Monday, June 08, 2009

In case you missed it....

In case you missed it — and I don’t how you could unless you haven’t turned on your TV over the last week — President Barack Obama gave a “shout out” to U.S. Sen. Christopher J. Dodd for championing the credit card tax reform bill that he recently signed into law.
The TV commercial — which, by the way, doesn’t mention the language about carrying loaded guns in national parks — of Obama signing the legislation has been running consistently on local TV channels for a week now. The campaign ads are being paid for by Dodd’s re-election committee.
Coincidentally, a “non-partisan” group is also running a television ad campaign praising Dodd for his efforts to secure health care coverage for working families. It’s one of those...”call Chris Dodd and thank him”...commercials.
I find this all a bit amusing because when the senator was in to see us in late March at the height of the AIG bonus problem, he was rather adamant that he had no intention of running an 18-month re-election campaign. It was too early to start that, he said.
Four days after that meeting, he hired a campaign manager. And now, I guess, a 17-month campaign is okay. Hey, why let all that campaign cash just sit there. If you got, spend it.
Of course all this “non-campaigning” comes as the senator is facing challenges from both inside the party as well outside.
At the same time, his potential Democratic primary challenger, Merrick Alpert of Groton, was soundly rebuffed two weeks ago by his own town committee. The Groton Town Committee adopted a resolution praising Dodd for all he’s done, and “condemning” anyone who would dare repeat the “trumped up” charges being leveled at the incumbent. The resolution didn’t mention Alpert by name, but reportedly all eyes were on him in the room as that passage of the resolution was being read.
Obviously the Groton Town Committee membership didn’t get the memo on the Democratic Party’s cardinal rule #1: Never speak badly about a fellow Democrat — at least not in public, and certainly, not to his face.
Groton Democratic leaders went even further by claiming the resolution was not an endorsement of Dodd’s re-election — saying, “it’s too soon for something like that.” Of course, stapling the invitation to a fundraiser next month to benefit Dodd’s re-election to the resolution before it was handed out to those attendence shouldn’t be construed as anything remotely looking like an endorsement — not this early in the campaign, anyway.
Republicans may be known as the Grand Old Party, but honestly, if it wasn’t Democrats, politics would never be this much fun.
Because it gets better.
Where do you think Dodd was when news of the Groton incident broke?
He was in Hollywood, California with his two new best friends — President Obama and “Democratic” Sen. Arlene Specter — hobknobbing with Hollywood’s elite and famous — and rich, too.
And what were they doing in Hollywood? You guessed it, attending fundraising events for the Democratic National Committee and the personal re-election campaigns of Dodd and Specter. And they apparently did rather well.
It may be a wee bit too early to being the 2010 Senatorial election, but It’s never too early to raise the moneyfor it. And once you got, spend it. There’s always more out there.

Friday, June 05, 2009

yeah...it's been a while...

Some quick updates on the U.S. Senate race.

By now you've probably heard that the field of potential Republican challengers to Chris Dodd has grown with the announcement of former Irish Ambassador Tom Foley's decision to get into the race. I find the timing a bit odd....there's just over three weeks left in this quarter before campaign finance reports have to be filed...not a lot of time to raise money.

Foley was a major fundraiser for George Bush, thus the expectations of his fundraising abilities for his own campaign will be high. He might be able to slide this fist reporting cycle, but a lot that will depend on how well his two Republican rivals do...former Congressman Rob Simmons and state Sen. Sam Caligiuri.

My guess is that Foley's entrance into the contest, and a respectable first filing, will hasten Caligirui's departure from the race.

On the Democratic side....Democratic primary challenger Merrick Alpert and his wife Alex have a new addition to the family. Merrick sent me the following e-mail this morning:

Alex and I wanted to share the good news with you. Our son, Wyatt Mateo Alpert, was born at 12:56PM today at Lawrence & Memorial Hospital in New London. He is 7 pounds, 5 ounces and 19.5 inches long. Mother and son are resting comfortably.