The five-term Democrat has been beset by 10 months of damaging stories and fumbling responses to questions about mortgages he received from Countrywide Financial, a company at the heart of the nation's subprime mortgage meltdown. More recently, he has taken flak for his role in crafting legislation that allowed $165 million in federal bailout money to be used for bonuses for executives of AIG, the troubled insurance giant now owned by the American taxpayer. Dodd's circumstances echo those faced in 1994 by his close friend, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, who polling showed was vulnerable to a tough challenge from Republican Mitt Romney that year. Kennedy's campaign found that Bay State voters knew more about the soap opera aspects of Kennedy's personal life than his accomplishments in more than three decades in the Senate and then launched an all-out effort to inform the electorate. Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Dominican Republic in the 1960's.
Dodd faces steep road to reelection
Dodd faces steep road to reelection
Conn.'s senior senator trails 3 Republicans
By Brian C. Mooney
Globe Staff / April 17, 2009
HARTFORD - The election is still more than 18 months away, but US Senator Chris Dodd is barnstorming Connecticut this week like an incumbent in trouble. Voters who have supported him for 29 years are showing anger over his personal finances and for legislation that allowed federal bailout money to be used for executive bonuses.
The political perils for Dodd, who is being outpolled by each of three little-known Republicans, have grown so acute that President Obama weighed in yesterday with a strong endorsement and a pledge of personal support.
"I can't say it any clearer: I will be helping Chris Dodd because he deserves the help," Obama told the Globe yesterday in a phone interview from Air Force One, as he flew to Mexico on a diplomatic trip.
"Chris is going through a rough patch," Obama said. "He just has an extraordinary record of accomplishment, and I think the people in Connecticut will come to recognize that. . . . He always has his constituencies at heart, and he's somebody I'm going to be relying on and working very closely with to shepherd through the types of regulatory reforms we need."
The five-term Democrat has been beset by 10 months of damaging stories and fumbling responses to questions about mortgages he received from Countrywide Financial, a company at the heart of the nation's subprime mortgage meltdown. More recently, he has taken flak for his role in crafting legislation that allowed $165 million in federal bailout money to be used for bonuses for executives of AIG, the troubled insurance giant now owned by the American taxpayer.
Dodd said last month that he had no idea that AIG bonuses would result from what he considered technical language he inserted at the request of the Obama administration, which feared litigation involving contractual obligations.
Combined with public anxiety about the economy and mortgages, it has created a toxic environment for Dodd.
A Quinnipiac University poll released April 2 showed Dodd with a disapproval rating that has shot to 58 percent. The poll showed him trailing three potential Republican challengers, including former US representative Rob Simmons by 16 points.
"Certainly you'd like to have better poll numbers, but I also know that polls aren't terribly significant at this juncture," Dodd told reporters this week before attending a roundtable discussion in Bridgeport with Shaun Donovan, Obama's secretary of housing and urban development.
"I didn't get elected to get reelected," Dodd said. "I got elected to do a job, and I'm doing my job as best I can every single day to help people get back on their feet again."
But in a state that Obama carried by 22 points last year, his slump makes Dodd the most vulnerable Senate incumbent heading into the 2010 election cycle by most accounts.
"The fact that all three of these Republicans, none of them well known, are beating Dodd really has to worry him," said Douglas Schwartz, the Quinnipiac polling director, who has done surveys about Dodd since 1994.
"His 58 percent disapproval rating stands out - it's something we haven't seen - and 54 percent that say he's not honest and trustworthy," Schwartz said. "These negatives are so high it will be tough to turn around. People here know Dodd; he's a household name in Connecticut."
Compounding Dodd's problem was his ill-fated 2008 campaign for president, including moving his family to Iowa for two months before a woeful showing in the kickoff caucuses drove him from the race. A November 2007 poll showed that 55 percent of Connecticut voters thought he was spending too much time running for president and not enough time representing the state, Schwartz said.
The Connecticut GOP has been strafing Dodd repeatedly since the loans from Countrywide surfaced last year. Last June, Portfolio magazine reported that Dodd was on a Countrywide VIP list known as "Friends of Angelo," referring to the company's former chief executive, Angelo R. Mozilo.
Dodd has steadfastly maintained he received no special mortgage rates from Countrywide. But he waited 253 days (Republicans kept a running count) while the matter was under review by the Senate Ethics Committee before producing in February both his own records and those of Countrywide for inspection by the media. The ethics panel has not issued a finding.
"Everyone's losing their homes, and he's got three of them on a senator's salary, and people want to know how he's managing to swing all these mortgages," said Christopher Healy, chairman of the Connecticut Republican Party. "After 30 years, there's a general fatigue about Dodd. You only beat people like this at the beginning or the end of his arc, and he's at the end."
As Congress broke for Easter this week, Dodd has been campaigning as though the election were next month, not next year, emphasizing his record in the Senate. He met with business groups, spoke at an environmental symposium, and met with machinists at jet engine maker Pratt & Whitney in East Hartford, vowing to fight Defense Secretary Robert Gates's plan to terminate service of the F-22 jet.
Yesterday, Dodd chaired a field hearing in New Haven of his Senate committee on transportation issues, including commuter rail upgrades on a line linking New Haven, Hartford, and Springfield. A half-hour before the hearing, Obama, before departing for Mexico, unveiled a new report outlining plans to build a network of 10 high-speed rail corridors, including one in Connecticut.
Dodd's circumstances echo those faced in 1994 by his close friend, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, who polling showed was vulnerable to a tough challenge from Republican Mitt Romney that year. Kennedy's campaign found that Bay State voters knew more about the soap opera aspects of Kennedy's personal life than his accomplishments in more than three decades in the Senate and then launched an all-out effort to inform the electorate.
Dodd, who has raised huge sums from the financial services industry he oversees as chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, has stepped up his fund-raising. His campaign started this month with more than $1.3 million in the bank. By some estimates, he may need 10 times that to hold the seat he won in 1980 after three terms as a congressman.
In Bridgeport and at earlier events in Hartford and New Haven on Monday, HUD Secretary Donovan was effusive in his praise of Dodd and his record, using the words "leadership," "persistence," and "incredible force" more than a dozen times to highlight Dodd's work on housing programs.
On Tuesday, in the hall of Boilermakers Local 614, not far from the vast Electric Boat Co. in Groton, a group of about 50 shipyard union leaders rose twice to cheer the state's senior senator for his efforts over the years to save jobs at the facility that builds and repairs submarines for the Navy.
Nancy Driscoll, a retired nurse and Democratic activist from Groton, attended and was ready to go to work. "We've got to start from the beginning and bring Chris back," she said. "In this environment, you can't help but be a little nervous."
