The longtime Connecticut senator was the first Jewish American to be nominated on a major party’s ticket.
Joe Lieberman, a longtime senator from Connecticut who became the first Jewish American to be nominated on a major party’s ticket, died Wednesday. He was 82.
McCain considered picking Lieberman as his running mate on the 2008 GOP presidential ticket but was persuaded otherwise by Republicans worried that it would cause a rift in the party. “The parties are failing the American people because they’re rarely willing to do anything but attack for political reasons,” he saidJoe Lieberman , John McCain and Lindsey Graham are seen in Tbilisi, Georgia, in September 2012 on one of their frequent international trips. | Zurab Kurtsikidze/AP
There had been other Jewish figures in the Senate before, but Lieberman was unique. As an Orthodox Jew, he kept the Sabbath, which meant avoiding all business from Friday sundown to Saturday sundown. “I think when it comes to pure competency or integrity, that Joe Lieberman is tops,” then-Sen. Arlen Specter In August 2000, he was chosen as Gore’s running mate on the Democratic ticket. He was seen as helping Gore offer a contrast to the scandals of the era of President Bill Clinton, of whom Lieberman had been critical during the Monica Lewinsky scandal that led to Clinton’s impeachment. “Lieberman is the closest thing Democrats have to an anti-Clinton,” the Wall Street Journal opined.
After the 9/11 attacks, Lieberman offered legislation that would have created a Department of Homeland Security. Bush initially opposed it, then offered up his own version that borrowed heavily from Lieberman’s. Lieberman’s 2004 presidential bid never took flight. He finished a distant fifth — well behind fellow New England Democrats John Kerry and Howard Dean — in New Hampshire and never drew more than 11 percent in any state. His candidacy ended in early February.
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