ASHINGTON - The senator in charge of getting Democrats elected to the Senate said yesterday that Senator Joseph I. Lieberman should quit his reelection campaign and deny Connecticut's Republican governor the chance to fill Lieberman's seat if he wins the vice presidency.
Senator Robert Torricelli of New Jersey, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, made his comment on NBC's ''Meet the Press.''
Connecticut Democrats nominated Lieberman at their state convention July 14, three weeks before Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore chose him as his running mate. Lieberman said yesterday that replacing him by committee now would cause ''a lot of chaos'' for the party. He added, ''The US Senate seat is too important to be filled on the run.''
In his television appearance Torricelli said: ''If indeed the prospects of the Gore ticket get better and better as the weeks go by, which I think they will, and [Lieberman] sees the real prospect of a Democratic majority in the Senate, which I think will become clearer, then Joe Lieberman has to make a personal decision. ... I trust Joe Lieberman to make the right decision.''
Asked whether that decision would be to get out of the Senate race, Torricelli said, ''Well, it would from my perspective.''
He said Attorney General Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut ''would clearly win the seat'' if the state party's Central Committee named him to replace Lieberman even as late as Oct. 27, the last day for Lieberman to quit.
Contacted at his Greenwich, Conn., home, Blumenthal said he does not expect Lieberman to abandon the race. ''I think he has made the absolutely right decision - to stay in the Senate race - and will continue to do so,'' Blumenthal said.
If Lieberman should stay in the race and then win the vice presidency, state law would allow Governor John Rowland, a Republican, to appoint his replacement until 2002.
