Yup. He's given $230,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee this cycle ($200,000 from his campaign fund, and $30,000 from his leadership PAC.
Now, obviously, as mentioned in the Politico article, he's doing this to try to buy himself some love:
"Basically, he doesn’t want everybody to hate him," one Lieberman-friendly Democrat said. "Plus he wants to keep his committee."
Of course, that's not good enough. Despite the fact that Tom Carper (next most senior member) is not a great Democrat, we will make sure he becomes chairman. If Lieberman wants to make peace, he can do so by using his time at the Republican Convention to castigate McCain and endorse Barack Obama (think of the media you'd get, Joe! That's what matters to you above all, isn't it?). Otherwise, he's out.
My real point is this.
A non-Democratic member of the Senate has put more money ($257,000) towards electing Democratic Senators than most Democratic Senators have.
2008 is a major, major opportunity that's not coming again for a while. We've got a legit shot at at least 12 pickups. They need to pony up.
Update:
I wanted to note in the diary that Senator Lieberman has given $15,000 to Republican candidates through his leadership PAC.
$10,000 to Susan Collins(R-ME), who he's headlined a $3,000/person fundraiser for, and $5,000 to John McCain, who, as we're well aware, has had his bearings personally inspected by Senator Lieberman.
Charlie Cook rates 12 currently Republican-held Senate seats as less than safely Republican (AK, CO, KY, ME, MN, MS-Wicker, NE, NH, NM, NC, OR and VA)
and we've got credible candidates in Andrew Rice, Jim Slattery, Rick Noriega, Larry LaRocco and Jim Martin. So that's a very, very very outside chance of a veto-proof majority and a real shot at a filibuster-proof majority.
The point being, now is the time to go all out. Democratic Senators need to sink their precious campaign funds into getting other Democrats elected now
Of course, there are some exceptions. Those who ran for president this year are either trying desperately to pay off debt (Clinton, Biden, Dodd) or are busy trying to win the presidency (Obama). And the new freshmen don't have enough cash in many cases (Casey, Webb, Whitehouse, Brown, McCaskill, Tester, Klobuchar, Cardin; Menendez started in 2006 and has $825,000 on hand, so I'm not exempting him).
In addition, Tim Johnson, Mary Landrieu and Frank Lautenberg have at least semi-significant challengers and need to concentrate on their races.
However, the other 34 Senate Democrats need to be giving more money towards electing more Democrats than is non-Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman.
In other words, "More than Joe or we're letting you go!"
As of the latest FEC reports (which admittedly don't include donations between July 1st and today, including Lieberman's latest $100,000), only the following Democratic Senators are in this category by my calculations via a combination of their campaign funds and their leadership PACs.
Mark Pryor, Dianne Feinstein, Dan Inouye, Ted Kennedy, Ron Wyden, Jay Rockefeller, Jeff Bingaman, Kent Conrad, Max Baucus and Jay Rockefeller Harry Reid.
Those 10 are the only ones of the 42 who I can confirm have put more cash this cycle towards electing Democrats than Joe Lieberman. It's possible and quite probable that there are several others (OpenSecrets has crashed so I can't check leadership PAC data).
Still, the vast majority of Democratic Senators have put less cash this cycle towards electing Democrats than has non-Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman.
Almost every member of the Senate has far more than enough cash on hand to turn over $250,000 to Democratic candidates. They need to do it.