Jesse Jackson and Sharpton Lend Support to Lamont Bid

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Jesse Jackson and Sharpton Lend Support to Lamont Bid

BRIDGEPORT, Conn., Aug. 2 — Seeking to broaden his support among black voters before Tuesday’s Democratic primary for Senate, Ned Lamont campaigned on Wednesday with the Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Al Sharpton, who endorsed him at a series of appearances in Bridgeport and New Haven.

In a speech at a church here, Mr. Sharpton criticized the man Mr. Lamont is trying to defeat in the primary, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, for having supported the Republican Party on a host of issues, from Iraq to health care. Time and again, Mr. Sharpton said, “I would find my friend Joe headed to the other bench, in the other uniform, and I realized he wasn’t on the same team.”

In the final days of the primary contest, Mr. Lamont and Mr. Lieberman have aggressively courted black voters. Both have attended black churches on recent Sundays, while Mr. Lamont has campaigned repeatedly in Bridgeport, which has a large black population.

Mr. Lieberman, who has in the past received strong support from black voters, has said that his youthful days in the civil rights movement and his 18-year legislative record in the Senate provide strong reasons for black voters to support him again. But Mr. Lamont’s advisers assert that many blacks are receptive to the challenger’s strong messages of opposition to the war in Iraq and to President Bush.

Full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/03/nyregion/03trail.html