(Note: this piece does not appear online and is in the Connecticut section of today's Times. Overall, a well-done and comprehensive background piece and sure to push Lamont's recognition factor in the state.)

Lieberman Faces a Challenge from the Left

   By C.J. Hughes, New York Times, Sunday February 19, 2006

   From the outside, Ned Lamont's office building looks like many others in downtown Greenwich: non-descript and very corporate.

   Inside, there is a different story.  Surrounding his desk is a lavish tribute to the baby boomer counterculture, with a gallery of photos of cultural heroes like Muhammad Ali, John Lennon, the Rolling Stones and Elvis Presley.

   In many ways, the appearance-versus-reality paradox is an apt metaphor for Mr. Lamont, the founder and president of Lamont Digital Systems, a cable TV company, who has formed an exploratory committee as he considers challenging Senator Joseph I. Lieberman.

   Mr. Lamont, 52, is the product of some of the nation's most elite schools and a resident of one of the state's most buttoned-down towns, a self-made business executive with a pedigree to make Miles Standish blush.

   Yet he is also a mince-no-words, unreconstructed left-of-center liberal who said he strongly believed that Senator Lieberman had drifted far to the right and had become too cozy with the White House, and that when it come to the people who put the senator in office, fallen way of out touch.

The story then mentions Lamont's "eureka" moment,deciding to enter the race, when Senator Lieberman argued for staying the course in Iraq (11/29/2005):

America can't abandon 27 million Iraqis to 10,000 terrorists

You can guess the rest or click that link. Basically it was the last straw for Lamont.

There is also a telling comment from Leslie O'Brien (lobrien@ctdems.org), executive director of the Connecticut Democratic Party:
   

"There are many concerns about this being a distraction of resources and energy away from three competitive House races this year. It's also a distraction from the gubernatorial race."

Gee, I wonder where the sympathies lie there?

Then some complimentary quotes from Lowell Weicker, who Lieberman defeated in 1988, and who had considered running this year before Lamont made his name known.

The family history is an impressive one, and lest anyone think Lamont is just another big business guy trying to make a name for himself think again.

   Making a difference was emphasized from an early age in the Lamont household, which despite its patrician leanings - his great-grandfather Thomas Lamont was chairman of J..P. Morgan, the Wall Street investment bank, and a benefactor of Harvard's Lamont Library - had its fair share of those who subverted the status quo.

   A grandfather, for example, spent his career working on a sailboat in Puerto Rico, eventually marrying a Catholic missionary stationed there.  And great-uncle Corliss Lamont's aren't Socialist beliefs prompted the ire of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy.

Quite a good piece in my opinion.

The full version can be found at Democracy for Connecticut (http://www.democracyforct.net).