Come on, Vinny. Prove Imus Wrong!

What better way to welcome a guest who is running for public office than to say, “You have no chance of winning. Are you aware of that?”

But Vinny Forras, the former firefighter who worked at Ground Zero after 9/11 and is now running for Chris Dodd’s Senate seat in Connecticut, is determined to prove the I-Man wrong.

“We had the Massachusetts Miracle, the Utah Upset, the Kentucky Kiss-Off,” said Forras, who is seeking the Republican nomination. “And this is going to be the Connecticut Cannoli!”

Connecticut’s Republican convention is tomorrow, and each candidate must receive 15 percent, or around 200, of the delegates to qualify for the primary. Should Forras get through, he said, “That’s their worst nightmare.”

With Imus’s help, Forras recently met with “a man of honor,” Senator Joe Lieberman, the Independent from Connecticut. “He made sure he had a private meeting with me that extended for over an hour,” said Forras. “We had an incredibly discussion. He’s a very decent man. He’s a man of honor.”

Unlike, say, one of Forras’s potential Democratic opponents, the state’s current Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who was caught lying (or, as he put it, “misplacing words”) about having served in Vietnam. Rumor has it that Republican candidate Linda McMahon, wife of the WWE’s Vince, leaked that story to the New York Times, which Forras thinks is true.

Forras cautioned McMahon that payback might not be pretty. “I can only imagine what they have on tap with her,” he said. “I think it’s going to be a bloodbath.”

To Forras, the most important issue in the election is not just creating jobs, but bringing manufacturing jobs back to Connecticut. “This Attorney General, with his overregulation, he’s chased all sorts of manufacturing jobs out,” said Forras. “We’ve got to find a way to reduce those regulations, roll back taxes, bring these guys in.”

Though he’s a quintessential non-Washington insider in a year of anti-incumbency fever, Forras’s candidacy is still a bit of a long shot. So much so, in fact, that Imus promised to paint his guest’s house if he wins this election.

“I sound like the biggest A-hole on the planet,” said Imus. “Well, I don’t sound like the biggest A-hole on the planet—I am the biggest A-hole.”

No comment.

-Julie Kanfer