Connecticut, Where Political Parties Never Die
It seems that in Connecticut, you just cannot kill an old political party.
Connecticut has a competitive Senate race to get new voters interested in Tuesday’s general election, but some of them are affiliating with parties that are practically defunct.
For instance, nine new Connecticut voters this year have joined the Connecticut for Lieberman Party — the party established in 2006 to secure a ballot line for Sen. Joe Lieberman (I) when he lost the Democratic primary to challenger Ned Lamont.
Since then, a group of anti-war voters opposed to Lieberman have taken over the party, even though it remains officially the Connecticut for Lieberman Party, with 83 members heading into Election Day.
Lieberman was not the first well-known politician to see a party made up from whole cloth to allow him to gain access to the ballot. After losing his Senate seat to Lieberman in 1988, Republican Lowell Weicker launched the A Connecticut Party — yes, with that peculiar grammatical construction — to run for governor.
Despite Wikipedia writing about A Connecticut Party in the past tense, it remains alive. Seven Connecticut voters remain members of the party that used to be referred to as the ACP.
The CFL and ACP are not alone. Connecticut also has a political party called the Friends of Saybrook, established in 1995 to oppose building a Walmart in the quaint shoreline town of Katharine Hepburn. Two new voters affiliated with that party this year, even though there’s long since been a Walmart in town.