CUNA Keeps Building Case For Embattled Senator

HARTFORD, Ct. -- CUNA reported Wednesday it mailed an unprecedented fifth brochure to voters on behalf of Sen. Joseph Lieberman, who is in a close race for next Tuesday's Democratic primary. The credit union group has spent $145,504 on independent expenditures over the past week to prop up the three-term Senator, who polls say is trailing anti-war candidate Ned Lamont for the Democratic nomination. CUNA has had mixed success with independent campaign expenditures in the past. Its efforts in 2002 and 2004 helped neophyte candidates Jon Porter, R-Nevada, Michael Michaud, D-Me., and Allyson Schwartz, D-Pa., win House seats. But independent expenditures by CUNA failed to save 18-term Rep. Phil Crane, a senior member of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, in 2004; and similar spending for Republican candidate David Huffman in the 2004 Republican primary, created enmity with the eventual winner Patrick McHenry, who sponsored anti-credit union legislation last year that would ease the way for credit unions to convert to mutual savings banks.