(Bloomberg) -- Joe Lieberman, the US senator and vice presidential nominee whose voyage from reliable liberal to stubborn centrist led him to abandon the Democratic Party at a time of political polarization, earning him both admiration and contempt, has died. He was 82.

He died on Wednesday in New York City due to complications from a fall, according to a statement from his family. The statement said his “love of God, his family and America endured throughout his life of service in the public interest.”

Lieberman represented Connecticut in the Senate from 1989 until 2013. His willingness to break with his party was on display in 1998, after President Bill Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives for his affair with a White House intern. While most Democrats in Congress were standing with Clinton, calling his actions far short of impeachment-worthy, Lieberman took to the Senate floor to denounce Clinton’s behavior as “disgraceful” and “immoral.” 

His national stature soared when then-Vice President Al Gore chose him to be his running mate in the 2000 presidential election, making him the first Jewish candidate nominated on a major political party’s ticket. (Religiously observant, Lieberman kept kosher and avoided work on the Sabbath.) 

In one of the closest contests in US history, Gore and Lieberman won more votes but lost where it mattered, in the Electoral College, to Republicans George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, after a 5-4 ruling by the Supreme Court ended a recounting of votes cast in Florida. 

Bush’s 537-vote win in that state gave him just enough electors to become president, and it sent Lieberman back to the Senate.

President Joe Biden, who served with him in that chamber, said in a statement that they “didn’t always see eye-to-eye, but he had an extraordinary career in public service.” Biden added that Lieberman “helped us” pass the Affordable Care Act and the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy that allowed gay and lesbian Americans to be in the military as long as they didn’t disclose their sexual orientation.

Lieberman campaigned unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004, withdrawing after failing to win any of the first nine state primaries or caucuses. He blamed his poor showing in part on his 2003 vote in favor of authorizing Bush to attack Iraq. 

That hawkish vote, and his ongoing support for the Iraq War even after no weapons of mass destruction were found there, also became an issue in 2006, when Lieberman asked Connecticut Democrats to nominate him for a fourth term. He was defeated in the party primary by Ned Lamont — now Connecticut’s governor — who collected endorsements from leading Democrats including the state’s senior senator, Christopher Dodd, a longtime friend of Lieberman.

Republican Support

Despite losing the primary, Lieberman stayed in the race as an independent — and he won, because enough Republicans voted for him. Despite having turned on his party in the election, Lieberman agreed to caucus with the Democrats, making them a 51-49 majority. The Democrats made Lieberman chairman of the Governmental Affairs Committee as part of the deal.

Lieberman told CNN in 2010 that his 2006 primary loss was “the most painful moment — most disappointing moment — of my political career.” 

But being forced to switch to independent tuned out to be “a favor,” he said: “I think it put me in exactly the position I want to be in at this hyper-partisan, non-productive, divisive time in our politics. It gives me the latitude to try to be a bridge on a lot of different issues, to make things happen.”

Lieberman was the founding chairman of the centrist group No Labels, which has been trying to recruit a presidential candidate to lead a third-party challenge later this year to Biden and presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump. Just last week, Lieberman said the organization was facing a “daunting” struggle to attract a standard-bearer but was in talks with “a couple of quality candidates” whom he declined to identify.

Joseph Isadore Lieberman was born in Stamford, Connecticut, on Feb. 24, 1942, to Henry Lieberman, a liquor store manager, and the former Marcia Manger. He received a bachelor’s degree in political science and economics in 1964 from Yale University, where he earned a law degree in 1967.

He worked for a law firm and was elected in 1970 to the Connecticut Senate, where he served three terms as majority leader during his 10 years there. He suffered a defeat in the Republican landslide in 1980, losing a race for the US House of Representatives. While serving as state attorney general from 1983 to 1989, he defeated moderate Republican Lowell Weicker in 1988 to win election to the Senate.

Moved Rightward

During his final term in the Senate, starting in 2007, Lieberman kept moving rightward, especially on international affairs. 

He endorsed his friend John McCain, the Republican senator from Arizona, for president in 2008, describing Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee, as too inexperienced. (“Eloquence is no substitute for a record,” he said at the Republican nominating convention, where he was given a speaking slot.) 

After Obama took office, Lieberman played an important role in limiting changes to America’s health-care system. During debate over what became known as Obamacare, Lieberman agreed to be the crucial 60th vote needed to prevent a Senate filibuster that would have blocked passage of the law. But his price was to remove the so-called public option that would have created government-run health care as competition to private insurance.

Lieberman was also a leading force in creating a Department of Homeland Security, over which he had jurisdiction as chairman of the renamed Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Such stances help explain why President Donald Trump said Lieberman was a strong candidate to replace fired Federal Bureau of Investigation director James Comey in 2017. Lieberman withdrew his name to avoid conflict-of-interest objections after Trump hired Marc Kasowitz, a partner of the law firm Lieberman had joined, New York-based Kasowitz Benson Torres, after retiring from the Senate.

Lieberman and his first wife, Elizabeth Haas, had two children, Matthew and Rebecca. He later married the former Hadassah Freilich Tucker. They had a daughter, Hani, and a stepson, Ethan, from her earlier marriage.

--With assistance from Steven T. Dennis.

(Updates with Biden statement, in seventh paragraph.)

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