Is Lieberman’s loss of support in Arizona a sign of things to come?

On its face, you might not think Arizona’s February 2004 presidential primary would be particularly important. You’ve heard plenty about Iowa (the nation’s first caucus), New Hampshire (the nation’s first primary), and South Carolina (the first Southern primary), but Arizona isn’t usually one of those states that generates a lot of attention.

In practice, however, states like Arizona become significant for presidential candidates who appear viable, but didn’t fare well in Iowa or New Hampshire. In order to keep some sense of momentum going, and keep the checks coming in, candidates who finish outside the top 3 in Iowa and New Hampshire look to states like Arizona for victories so they can say, “See? I can win!”

Joe Lieberman, for example, already has a campaign organization on the ground in Arizona for just this purpose. Lieberman and his staff realize their chances of wining in Iowa and New Hampshire are slim. He’s already polling poorly in both states, despite almost 100% name recognition. So he concludes, correctly, that he should focus on a state like Arizona, which has a primary on February 3, just a week after New Hampshire’s.

Lieberman figures a win there will show that he has broad appeal in a Western swing state, which should count for something. The problem for Lieberman, as today’s edition of The Note mentions, is that the support he’s built is already starting to fade.

As the Hartford Courant reported today, Lieberman announced in March that he had “locked down” the endorsements of “a majority of the state’s [Democratic] representatives,” including Dem state leaders Richard Miranda and Wally Straughn.

Yesterday, however, Miranda and Straughn showed up on a list of Arizona lawmakers who had endorsed Sen. John Edwards, who is just as anxious to win in Arizona as Lieberman is, for all the same reasons.

When asked what happened, Miranda said the decision to back Lieberman in the spring “was a little premature.”

Straughn was less reserved, saying, “I thought he was going to do a lot more in Arizona, and when I found out about some of his issue positions, I was not happy with them.”

Straughn, a Navy veteran, was also bothered by Lieberman’s foreign policy positions, concluding, “I knew he was backing the war, but I did not realize he was such a hard-core hawk. I think he envisions such action against a number of other places, and Edwards is not that full of ammunition.”

While these endorsement switches are certainly good news for Edwards, I think it shows a deeper problem for Lieberman. Since 1972, no candidate has gone on to win the nomination of either party without finishing in the top four in both Iowa and New Hampshire, which appears highly unlikely for Lieberman. Now he’s losing endorsements in states like Arizona, which he’ll have to win to remain competitive, because lawmakers are learning more about his “issue positions,” and they’re “not happy with them.”

I know 50 million of us voted for Lieberman to be vice president just a few years ago, but I just can’t imagine the circumstances in which he wins the Democratic nomination.