http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080104/ap_po/dodd


Dodd to drop presidential bid
By BETH FOUHY, Associated Press Write
14 minutes ago
1-3-8



DES MOINES, Iowa - Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut was set to abandon his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination Thursday after a poor showing in Iowa's precinct caucuses.

The veteran lawmaker was to announce his decision to supporters at a post-caucus party in Des Moines, according to advisers speaking on the condition of anonymity. He was expected to travel to Connecticut Saturday with his family to thank friends and supporters.

Dodd was never able to break from the pack of Democratic contenders despite his long and distinguished Senate career. He won just 0.02 percent of the state's caucus-goers.

At 63, Christopher John Dodd is at an age that's considered prime for both presidential candidates and U.S. senators. And yet, Dodd's true-blue liberalism, his thick white-mane and his background as the scion of a politically-prominent, Irish-American family from New England conjures images of a bygone political era.

Dodd is the son of Thomas J. Dodd, a lead prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals after World War II and a U.S. senator from Connecticut for 12 years.

The elder Dodd was censured by his colleagues after an emotional nine-day Senate debate in 1967 for using campaign money to pay personal bills. He ran for re-election as an independent in 1970, but lost to Republican Lowell Weicker and died six months later.

The younger Dodd would later describe the censure as "cruel" and "one of the great travesties."

Three years after his father's death, "Chris" Dodd was elected to the House from Connecticut's 2nd congressional district in the post-Watergate election of 1974. He served three terms before winning the Senate seat vacated by retiring Democratic Sen. Abraham Ribicoff in 1980.

In his 32 years in the House and Senate, Dodd has forged strong ties with labor unions, tried impose fiscal accountability on corporations and championed family and children's issues.

Dodd was the chief Senate sponsor of the 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act, which allows workers up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave for the birth or adoption of a child, or to tend to a personal or family illness. He also helped rewrite the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, worked to create after-school initiatives and has introduced legislation to reform the 2002 No Child Left Behind law.

Dodd was a driving force behind the 2002 law that toughened disclosure and conflict-of-interest rules for accounting firms in the wake of securities fraud scandals. He also helped write a terrorism insurance bill, an issue important to his state's insurance industry.

A fluent speaker of Spanish, Dodd served in the Peace Corps in a rural village in Dominican Republic from 1966-68 and has had a strong interest in Latin American affairs throughout his career. As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's western hemisphere subcommittee, he's been able to wield a heavy influence on U.S. involvement in the region.

Dodd strenuously opposed the Bush administration's choice of Otto Reich as the State Department's top diplomat in Latin America. Dodd and others criticized Reich's work in the 1980s as a State Department official heading an office accused of putting out illegal domestic propaganda against Nicaragua's Sandinista government.

Although he is firmly positioned in his party's liberal wing, Dodd is noted for a willingness to compromise that has made him capable for forging coalitions with members of both parties.

His role as chairman of the Senate Banking Committee — which oversees the nation's banking, financial services and insurance industries — gives Dodd somewhat of a fundraising advantage compared to other longshot 2008 prospects.

Dodd and his first wife, Susan Mooney, divorced in 1982 after 12 years of marriage. In 1999, Dodd married Jackie Marie Clegg, a former Export-Import Bank official and a Mormon. The couple have a daughter.

damn, that sounds like an obituary.

This is sad - Dodd wasn't the worst candidate, by any means. He had the support of a lot of good people in my state. He had a strong organization, and spent a ton of money here.

I'd be interested to hear why people don't think he managed to gain any traction.

You should know better than most Max, that credentials and qualifications are way down the list of priorities for most American voters when choosing which candidate to support. Most aren't even made aware of a second-tier candidates history, and can't be bothered to find out. We're pretty much limited to those candidates that are chosen for us. Our system can only work well with an informed electorate. They ain't and probably won't be anytime soon. Chosen candidates is one reason to watch out for McCain from the Republican side. It's his turn.

he sounded kind of self important in the debates, as did Richardson. they both had reason to fire off their expirience, but to me, that's all they seemed to do - nothing really against them in my book, that's just the reason that i think they didn't gain traction. that and a lack of funds. Biden seemed to sell himself short by bieng humorous, and took the criticism that he talked to much waaay to seriously, early on. And the lack of funding.