Lamont Edges Lieberman in CT

In the wake of his political victory over incumbent Joseph I. Lieberman in Connecticut’s Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate on Tuesday, Edward “Ned” Lamont, Jr. ’76 now needs to prove that he can unify his party and constructively lead his state in a divided Senate.

In an interview with The Crimson last Friday, Lamont said he was up to the task.

“I started out a business from scratch. I think I can work with people,” he said, arguing that his business success will spill over into the political arena.

Lamont’s opposition to the Iraq War was a major issue in the primary race, which received national attention and was seen by many as a referendum on the direction of the Democratic party.

Lieberman, vowing to run as an independent this fall, blamed Lamont for his polarizing partisanship throughout the campaign.

“The old politics of partisan polarization won today,” the former presidential candidate told his supporters the night of his four percentage-point loss. “For the sake of our state, our country and my party, I cannot and will not let that result stand.”

But friends from Lamont’s college days at Harvard say that while he was strongly liberal and outspokenly against the Vietnam War, he befriended students across the political spectrum.

“He tolerated the conservatives,” Richard W. Edelman ’76, one of Lamont’s college friends, said. “The thing about Ned Lamont is he gets along with everybody.”

But Lamont’s politics have stayed liberal since his college days, through to his victory this week, which is attributed largely to the fact that he is farther left than Lieberman.

“He’s always been question-marking why America needs to be so big-footed and interventionary,” Edelman said. “He’s on the peacenik side.”

ALL IN THE FAMILY

Though Lamont is a political neophyte, his family name has been a significant presence in government—and at Harvard—for generations.

As a student at Harvard, Lamont was quite aware of his family’s extensive influence on the University, he said. But his friends said that he did not seem self-conscious about his last name.

Lamont was a fourth generation legacy student whose great-grandfather—Thomas W. Lamont, class of 1892—was a partner at J.P. Morgan and the donor who gave Lamont Library its name.

Lamont’s first-year roommate, Frank D. McPhillips ’76, said that he recalls several times when Ned Lamont would be leaving their room in Mower and say, “‘I’m headed to Lamont Library.’”

“I’d think to myself, ‘How could he say that with a straight face?’” McPhillips said in recollection.

Thomas W. Lamont became the youngest partner at J.P. Morgan in 1911, and was one of President Wilson’s negotiators in the Treaty of Versailles. He Lamont was also a member of the Harvard Board of Overseers and a Crimson president.

Two-time candidate for Senate Corliss Lamont ’24, Ned’s great-uncle, was a director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) for 22 years, was a vocal opponent of McCarthyism, and won a suit against the Central Intelligence Agency after he discovered that the intelligence agency had been reading his mail.

The Harvard connections continue. Ned’s grandfather, Thomas S. Lamont ’21, was a member of the Harvard Corporation. Ned’s father, Edward M. Lamont, Sr. ’48, is an economist who helped administer the Marshall Plan and worked in Richard Nixon’s Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Lamont told The Crimson that he remembers dinner table discussions between members of his family. “They’d have a good old fashioned discussion,” he said, adding that he had hoped this election would also be like a “kitchen table debate.”

Lamont’s daughter, Emily H. Lamont ‘09, has donated $4,200 of her own savings to her father’s campaign and has been helping on the campaign trail.

“He’s the least self-serving person I’ve ever met,” she told The Crimson on Tuesday. “There’s too much ego in the Senate.”

GROWING UP RICH

At Harvard, Lamont lived with McPhillips across from Al Gore ’69’s room and in the same room that Tommy Lee Jones ’69 called home eight years earlier.

McPhillips said that Lamont was a balanced roommate and friend who made close friendships with students of various socio-economic backgrounds.

“He did not wear his money on his sleeve,” McPhillips said.

Lamont’s campaigners are trumpeting the same theme in response to criticism from Lieberman about Lamont’s wealth keeping him disconnected from the average voter.

The cable television entrepreneur released his personal tax returns last month after pressure from Lieberman, showing an adjusted gross income of more than $2.9 million for 2005. His advisers estimate that Lamont and his wife have a combined total wealth of around $200 million, according to The New York Times, about 10 percent of which comes from family inheritance.

“His family is fairly well-to-do, but they kept him grounded in reality,” Edward N. Bothfeld ’76, Lamont’s roommate in Lowell House for three years, said of his friend. “If you were out for pizza and beer, he wouldn’t pick up the tab. Ned was always very careful with his money.”

Lamont—who was editor-in-chief of the Phillips Exeter Academy paper when he was a student there—said that he did not join any final clubs or student groups at Harvard.

“I loved journalism. I always thought I was going to be a journalist,” he said. “I didn’t get involved in The Crimson for reasons I don’t yet understand.”

The history and sociology concentrator campaigned as an undergraduate for Birch E. Bayh, a Democratic presidential candidate in 1976, and wrote his undergraduate thesis on Huey P. Long, Jr.­, the radical populist who served as governor and senator from Louisiana in the 1920s and 1930s. After graduation, Lamont worked for a small weekly paper in Ludlow, Vermont, eventually becoming an editor of the paper.

Lamont, who acknowledged that his has not been a traditional route to politics, said that his passion for journalism eventually brought him to the cable television news business, where he made much of the fortune that has been a springboard to his political career.

—Material from the Associated Press was used in the reporting of this story.

—Staff writer Katherine M. Gray can be reached at kmgray@fas.harvard.edu.