Joe Lieberman, 2000 vice presidential nominee, dies at 82

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.

Lieberman's family stated that he died "due to complications from a fall. He was 82 years old. His beloved wife, Hadassah, and members of his family were with him as he passed."

Halfway through his 24-year Senate career, Lieberman was chosen as Al Gore’s running mate for the 2000 presidential election. The ticket lost one of the closest elections in American history. “No Jew had ever sought such a lofty office,” wrote the authors of “Jews in American Politics.”

“The net effect of the nomination,” they added, “has been to change the perception of what is possible for Jewish candidates for office for all time.”

Four years later, he sought the Democratic nomination for president, without success.

Lieberman was known as a hawk on foreign affairs, becoming one of the legislative fathers of the Department of Homeland Security, which was established in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. His penchant for aligning himself with two Republican colleagues, Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, particularly when it came to American military policy in Iraq, cost him his party’s Senate nomination in 2006, but he was able to win reelection as an independent.

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.

“I completely trusted, liked and worked well with Joe,” McCain wrote in “The Restless Wave.” “And I still believe, whatever the effect it would have had in some quarters of the party, that a McCain-Lieberman ticket would have been received by most Americans as a genuine effort to pull the country together for a change.”

Before and after 2008, Lieberman would frequently join Graham and McCain on overseas trips, intent on exposing injustice and tinhorn dictators around the globe. In September 2018, describing a journey with McCain near the end of his life, Lieberman quoted McCain about their trips: “He says to me: ‘Joey, you and Lindsey and I traveled to places that billionaires can’t go to.’”

In 2023, Lieberman reemerged as the public face of No Labels, a political organization designed to give Americans a third option in elections, one designed to restore civility and bring unity to the process.

“The parties are failing the American people because they're rarely willing to do anything but attack for political reasons,” he said in an interview.

Joseph Isadore Lieberman was born Feb. 24, 1942, in Stamford, Connecticut, the son of a liquor store owner. Educated at Yale, he worked as a summer intern for Sen. Abraham Ribicoff and the Democratic National Committee.

Three years after completing law school at Yale in 1967, he was elected to the Connecticut State Senate. Lieberman served there for a decade and later for six years (1983-88) as the state’s attorney general. “He went after various ne’er-do-wells,” according to “Jews in American Politics,” “including polluters, deadbeat parents and public utilities.”

In 1988, he challenged Sen. Lowell Weicker, a liberal Republican with a reputation as a maverick, and benefited, not for the last time, from his proximity to the Republican Party on some positions. He was endorsed, for instance, by William F. Buckley Jr., the noted conservative columnist and TV host, who loathed Weicker.

Lieberman won by slightly more than 10,000 votes. “Those who voted for me were saying, ‘Thank you, Lowell, for serving 18 years, but it’s time for someone new,’” he said on election night.

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.

“Religion is a very personal force and a factor in our lives,” his second wife, Hadassah Lieberman, was quoted as saying in a 1988 Chicago Tribune profile of him. “On Friday nights and Saturdays, he doesn’t do anything political. That’s a centering factor.” (Years later, Lieberman wrote a book, “The Gift of Rest: Rediscovering the Beauty of the Sabbath,” that extolled the virtues of escaping worldly concerns one day a week.)

The newcomer quickly gained a reputation as being very much his own person. “In his first term,” the Almanac of American Politics wrote, “Joseph Lieberman exerted influence far out of proportion to his seniority, committee position or political clout, an influence that came from respect for his independence of mind, civility of spirit and fidelity to causes in which he believes.”

He was a liberal in some areas, such as environmental issues, but he supported some conservative causes as well, pairing with conservative activist William Bennett to combat sex and violence in music, movies and video games.

“I think when it comes to pure competency or integrity, that Joe Lieberman is tops,” then-Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said in 2000.

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.

“Miracles happen,” Lieberman said when chosen. “I believe deeply in Al Gore.”

The Washington Post noted: “While critical of Clinton’s personal lapses, the Connecticut senator has been a largely enthusiastic cheerleader of the administration on substantive issues, and he praised Gore yesterday as a ‘full partner’ in shaping policy with Clinton. He also indicated he was prepared to assume the standard vice presidential role of attacking the other ticket — with relish.”

Democrats harbored hopes that Lieberman might bolster Jewish support for Gore in Florida. That focus turned out to be more appropriate than anyone could have imagined, as the two parties, having divided the nation’s other electoral votes very nearly evenly, fought a prolonged legal battle after Election Day over Florida’s decisive 25. Ultimately, it was Republicans George W. Bush and Dick Cheney who ended up in the White House; a newly prominent Lieberman returned to the Senate.

"Joe was a man of deep integrity who dedicated his life to serving his country," Gore said in a statement Wednesday. "He was a truly gifted leader, whose affable personality and strong will made him a force to be reckoned with."

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.

“I think it will help us immediately,” Lieberman said when the bill was signed in November 2002. He strongly supported Bush’s other efforts to combat terrorism, including the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

With Gore opting not to run again, Lieberman launched a presidential bid. He was not the first major Jewish presidential candidate — then-Pennsylvania Gov. Milton Shapp had made an ungainly stab at the Democratic nomination in 1976 — but he seemed to be the first with a prayer of winning. "I will not hesitate to tell my friends when I think they're wrong and to tell my opponents when I think they're right,” he said when he entered the fray Jan. 13, 2003.

Lieberman’s 2004 presidential bid never took flight. He finished a distant fifth — well behind fellow New England Democrats John Kerry (the eventual nominee) and Howard Dean — in New Hampshire and never drew more than 11 percent in any state. His candidacy ended in early February.

One of the things that hindered him in the 2004 primaries was his closeness to Republicans, particularly in his support of the increasingly unpopular Iraq War. The next time he was on a Connecticut ballot, Democrats rejected him: Ned Lamont, a businessperson, topped him in the party’s August 2006 Senate primary by 10,000 votes.

Undeterred, Lieberman pressed on as an independent. "If the people of Connecticut are good enough to send me back to Washington as an independent Democrat, I promise them I will keep fighting for the same progressive new ideas and for stronger national security," he said.

In November, Lieberman easily defeated Lamont and Republican Alan Schlesinger, who found himself largely abandoned by leading lights of the GOP, including Rudy Giuliani and Newt Gingrich, in favor of Lieberman. “We never wavered in our beliefs or in our purpose, did we?” a triumphant Lieberman asked his supporters on election night.

He continued to caucus with Democrats in the Senate, but in 2008, he opted to back McCain for the presidency over the Democratic nominee, Barack Obama. He told the Republican National Convention: “I am here tonight because John McCain’s whole life testifies to a great truth: Being a Democrat or a Republican is important, but it is nowhere near as important as being an American.”

Lieberman retired in 2012. One of his last significant stands was against a public option in Obama’s signature Affordable Care Act, a stance that led aggrieved Democratic strategist Paul Begala to dub him “Traitor Joe.” According to Sen. Sherrod Brown’s book “Desk 88,” it was also Lieberman who blocked a provision offering the possibility of allowing those 55 and older from buying into Medicare as part of the Obamacare plan.

But he also led efforts with Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) to end restrictions on gays in the U.S. military. “We righted a wrong,” Lieberman said after a 65-31 Senate vote in December 2010.

In 2011, he offered up a deficit reduction plan, but found few takers on either side of the aisle.

After leaving the Senate, Lieberman joined the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. “There is an urgent need to rebuild a bipartisan — indeed nonpolitical — consensus for American diplomatic, economic and military leadership in the world,” he said at the time.

His support for Israel and opposition to the Iran nuclear deal led Lieberman to back President Donald Trump on a number of issues, even though he had supported Hillary Clinton for the presidency. When Trump needed a new FBI director in 2017, Lieberman’s name surfaced.

He joined Trump at an event marking the move of the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in May 2018. “I am grateful to President Trump for making this decision,” he said.

Earlier this month, Lieberman wrote a column in the Wall Street Journal attacking Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer for saying that Israel needed to replace Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as its leader.

"While Mr. Schumer’s statement undoubtedly pleased American critics of Israel," he wrote, "for the Israelis it was meaningless, gratuitous and offensive."

In 2018, he offered a deeply felt eulogy for his close friend McCain at the National Cathedral in Washington, paying tribute to his devotion to American ideals.

“Godspeed, dear friend. May angels sing you to your eternal home,” Lieberman concluded.

On Wednesday, it fell to Graham, who signed his message "from the Last Amigo," to remember both McCain and Lieberman.

"The good news, he is in the hands of the loving God," Graham said of Lieberman. "The bad news, John McCain is giving him an earful about how screwed up things are. Rest in peace, my dear friend."