When Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman lost the Democratic Senate primary last week and decided to run as an independent, his old supporters in New Hampshire were watching.

Katrina Swett, who served as national co-chairwoman of Lieberman's 2004 presidential bid, supports Lieberman's decision to stay in the race, though she might feel differently if his continued candidacy were likely to split the vote and lead to a Republican victory. Instead, the general election will be "round two of the Democratic primary,"and it will have implications for the national party, she said.

Swett believes Lieberman lost because of three perceived Democratic "sins": the sin of supporting the Iraq war and being tough on defense, the sin of being bipartisan and the sin of displaying religious faith. Swett said those traits might make Lieberman undesirable to many Democratsbut they could be key for Democrats in winning future national elections.

"Round two in Connecticut is going to be a battle between two Democrats: Joe Lieberman, a centrist Democrat, and Ned Lamont, a pretty-far-left-of-center Democrat," said Swett. "I'm convinced that Joe Lieberman is the better leader . . . and I'm also convinced that he's the better positioned politically for the future of the party that I love."

As a result, Swett said, she thinks many prominent Democrats in Washington - despite their post-primary support for Lamont - would "quietly and secretly" breathe a sigh of relief if Lieberman bounced back.

Former state Democratic Party chairman Jeff Woodburn, an early supporter of Lieberman's last presidential bid, had a visceral reaction to the primary vote. He's worried that his party is "marching toward the extreme left and throwing out anybody who doesn't agree with those extreme positions 100 percent."

Woodburn and Swett both predicted Lieberman would win the general election with the added support of independents and moderate Republicans. But "the bad part is, our party structure is dying," he said.

Woodburn said Democrats need to be wary of pushing themselves too far left; he sees the support for Lamont as an impulse that comes from displeasure with the war in Iraq and President Bush. Democrats sometimes "get so excited about the failures of Bush that they don't have any credibility and they can't take advantage of it, because they're too zealous in their approach," he said. He sees it as reminiscent of the GOP response to the Lewinsky affair. "Republicans got too close to the fire on that issue, and it ended up burning them, not Clinton," Woodburn said.

State Rep. Chris Pappas of Manchester, who worked for Lieberman in New Hampshire, was less emphatic in his support for Lieberman. "I'm glad I don't live in Connecticut and don't have to make that tough choice," he said.

Pappas didn't agree with Lieberman about every issue in 2004, but he liked his "strong moral compass" and thought his appeal among moderates and centrists meant he could win the White House - if he could get through the Democratic primaries first.

Pappas said it was difficult to watch what happened last week."It's hard to see him leaving the party and firing his campaign staff and going it alone, because he always has been such a good Democrat," Pappas said. "It's difficult to see him go against the wishes of the good primary voters in Connecticut."

Bad deal for Second Start

In the latest round of the turf war between Health and Human Services Commissioner John Stephen and Gov. John Lynch, the Executive Council voted unanimously last week to hold off on awarding a $2.1 million contract extension that Stephen wanted to give Southern New Hampshire Services to provide job training programs for welfare recipients. The contract had not gone out to bid.

Major federal welfare changes go into effect Oct. 1. Among other changes, 50 percent of the state's welfare recipients will need to be working or engaged in job training to avoid a $4 million penalty for New Hampshire; that means several hundred more welfare recipients need to join the workforce.

HHS wanted to meet that goal in part by creating "Job Club" training programs run by the local Community Action Program agencies. That would take care of seven of 12 proposed Job Club sites; HHS wanted Concord-based Second Start to provide the other five.

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