Conducted by Christopher Gombeski

Ned Lamont is the founder of Lamont Digital Systems, a company that serves over 150 campuses across the country with foreign language, distance learning and cable television services. He is a graduate of both Harvard and the Yale School of Management and a former newspaper editor.  In 2006, Lamont defeated incumbent Senator Joseph Lieberman in the Connecticut state Democratic primary.  Following his loss in the general election, Lamont has served as a fellow at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics in Spring 2007, and currently serves as a board member at the Progressive States Network. He is in the process of setting up a policy center at Central Connecticut State University to work on state issues such as healthcare, education, transportation, and tax reform.

At the YearlyKos convention in Chicago this past August, you led a panel on the lessons learned from your campaign. What can political observers take away from your campaign—its primary and in the general election phases?

I think the main lesson learned from our campaign is that when you’re a first-time candidate, you have to define yourself. During the primary, those voters who hadn’t met me I went and met. Having the ability to do that gives you the chance to break through stereotypes. I think that was very helpful. Now, in the general election, all of a sudden, you have ten times as many people to meet, and you’ve got one-fifth the time to do it. There, you’ve got a lot less chance to meet everybody and make your case, and then TV and the press become a lot more important. There, I made the mistake of letting the Lieberman campaign define me.

New York University Professor Clay Shirky has called you the last of your kind, meaning the last net-savvy candidate to square off against a non-net-savvy candidate. Do you think every candidate—incumbents included—has gotten the notice?

I think that the online community is very important and was particularly important in our race for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, the establishment dismissed us out of hand at the beginning. The Hartford Courant ran a big cartoon featuring some ingenue wearing a “Ned who?” button. The rest of the mainstream media, the major unions, the major businesses—they all were lining up behind the incumbent. You may remember that I was the first candidate in history opposed by Bill Clinton, Karl Rove, the Chamber of Commerce, and the AFL-CIO.

The online community did not line up behind the incumbent but was willing to take a look at me. They give challengers like me an opportunity. Over time the Hartford Courant, The New Haven Register, and WFSB television news picked up once we got momentum, but the online community helped us pick up that momentum. The other thing the online community does is fact-check. They challenge you; they say, this is inaccurate or this is misrepresentative, or this is different from what you said a week ago Thursday. You may be talking to the converted—online people talking to online people—but the mainstream media like the Hartford Courant and New York Times start reading these commentaries online, and they slowly begin to filter into the mainstream press.

Many commentators have sized up your support among Connecticut voters and still argue that the movement behind you can more rightly be regarded as forming in opposition to Senator Lieberman rather than truly in support of you. How do you respond to those who say you failed to exercise positive leadership?

I’d say that was true at the beginning of the campaign but not at the end. In the beginning, one of the first headlines I saw on a blog was along the lines of ‘I don’t know a damn thing about Ned Lamont, but I know a lot about Joe Lieberman, so I’ll listen to what Lamont has to say.’ So, definitely being opposed to key policies Senator Lieberman had so vigorously espoused got me in the door. Once you get in the door, though, you have to earn the votes. You have to stand up there and make your case. You have to have a positive vision. You have to say what you want to do, and you have to take the questions. There are a lot of people who have just said, ‘No,’ and I made a big point of saying, ‘Yes.’ We were very specific on health care and jobs and education and what we would do in the Middle East.

Your campaign manager, Tom Swan, delivered some criticisms of leading Democrats for their lack of support in the run-up to the election, including Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. How do you think you were treated by top Democrats?

I’d say during the primary I was Kryptonite, and nobody would touch us with a ten-foot pole. They not so quietly supported the incumbent, even though most Democrats were slowly coming into opposition against the war. After we won the primary, the response was mixed. There were an awful lot of Democrats—national Democrats, Washington Democrats—who didn’t care whether it was Lamont or Lieberman; they just wanted to make sure the seat was safely Democratic. Many of them finally sided with Joe Lieberman. We also had some who were strongly supportive of us. I’d say it was mixed.

You’ve expressed support in the past for Senator Chris Dodd’s presidential campaign. Are you still impressed with his chances? And is there any other contender you would support in the 2008 election?

His chances, no; his passion, his energy, his position on the issues, yes. I think unlike in 1988, where they called our candidates in the race “the Seven Dwarves” and some of them didn’t seem to have the executive gravitas necessary to be president of the United States, when you look at Hillary and Barack and most of the leaders, I think people know that they would be strong as president and take this country in a new direction. They are actually very comfortable with the Democratic candidates.

General Petraeus has recommended a reduction in troop levels in Iraq because, in President Bush’s words, “We have now reached the point where we can maintain our security gains with fewer American forces.” As an outspoken opponent of “the surge,” are you satisfied with the pullout?

No. The pullout has nothing to do with success or lack of success on the ground. The so-called pullout is simply due to the fact that we don’t have the troops necessary to maintain the surge. We’ve got to pull back to a level of troops that the military itself says it can sustain.

You’ve declared, “There is no military solution to the situation in Iraq.” What can be done to remedy the turmoil in Iraq while still fulfilling what you have termed our “human, strategic, and political obligation to the people of Iraq”?

I would go back to the recommendations of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group. I would put diplomacy and political jawboning front-and-center. I’d work with other countries in the region, including Iran and Syria, without preconditions, which is just what former Secretary of State Jim Baker has advocated. You’re not going to pull the troops out precipitously from Iraq. If we are going to change our mission in Iraq, we should do that soon. It’s likely we’ll need to play a continued anti-terrorist role, but our frontline combat has got to come to an end.

According to a poll from the independent pollster Research 2000, you would beat Senator Lieberman by a margin of 48 to 40 percent if you faced him today in a rematch. Do you think this hypothetical represents primarily a referendum on the war and the administration’s handling of it?

I think that independent poll reflects a lot. During the campaign, Senator Lieberman pledged significant troop reductions by the end of 2006. He said during the debates, “Nobody wants to end the war more than I do.” And then soon after the election the Senator was calling for escalation. I think that a fair number of people in Connecticut took a second look. I think it was probably bigger than the war. There’s just a sense that we’ve got some big issues confronting the country, and the incumbent class in Congress is not ready to step up. Congress as a whole, if you look at the polls, is looked on with some disfavor. I think people are clamoring for a fresh start and some new blood.

Tom Swan has vowed that “Connecticut has not heard the last of Ned Lamont.” What’s in store for you in the future?

Time will tell. I’m teaching a course at the Yale School of Management in a few weeks. If you had told me three years ago that I’d be taking on a three-term incumbent, I’d have suggested you go see a shrink. Races for public office are important. They’re a bully pulpit where you can bring issues to the table and push the political dialogue. If I had another opportunity to run, I’d take a hard look at it.

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