Chris Dodd for President

Christopher J. Dodd was born in 1944 with a natural veil covering his face.

Being born with a caul, or thin remnants of the fetal membrane, is a rare, but harmless, biological fluke.

But to the Dodd family, it meant something more.

"In our upbringing, which was Irish ... it meant that this baby born with a caul was destined to greatness," said Dodd's older sister Martha Buonanno, 67, of Rhode Island.

Fast-forward 63 years, and Dodd, who represents Connecticut in the U.S. Senate, is running for president.

"I really think he's one of the real statesmen in the United States Senate," said Nelson resident William J. Rainer.

Rainer, 61, a former Connecticut businessman who has known Dodd since the mid-1980s, describes his friend as considerate, genuine and having a "terrific wit."

Christopher "Kip" O'Neill, another longtime friend of Dodd's, similarly described his humor.

"He has a wonderful gift and ability to see the humorous, human side of everybody," said O'Neill, 58, a Washington lawyer and lobbyist and son of former House Speaker Thomas Phillip "Tip" O'Neill Jr.

With a political career that has spanned more than three decades, Dodd is among the most experienced candidates in this year's presidential primary.

His problem?

Many people still don't know who he is.

From the beginning, Dodd said he knew his challenge would be to break through the celebrity status of many of his fellow candidates, "to be able to show people that experience of producing results really (does) matter."

Dodd's political career has included three terms as a congressman from Connecticut, and he's currently in his fifth term as a senator. During this time, Dodd has served on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was chairman of the Democratic National Committee and is now the chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee.

He authored the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, which provides up to provides 12 weeks of unpaid leave for personal and health issues and formed the first Senate Children's Caucus.

And this was all without a family of his own.

"He did all those things as a single guy," his sister, Buonanno, said of Dodd's work on behalf of women, children and families.

This involvement, Dodd said in an interview, "I think used to mystify some people - that the single senator would be so involved in children's issues."

But, he said, he didn't think parenthood was in the cards.

"You don't get everything in life and I had a wonderful career ... When I thought about the possibility of becoming a father, I didn't think it was probably going to happen."

After divorcing his first wife in 1982, he was pegged with a reputation as something of a playboy, according to Howard L. Reiter, head of the University of Connecticut's political science department. Among his reported girlfriends were Bianca Jagger and actress Carrie Fisher.

But, in 1999, at the age of 55, Dodd married Jackie Clegg, then an executive with the government's Export-Import Bank.

He was 57 when Jackie gave birth to Dodd's first daughter, Grace, now 6.

Grace was born on Sept. 13, 2001, in Arlington, Va., two days after the terrorist attacks.

"I did what every other parent, I think, has done throughout the ages," he said, "and that is I picked her up that afternoon, looked at her face and said to myself, 'What kind of world is this child going to grow up in?' ... So it changed everything in a sense, and in no small measure's why I'm running."

Also clearly influential to Dodd is a man who died 30 years before Grace's birth - his father, Thomas J. Dodd.

In 1953, Thomas Dodd traded his career as a lawyer for a career as a congressman, followed by multiple stints in the U.S. Senate.

Even as a child, Thomas Dodd called his son his "shadow," according to "Letters From Nuremberg," a book that combines Christopher Dodd's reflections with letters that Dodd's father sent to Dodd's mother during the Nuremberg trials.

At the beginning of his political career, Christopher Dodd remained, somewhat, in his father's shadow, according to Reiter.

"He started out in politics best known as the son of a famous father," Reiter said. "The joke that was going around the district in 1974 was that half the people (thought), 'He's just like his old man, and that's great.' The other half thought, 'He's nothing like his old man, and that's great.' "

Thomas Dodd was both hailed in his time as a prosecutor in the Nuremberg Trials and as a man who, in 1967, was censured by the Senate for allegedly misusing campaign funds.

Both had their effect on Christopher Dodd.

In the first section of "Letters from Nuremberg," Dodd calls his father's censure "the darkest days - days that my brothers and sisters and I still struggle with."

Saying that his father was never charged with any crime, Dodd wrote, "There is no doubt that a certain heartbreak about our father will always be with us."

In the book's prologue, Dodd also wrote about the profound importance of Nuremberg's message - that even Nazis deserved their day in court.

"If, for sixty years, a single word, Nuremberg, has best captured America's moral authority and commitment to justice, unfortunately, another word now captures the loss of such authority and commitment: Guantanamo," Dodd wrote.

Dodd's sister Buonanno also noted the impact the trial had on her brother.

"When my father came back from Nuremberg, there was no word 'Holocaust,' but we grew up in a family where we knew what had happened to the Jews in Europe," Buonanno said. "We talked about it all the time ... So I think all those things really were a tremendous influence on (Dodd)."

Sixty years after the trial, Dodd wrote in his book, "In a mockery of justice we lock away terrorism suspects for years and give them no real day in court. We deny the lessons of Nuremberg, of universal rights to justice."

As president, Dodd has vowed to restore civil liberties that he believes have been compromised during President Bush's administration, which is one of the reasons Charlestown resident Cynthia P. Sweeney said she's backing the Connecticut senator.

Sweeney said she shares this commitment, explaining that it was bred in her by eight Ursuline nuns at St. Thomas the Apostle in West Hartford, Conn., where both she and Dodd attended elementary school.

Recalling Dodd as a popular "little tow-headed kid" at recess, Sweeney said six of the eight nuns at the school were Irish immigrants, just like Dodd's ancestors.

"They taught us to appreciate what we had here in the United States," she said. And during Dodd's campaign, she added, "Those are the things that he has championed."

U.S. Sen. Christopher J. Dodd is turning up the heat on military brass and federal financial regulators to help ensure that all active-duty troops can take advantage of a federal law that establishes a 6 percent cap on their finance and mortgage interest charges.

Dodd, chairman of the powerful banking committee and a candidate for president, sent letters late Friday to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and to federal regulators asking them to detail what they have done to inform military personnel of those rights and to ensure that the military can take full advantage of them.

The Connecticut Democrat asked Gates and the regulators to work together on this issue.

Dodd took this action in response to my June 22 Watchdog column in which I detailed how for months large financial institutions ignored the requests of three Iraq-based service members to have the interest rates on their credit cards and loans capped at 6 percent.

Dodd included the column in his letters to Gates and to the regulators.

``Our nation places extraordinary demands on our troops. The last thing that they should be worried about is an onerous interest rate when they are sacrificing so much for our nation,'' Dodd wrote to John C. Dugan, comptroller of the currency, and to regulators responsible for overseeing credit unions and state and federal chartered banks. . . .

They spoke at the annual convention of the National Education Association, the nation‘s largest teachers union.
The law, passed with broad Democratic support in 2001, requires public school students to be tested annually in reading and math in third- through eighth-grade and once in high school. It is up for renewal this year in Congress.
Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., sported the sticker on his own lapel as he called for the law to be overhauled. "It‘s time that we get this law right," Dodd said, saying it needed higher funding levels, among other things. . .

DAVENPORT, Iowa - Democratic presidential hopeful Chris Dodd said Tuesday he is unfazed by his low poll numbers in Iowa and believes Iowans are still looking for a candidate to believe in.

The Connecticut senator made campaign stops in eastern Iowa, trying to build support for the state's leadoff caucuses in January.

"As long as Iowans are shopping and looking, we have a good chance of winning support," he told a crowd of about 60 Democratic activists in Davenport.

Dodd asked the crowd to support his candidacy, saying he offers experienced leadership and "bold ideas."

He said he supports creating a universal health care system, securing the country's borders and enacting tougher consequences for businesses that employ illegal immigrants.

. . .

By Lisa Arsenault

P
residential candidate Chris Dodd got to show off his Spanish skills at Concord High School yesterday and encouraged students to do what he did when he was a young man: Join the Peace Corps and learn about the cultures of the world.

After a brief introductory speech at the high school yesterday morning, Dodd fielded his first question from senior Alaina Maher, who posed it all in Spanish.

"Muy bien!" Dodd replied and continued in Spanish to praise Mayer.

"The question was, if I were president, what would I do to improve education in this country?" he added, for those in the audience who don't speak the language.

Dodd, a U.S. senator from Connecticut, became fluent in Spanish as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Dominican Republic after he graduated from Providence College in the mid-1960s. Dodd refers to the experience often on the campaign trail, urging everyone to get involved in something bigger than themselves and criticizing the Bush administration for failing to reach out to foreign countries.
Dodd, 62, is running for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination after serving 26 years in the U.S. Senate.

He gave his answer to Mayer's question in English yesterday, telling students that the No Child Left Behind law is not working and that public education needs more funding from the federal, state and local governments. Dodd voted in favor of No Child Left Behind but said the law needs to be changed and better funded.

"I think it's disgraceful that we spend less than 5 percent of the national budget in this country on elementary and secondary education," he said. "We're in the 21st century, and the idea that we determine the quality of a child's education in this country based on the affluence or economic well-being of the county in which they reside in is incredible. It ought to have nothing to do with how wealthy the town is."

He went on to say that students should be learning foreign languages in elementary school and said U.S. foreign policy needs to focus on reaching out to other countries "not just when you want their vote at the United Nations."

Dodd has been an outspoken critic of the Bush administration's foreign policy, telling audiences that "we need a surge in diplomacy" instead of a surge of troops in Iraq. He said U.S. troops in Iraq should be brought home right away. U.S. leaders have to go back to a policy where diplomacy is the first priority, he added.

"If you think we're going to deal effectively with global terror on our own, you're kidding yourself," he said. "It's not a sign of weakness to negotiate. Diplomacy is not a gift to your opponents."

When asked by a student what sets him apart from other Democrats in the field, Dodd talked about his lengthy service in Congress and his track record of working across party lines to pass key policy changes. He also fielded questions about his stance on gay marriage, what he plans to do about global warming and whether he would take an aggressive stance on reducing nuclear stockpiles.

He told students that he is against a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage and in favor of civil unions. He also said he thinks the country needs to step up investments in renewable energy and become more aggressive about phasing out reliance on fossil fuels.

Maher said she was surprised Dodd was able to immediately understand and respond to her question in Spanish. Her class worked on formulating the question because their teacher told them Dodd knew the language.

"I was very impressed," she said. "He was very forceful. He didn't just give general opinions."

Junior Nathan Holmes said he thought Dodd made some strong points about Iraq and the need to reach out more to other countries. But he also said that it will be a difficult race for Dodd, who is unknown to many voters.

"I've never heard the name before. That tells you something," Holmes said.

Dodd's polling numbers have been in the single digits, and his fundraising tallies are millions below his high-profile Democratic competitors. Dodd told reporters after his appearance yesterday that he has raised $4 million in his presidential bid so far. He hopes to at least double that in the coming months, he said. Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama say they have raised $26 million and $25 million respectively.

Still, students said, it's too early to say lesser-known candidates like Dodd don't have a chance.

"I definitely see him as a contender," said freshman Swathi Nuli, who asked Dodd what he would do to slow down global warming. "I was impressed."

Dodd ended his talk at Concord High by thanking students for listening to him and giving him a chance to prove himself.

"I think New Hampshire likes to prove the pundits wrong from time to time," he said. "This is worth millions, if you will, to have a chance to talk to students here, to express my views candidly with you about what I would try to do if I'm elected your president."