l Gore's choice of Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman as his running mate was an inspired pick, but there is one fly in the ointment: Lieberman has been running for reelection to his Senate seat and has refused to give up that race while he is filling the bottom half of the Democratic presidential ticket.
State law in Connecticut allows this, just as Texas law permitted Lyndon Johnson to do the same thing in 1960 and Lloyd Bentsen to do it in 1988. But just because something is legal does not mean it is a good idea, and Lieberman's twofer raises the realistic possibility that Connecticut voters will end up with a senator they didn't vote for. Lieberman should give up the Senate race now, while there is still time for the Democratic state committee to convene and pick a new candidate for a very short campaign.
If the Gore-Lieberman ticket wins in November and Lieberman is sent back to the Senate by Connecticut voters, he would resign his seat and it would be up to Connecticut Governor John Rowland to choose a successor, almost certainly a fellow Republican. Under state law, the seat would be up for election again in 2002.
Lieberman is an immensely popular politician in Connecticut, and all polls indicate his race against the Republican mayor of Waterbury, Philip Giordano, will be a landslide. But despite Lieberman's high rating, a Quinnipiac College poll shows that voters split down the middle on the subject of whether he should pull out of the Senate race.
Lieberman says he is staying in the Senate race because by the time he was picked by Gore in August it was too late for Connecticut Democrats to hold a primary to pick a new nominee. While that is true, the senator leaves himself open to the suspicion that one factor in his decision-making is his concern that if he quits the Senate race and he and Gore lose to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney he would be jobless in January.
It would certainly be a statement of confidence in his ticket's chances if Lieberman were now to give up the Senate run. The longer he waits before the Oct. 27 deadline for action, the less chance his party will have to agree on a fill-in and mount a respectable race. One likely choice is state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal.
Lieberman is being urged to withdraw from the Senate race by Democrats who fear they may lose the chance to regain a Democratic Senate majority if Rowland picks a Republican after a Gore-Lieberman victory. Whatever weight that carries, the crucial fact for Lieberman is that his insistence on running in two places at once could take the ballot for Senate right out of the voters' hands.
