message. And, some friends and advisers say, that earlier rejection played a role in Mr. Lieberman’s decision to run for re-election on his own party line; it freed him to do and say exactly what he felt.

“I think that was kind of a defining moment,” said Edward L. Marcus, a former chairman of the Connecticut Democratic Party who remains a Lieberman friend and supporter. “The whole experience made it clear to him that he was not being rejected by the voters, he was being rejected by a wing of the party that he just could not hope to appease.”...

“I think it was his sense that it was Job-like, that he had to go through it,” Mr. Eskew recalled. “It was probably a combination of things — one, the practical suggestion that he needed to say to people: ‘I didn’t leave you, you left me. I didn’t give up on you.’ To his credit, he did run in the primary. And, to his credit, he didn’t trim his sails.”