John Orman’s chances for winning the Democratic primary for the United States Senate are similar to the Toronto Blue Jays chances of winning the American League East.
He will likely be outspent by as much as a 100 to 1 margin, and Donald Greenberg, his long-time colleague at Fairfield and a supporter of his campaign, says he has “absolutely no chance to win.”
So why in the world is the Fairfield University politics professor, who has never held an elected office and hasn’t run for one in more than two decades, launching a bid to un-seat Sen. Joe Lieberman?
“I want to express my discontent with Joe, get the issues out there, and make Joe come and be a Democrat for a year,” Orman says.
Orman says that in the weeks since he first announced his intention to run for the seat, he has been taken back by the support he has gotten.
Liberal pundits and Internet bloggers, outraged by what they perceive as a disloyalty to the party on behalf of Lieberman, have adopted an “ABJ” approach to the 2006 primary – “Anybody but Joe.” Right now, Orman is that “anybody.”
“People say, ‘well what about [Attorney General] Richard Blumenthal, or what about [Secretary of State] Susan Bysiewicz?'” Orman says. “But those people have a career to think about. I’m just a college professor.”
Without a more prominent Democrat in the running, Orman became an official candidate April 25 when he filed his candidacy with the Federal Election Commission.
He says he has heard from liberal activists who promised to donate money to the “first real Democrat” to challenge Lieberman, and, starting this week, he can accept any and all donations up to $2,000 from each individual.
Orman has developed a reputation for glowing in the spotlight.
He has published and co-authored four books, the latest of which, “Celebrity Politics,” drew over 200 interview requests, nearly all of which Orman granted.
But Greenberg is quick to dismiss the idea that Orman is throwing himself in the national spotlight to make himself a celebrity.
“There may be small gratification to it. But the cost and the hard work is so much greater than any recognition that he’s going to get,” he says. “He believes it’s the right thing to do and he’s going to do it.”
True Treason?
In Orman’s latest press release, he features a chart which compares himself to the senator.
Under the column labeled “Dr. John Orman” reads “strongly opposes the agenda of George W. Bush.” The other side of the chart, under “Senator Joe Lieberman” reads “Republicrat cheerleader for the Bush administration.”
Liberal bloggers, including the architects of “dumpjoe.com” have labeled Lieberman a DINO (Democrat in Name Only) and mockingly refer to the former Democratic vice presidential candidate as “GOP Joe.”
But is there any merit to these claims? Has Lieberman really committed political treason?
A recent article in the Journal Inquirer in Manchester examined Lieberman’s voting record and concluded that he is a main stream Democrat, no more conservative than Sen. Christopher Dodd, his colleague in the Connecticut delegation.
But the unforgivable betrayal, his opponents say, is that he has failed to stand up for key Democratic principles on several issues.
More importantly they say, in the months since President Bush’s re-election, he has gone out of his way to speak in favor of the president and the most conservative members of Congress.
Lieberman was an outspoken supporter of two controversial Bush appointments, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and angered Democrats when he initially said he was willing to work with Republicans on a plan to overhaul the Social Security system.
Says Connecticut Union of College Republicans Executive Director Anthony Genovese, “The Democrats pushed Lieberman into the Republicans’ arms by outcasting him because of his support for the war in Iraq. Now he needs to make a name for himself as a Republican.”
But Genovese, who compares Lieberman to a Democratic version of ultra-popular Republican Senator John McCain, doesn’t stop there.
“I think Joe Lieberman would be a very attractive choice to be the vice presidential nominee on a Republican ticket,” he says.
Lieberman’s opponents agree, saying he is no longer on the left side of the aisle, but sitting smack dab in the middle of it.
While not all Republicans are as quick as Genovese to take Lieberman in as their own, the latest Quinnipiac University poll shows that the senator has a higher approval rating among Connecticut Republicans (72 percent) than he does among Democrats (66 percent).
Longest of long-shots?
Orman himself acknowledges that winning the race is highly unlikely. He is content with the secondary goal of further igniting the debate over the party’s mission, and of holding Lieberman accountable to the people who put him in power.
But the professor said that he would not be “wasting his time” if he had no chance at all to win. So is there a remote possibility that he could pull off the upset?
A first glance through history shows that the odds are stacked thickly against him.
It has been more than a decade since a sitting senator (Illinois’ Alan Dixon) lost his seat to a challenger from within his own party (Carole Mosely Braun), and Dixon never won the popular vote to be the vice president of the United States, as Lieberman did in 2000.
Moreover, while Braun had been an enormously popular figure in the Illinois House of Representatives, Orman’s only experience in politics was an unsuccessful Congressional bid in 1984.
But Orman has received an unexpected outpour of support from Democratic town chairs in the state, including Fairfield’s Mitchell Fuchs, an outspoken opponent of Lieberman, and Myrna Watanabe of Harwinton, who engaged in a much publicized exchange with Lieberman early this month that has the “Dump Joe” crowd claiming the senator was put on the defensive about his support for the war and for other Republican policies.
One other glimmer of hope that the professor might be able to get from history is the near defeat of Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter in the 2002 Republican primary.
A year before the primary, Specter’s approval rating was at 62 percent among Republicans, slightly lower than what it was among Democrats. But as conservative activists flocked to the polls and the moderate majority stayed at home, Specter won the nomination by two percentage points.
What Now?
Orman’s official announcement will come out some time this week, but even before the press release is sent out to the national media, he’ll be climbing an uphill battle to raise money.
Before Orman announced his intention to run, Lieberman had already been raising nearly $10,000 a day, and Orman said he won’t even try to compete with the senator financially.
“He raises money,” Orman says. “I raise ideas and issues, and you just have to raise enough money to get the issues out.”
In order to be put on the ballot for the August 2006 primary, Orman will need to get the support of 15 percent of Democrats at the state convention next May, or one out of six – something he said shouldn’t be a problem, because he said at least two out of six Democrats supports him right now.
He can also get on the ballot by collecting the signatures of two percent of registered Democrats in the state.
Having completed all his paperwork and registered his own campaign website, the professor is excited about the journey he has ahead, and can’t help but fantasize about being the junior senator from Connecticut in a year and a half.
“Even if I’m down two to one in the polls, “he says, “if I can get 80 percent voter turnout and he only gets 40, than that’s the biggest upset in political history, and that’s what I’m trying to do.”
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