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Last Updated June 22, 2005
Christopher Dodd was almost born into politics, one of six senators who are children of former senators (Lisa Murkowski, Mark Pryor, Evan Bayh, Lincoln Chafee and Bob Bennett are the others). His father Thomas Dodd, a prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, was elected to the House in 1952, when Chris was eight; he lost a Senate race to Prescott Bush, George W. Bush's grandfather, in 1956, then won in 1958. Chris Dodd served in the Peace Corps in the Dominican Republic from 1966-68. In 1967 the older Dodd was censured by the Senate for misuse of funds; he ran as an independent in 1970 and Chris Dodd managed his campaign, in which he finished behind Republican Lowell Weicker and Democrat Joseph Duffey, for whom Yale Law School student Bill Clinton was working as a volunteer. Almost immediately after law school, Chris Dodd ran for the House in the open-seat eastern Connecticut 2d District and, in the Watergate year of 1974, won comfortably. He was re-elected easily and in 1980 outmaneuvered fellow Watergate Democrat Toby Moffett to get the Democratic nomination to succeed Senator Abraham Ribicoff; he won that race by a wide margin. Dodd, who speaks fluent Spanish, has often played a role on Latin American issues. On the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee in the 1980s he took the lead in opposing U.S. military aid to El Salvador's government and aid to the Nicaraguan contras. He has long backed freer travel to Fidel Castro's Cuba and an end to the embargo on trade with Cuba. But he opposed the language in the House Republicans' June 2000 bill on lifting the embargo on food and medicine, which he said would restrict the president's ability to open up travel to Cuba. Dodd threatened a filibuster on the issue, and prevented it from being passed in June 2000 with the aid package that included the Clinton administration's $1 billion-plus Plan Colombia. In October, with some grumbling, he voted for the bill lifting the embargo, which passed by a wide margin. In contrast to his wariness of U.S. military aid in Central America in the 1980s, he supported Plan Colombia, to provide equipment and military training to Colombians fighting the FARC guerrillas. In September 2002 he called for international cooperation to disarm Saddam Hussein but said that lacking that, "I don't think we have any choice but to act alone." He voted for the Iraq war resolution in October 2002 but later had second thoughts. In November 2003, when the turnover to Iraqis in June 2004 was announced, Dodd said, "The good news is that they're doing it. The bad news is that it took so long to do it. Iraqi people have to choose their own leaders." In September 2004, he said of the Iraqi war resolution, "There wouldn't have been a vote if we knew then what we know now. Only the threat of weapons of mass destruction caused us to vote as we did." Would he vote for it again? "Of course not." Connecticut, with its big insurance companies, has long been a creditor state, and one that is leery of trial lawyers. In 1995 Dodd was the chief Democratic sponsor of the securities litigation bill sought by high-tech companies and fought by trial lawyers. When Bill Clinton vetoed it, Dodd immediately started lobbying Senate and House Democrats, and both houses in December 1995 voted to override. He was a lead sponsor of the product liability bill vetoed by Clinton in May 1996. In March 2002 he and Jon Corzine sponsored a bill to prohibit accountants performing audits from providing many consulting and non-audit services and to allow them to provide tax consulting only if approved by the audit committee; in December 2003 he and Corzine sponsored a bill to ban short-term trading by mutual fund insiders and to require disclosure of the amount each investor pays for operating expenses. Dodd supported the bill to limit class action lawsuits, but cast a critical vote against cloture in October 2003 when he said Republican leaders were not addressing his concerns. He voted for the measure when it passed in February 2005. Dodd was the lead Democratic sponsor of the terrorism bill, which passed the Senate in June 2002. His original version would have had the government pay for the first $10 billion of terrorism claims each year and then 90% of the rest. The House version, passed in December 2001, required insurers to repay the government and provided full coverage of only the first $1 billion of damage. In lengthy negotiations, Dodd managed to get a bill limiting claims to a sliding scale of percentages of premiums and placing a surcharge on all commercial insurance if companies' claims exceeded a sliding scale of limits. But there was intense argument over the House's provision shielding property owners from pain and suffering damages in lawsuits. Finally Dodd's compromise was accepted by the Republicans, consolidating lawsuits in a single federal court and setting up rigid tests for holding property owners liable. Dodd has a cheerful manner, seems unfazed by opposition and approaches debates with an affable air, deflating opponents' indignation and suggesting that they are all in this game together. In November 1994 he made an attempt to get a position in the national spotlight after Jim Sasser, who had expected to run for Senate majority leader, was defeated for reelection by Bill Frist. Dodd spent a month campaigning among colleagues for the minority leadership and lost to Tom Daschle by just 24-23. Dodd was promptly asked by Bill Clinton to be Democratic National Committee chairman. Dodd performed ably in public debates and set-tos with Republican Chairman Haley Barbour, but was embarrassed in October 1996 when he followed White House orders to stonewall on charges that DNC top-level fundraiser John Huang raised millions in illegal foreign contributions. Dodd left the chairmanship in January 1997. In 2000 he lobbied hard to get his junior colleague Joe Lieberman nominated for vice president, assuring Jesse Jackson, NEA head Bob Chase, and AFL-CIO President John Sweeney that Lieberman was a good Democrat. In 2003 Dodd gave some consideration to running for president in 2004, but in March 2003 announced he would not and endorsed Lieberman. After the defeat of Tom Daschle in November 2004, he made soundings to run for majority leader but did not when it became quickly apparent that Harry Reid had the votes. In April 2004, when Robert Byrd cast his 17,000th Senate vote, Dodd joined other senators of both parties in praising him. "I do not think it is an exaggeration at all to say to my friend from West Virginia that he would have been a great senator at any moment. Some were right for the time. Robert C. Byrd, in my view, would have been right at any time. He would have been right at the founding of the country. He would have been in the leadership crafting the Constitution. He would have been right during the great conflict of civil war in this nation." Protests came in from right and left because of some parts of Byrd's record. Dodd quickly apologized. "I could have chosen better words. I wasn't thinking about his vote against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or his involvement in the Ku Klux Klan--both of which he has apologized for profusely. Nonetheless actions and words can sting and hurt. I should have been more careful about this. I apologize for that." As ranking member on and then as chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, Dodd worked with Mitch McConnell on the elections procedure bill that just about everyone thought was necessary after the Florida controversy. Both sides accepted many provisions, but there were significant differences between the House bill passed in December 2001 and the Senate bill passed in April 2002. Most matters were agreed on: Provisional voting, computerized voter lists, improved access to the polls for the disabled, $3.9 billion to help states upgrade their equipment. But approval was delayed over disagreement over whether first-time voters who register by mail should have to show driver's licenses. Finally it was agreed that they could use utility bills, bank statements, paychecks, government documents with their names and addresses instead, and the bill was signed in October 2002. In June 2003, in response to demands that the Russell Senate Office Building be renamed, he proposed a bill setting standards and restrictions for naming places on the Senate side of the Capitol. He has sought more portraits of women and blacks there. Dodd was one of the chief sponsors of the Family and Medical Leave Act, vetoed by George H. W. Bush but signed in 1993 by Bill Clinton. Dodd has sponsored an immigration bill to make sure that employers seeking L-1 and H-1B visas have made efforts to hire Americans first. In September 2003 he added $1.2 billion for special education to an appropriations bill, to be financed by extending expiring Customs fees. In February 2004 he sponsored a bill to bar the use of federal funds to buy goods and services produced by overseas workers. In June 2002, when the Bureau of Indian Affairs approved tribal designation for Connecticut's Eastern Pequots, Dodd joined other Connecticut elected officials in opposing a new casino in the state. Dodd and Lieberman tried to get the Senate to agree to a one-year moratorium on recognition of new Indian tribes and lost 80-15. In September Dodd met with tribal leaders and said that BIA's designation process had to be fixed. On another state issue, Dodd has worked to preserve the old Coltsville complex in Hartford, where the Colt .45 was made, the telegraph first conceptualized and jet engine technology first developed. Dodd was reelected by 65%-32% in 1998 over former Congressman Gary Franks, one of the few black Republicans to serve in Congress. In 2004 he faced fashion entrepreneur Jack Orchulli who spent $1.38 million of his own money on the campaign. Dodd won 66%-32%, carrying all but five of Connecticut's 169 cities and towns. In November 2004 there was speculation that Dodd might run for governor of Connecticut in 2006 but in spring 2005 he didn't seem interested.
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