Reinventing Chris Dodd

Connecticut Senator Chris Doddis down in the polls in the wake of reports about his sweetheart mortgage deal from Countrywide Financial and his undervalued Irish “cottage.” So Senator Hedge Fund has been recasting himself as a populist critic of Wall Street, drug companies and other business targets.

Most recently, the 28-year Member of the Senate is trying to raise money by portraying himself as a scourge of lobbyists. In a recent fund-raising email, his campaign manager, Jay Howser, declares, “But what about the forgotten victims of Chris’s efforts? What about the lobbyists? The lobbyists can’t get meetings with Chris. He won’t return their phone calls. He even yells at them during hearings. Whether they’re lobbyists for the financial industry or health care companies, Chris just isn’t giving them the time of day.” The email is accompanied by a campaign video featuring a baby’s voice wailing behind the words: “He made them cry.”

This email went out the very day the Dodd re-election campaign filed its second-quarter fund-raising report. Some 38% of the money Mr. Dodd raised was from political action committees, and plenty of that was from the health-care and financial service industries with business in front of Mr. Dodd’s Congressional committees. Most of this cash is protection money that businesses feel obliged to pay lest Mr. Dodd punish them with legislation. As for the Senator’s political reinvention, he must believe Connecticut voters have short memories.