onnecticut Democrats are looking to US Senator Joseph Lieberman for a political hat trick next week: winning the vice presidency, winning his Senate seat, and helping two vulnerable Democratic congressmen keep their jobs.
Lieberman is the central presence in the Connecticut elections this year. He's also a virtual shoo-in for the Senate: His only opponent is Philip Giordano, the mayor of Waterbury, who has raised so little money that he ran his first campaign ad on network television only last weekend.
Voters' only uncertainty, it seems, is whether Lieberman should be in that race at all. A statewide poll by Quinnipiac College showed a nearly even split on the question, with 46 percent saying he should have withdrawn after being nominated for vice president, and 45 approving his decision to stay in the Senate race.
For Democrats, a Lieberman Senate win poses one big risk: Under state law, if he wins both the Senate race and the vice presidency, his successor will be appointed by Governor John G. Rowland, a Republican. The successor would serve until the next statewide election in 2002.
Aides to Lieberman downplayed that concern, saying if he wins a Senate seat he cannot occupy, the Democrat-controlled Legislature will call for a special election next year.
Meanwhile, the senator remains a looming presence in other Connecticut races.
With Senator Christopher Dodd, a Democrat, and Rowland not running, attention has shifted to the races for the US House of Representatives, where two Democratic incumbents are in especially tight races: Jim Maloney, whose district covers south-central Connecticut, and Sam Gejdenson, representing most of the eastern part of the state.
Maloney faces Mark Nielson, a former Republican state senator, in a rematch of a 1998 race Maloney won by a whisker - just 2,300 out of 157,000 votes cast. Their race this year is on a pace to be the most expensive in Connecicut history. Lieberman and President Clinton have campaigned by Maloney's side, and the Democrat holds an edge in polls.
Gejdenson, 52, a 10-term congressman whose races are almost always close, is facing one of his toughest challenges ever from Robert Simmons, a conservative Republican state representative who has sought to cast the incumbent as a Washington insider out of touch with voters.
In a recent debate, Gejdenson, the dean of the state's congressional delegation, disputed Simmons's charge that he lives in Branford, outside his district. He portrayed Simmons as a right-wing extremist.
Both national parties are pouring money and effort into the race. US Senator John McCain will campaign with Simmons Friday. Gejdenson has had support from Lieberman and former senator Bill Bradley.
Also on the Connecticut ballot, one referendum is drawing attention: a bid to abolish the state's 300-year-old system of elected county sheriffs. Critics of the current system, including Rowland, say that it is corrupt, driven by political patronage and no longer needed.
The issue has been hard fought, with Hartford County Sheriff Walter Kupchunos last week accusing the reformers of spreading falsehoods and rumors about sheriffs.
