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By Susan Page, USA TODAY
Six years after he was cheered as the Democrats' choice for vice president, Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman on Tuesday was denied his party's nomination for a fourth term in a bitter primary challenge that turned into a referendum on the Iraq war.
ANALYSIS: Lieberman weakened from start
Challenger Ned Lamont, 52, a millionaire businessman who was unknown to nine of 10 Democrats in the state just three months ago, tapped anti-war sentiment and the support of liberal Internet bloggers to unseat one of the nation's most prominent Democrats.
However, Lieberman vowed to run as an independent against Lamont in the general election.
"I am, of course, disappointed by the results, but I am not discouraged," Lieberman told supporters as he conceded at a Hartford hotel just after 11 p.m. He said "the old politics of political partisanship won today" and declared: "For the sake of our state, our country and my party, I cannot and will not let that result go unchallenged."
A few minutes later in Meriden, Lamont decried that U.S. troops were "stuck in a civil war in Iraq" and said it was "high time we bring them home to a hero's welcome." The crowd chanted: "Bring them home."
Lamont's margin of victory — a lead of about 10,000 votes — was a bit narrower than predicted by statewide polls over the past week.
In a final dispute, Lieberman accused Lamont's supporters of crashing his campaign website on Tuesday and demanded a criminal investigation by state and federal authorities. The senator said he didn't have proof who was responsible but said it was safe to assume that "it wasn't any casual observer."
Lamont denied his campaign was involved and called the accusation "another scurrilous charge."
Lieberman's ouster was a sign of the Democratic voters' anger over the war and their impatience with elected officials who haven't confronted Bush with what they see as sufficient force.
In the past half-century, the only other such prominent senator to lose his party's nomination was J. William Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a leading critic of the Vietnam War. He was defeated in the 1974 Arkansas Democratic primary by then-governor Dale Bumpers.
Posted 8/9/2006 12:15 AM ET
Updated 8/9/2006 12:35 AM ET
Six years after he was cheered as the Democrats' choice for vice president, Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman on Tuesday was denied his party's nomination for a fourth term in a bitter primary challenge that turned into a referendum on the Iraq war.
ANALYSIS: Lieberman weakened from start
Challenger Ned Lamont, 52, a millionaire businessman who was unknown to nine of 10 Democrats in the state just three months ago, tapped anti-war sentiment and the support of liberal Internet bloggers to unseat one of the nation's most prominent Democrats.
However, Lieberman vowed to run as an independent against Lamont in the general election.
"I am, of course, disappointed by the results, but I am not discouraged," Lieberman told supporters as he conceded at a Hartford hotel just after 11 p.m. He said "the old politics of political partisanship won today" and declared: "For the sake of our state, our country and my party, I cannot and will not let that result go unchallenged."
A few minutes later in Meriden, Lamont decried that U.S. troops were "stuck in a civil war in Iraq" and said it was "high time we bring them home to a hero's welcome." The crowd chanted: "Bring them home."
Lamont's margin of victory — a lead of about 10,000 votes — was a bit narrower than predicted by statewide polls over the past week.
In a final dispute, Lieberman accused Lamont's supporters of crashing his campaign website on Tuesday and demanded a criminal investigation by state and federal authorities. The senator said he didn't have proof who was responsible but said it was safe to assume that "it wasn't any casual observer."
Lamont denied his campaign was involved and called the accusation "another scurrilous charge."
Lieberman's ouster was a sign of the Democratic voters' anger over the war and their impatience with elected officials who haven't confronted Bush with what they see as sufficient force.
In the past half-century, the only other such prominent senator to lose his party's nomination was J. William Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a leading critic of the Vietnam War. He was defeated in the 1974 Arkansas Democratic primary by then-governor Dale Bumpers.
Posted 8/9/2006 12:15 AM ET
Updated 8/9/2006 12:35 AM ET
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