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Who is Ned Lamont
According to Wikipedia, Ned Lamont grew up in Syosset, New York. He graduated from Philips Exeter Academy in 1972, earned a bachelor's degree from Harvard in 1976 and a Master's from the Yale School of Management in 1980. His first job was with a newspaper in Ludlow, Vermont. After managing the startup of Cablevision's operation in Fairfield, Connecticut, Lamont formed his own company, Lamont Digital Systems, in 1984. The company builds and operates advanced telecommunications networks for college campuses and gated communities. A private company, it currently operates with 35 employees. A fourth generation trust fund beneficiary of J.P. Morgan partner Thomas W. Lamont, Ned Lamont has a personal fortune estimated in excess of $100 million.. (The Lamont Library at Harvard is named for his great-grandfather.) His family home is reportedly worth $30 million. Lamont personally funded approximately 60 percent of his $4 million Senate primary campaign. He has released his tax returns for 2005. Vetting issues have been minor and promptly answered. Before his current bid, Lamont ran unsuccessfully for a state senate seat in 1990. He has served two terms (eight years) as a selectman of the town of Greenwich. Lamont has chaired the state investment advisory council and served on many volunteer boards. Married to Anne Huntress, a venture capitalist, Ned and his wife have three teenage children - Harvard student Emily, her younger sister Lindsay and her younger brother Teddy. Lamont is an authentic New England blue blood but an empty Seville Row suit is still an empty suit. "Shallow" is the word used most often to describe him. "Inexperienced" comes in second. All in all, they say, a run-of-the-mill fellow with easy access to capital. Some say that he reminds them of John Kerry. Politically, the thing of interest in the Lamont family is not quiet Ned but his noisy grandfather, Corliss. The philosophy of the family, their taste for causes and radical associates seems to be transmitted through the generations, though no one accuses Ned of being Corliss. Corliss, for example, served as a director of the ACLU from 1932-54. He was a self-professed fellow traveler of the communist party, writing in 1934 that he was a "Truth Communist," according to the Democracy Project. That definition was apparently meant to isolate Corliss from the practices of Stalin while advocating the theories of communism. However, he continued to fund Stalin's projects. The old lefty gentleman was still fighting against the war in Southeast Asia in 1975, calling it "a cruel, immoral and unconstitutional war of aggression." Ned Lamont seems to be carrying on the family tradition of appeasement. In his campaign, he did not concede that there are any antagonists who cannot be mollified with the right bribe. For example, his view on Iran is, "We should work diplomatically and aggressively to give them reasons why they don't need to build the bomb, to give them incentives… I'd like to use carrots as well as sticks to see if we can change the nature of the debate." (For official positions, look at www.nedlamont.com ) What's Next? As the official party nominee, Lamont will receive the full support of his party and thus the dynamics of Joe Lieberman running as an independent will change. For one thing, Joe will have to raise his own money and he is not personally wealthy. For another thing, the consummate insider - Lieberman - will become the independent outsider running against the establishment. The Democrat party will have to acknowledge that it is now a McGovernite entity. If we are in for times of great stress and national instability, Joe might ask if the voters want a grown up representing their state? Issues of substance are ones where the national lefty bloggers can do great damage to Lamont but little good. Few individuals fit to govern will be attracted to the idea of recreating Vietnam 1975. Lamont received somewhere in the vicinity of 150,000 votes in the August primary. In November there will be 454,000 registered Republicans, 700,000 registered Democrats and 929,000 registered Independents to entice. Lamont, the great grandson of a multi-millionaire, pulled his votes from the wealthiest precincts in the state, many of them commuter communities of New York City. The Lamont voters were, in the words of Michael Barone, the sophisticated wealthy elite transnationals of New York City. Lieberman, the son of a small town merchant shopkeeper, pulled his voters from the traditional and patriotic Democrat blue collar areas of working men and women. As analysts project the makeup of the Independents and Republican across the state, they quickly run out of transnational exurbanites. There are still lots of traditional blue collar Democrats. Owing to the fact that the Republican nominee is so weak that he has been asked to withdraw, th experts quickly run out of reasons for a three-man race. While the gleeful propagandist press report that 60 percent of the folks polled are now opposed to the war, they fail to say that most of them oppose the idea of not winning the war. There is little support for cut and run or even cut and walk. Even less popular is the idea of turning Iraq over to Iran. Where will all the various war fronts be in October? Who knows? Columnist David Warren sums up the dilemma this way:
Today is the day that the British foiled a plot of alleged radical Islamists from Pakistan to blow up ten or
more planes in mid-flight between England and the United States. |
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Tom Huheey has more than four decades of experience in writing, editing and publishing books, magazines and newsletters. He has been actively involved with the national political scene in Washington since 1971, the second term of Richard Nixon. From time to time he has been a member of the adjunct faculty of George Washington University. He writes from a non-partisan but distinctly libertarian viewpoint. |
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