for the judgment exercised in his affair with Monica Lewinsky. However, he voted against removing Clinton from office by impeachment. Of his criticism of Bill Clinton, Lieberman said in 2014: It was a very hard thing for me to do because I liked him but I really felt what he did was awful and that unless I felt myself if I didn't say something, I'd be a hypocrite. I also felt that if somebody who was supportive of him didn't say something, it would not be good. And so it got a lot of attention. I got a call from Erskine Bowles who was Chief of Staff about three or four days later saying that he was going to express an opinion which wasn't universally held at the White House – he thought I helped the president by bursting the boil, that was the metaphor he used. The following Sunday morning, I'm at home and the phone rings, it's the White House. And it's now about a week and a couple of days since I made the speech. The president says, it was the president, "I just want you to know that there's nothing you said in that speech that I don't agree with. And I want you to know that I'm working on it." And we talked for about forty-five minutes. It was amazing. In spring 2000, Lieberman among other centrist Democrats founded the Senate New Democrat Coalition. In the same year, while concurrently running for the vice presidency, Lieberman was elected to a third Senate term with 64 percent of the vote easily defeating the Republican Philip Giordano. 2006 Senate election Primary Lieberman sought the Democratic Party's renomination for U.S. Senate from Connecticut in 2006 but lost to the comparatively more liberal Ned Lamont, a Greenwich businessman and antiwar candidate. Lieberman was officially endorsed by the Connecticut Democratic Convention, which met in May. However, Lamont received 33 percent of the delegates' votes, forcing an August primary. In July, Lieberman announced that he would file papers to appear on the November ballot should he lose the primary, saying, "I'm a loyal Democrat, but I have loyalties that are greater than those to my party, and that's my loyalty to my state and my country." He said he would continue to sit as a Democrat in the Senate even if he was defeated in the primary and elected on an