{news} As Dodd loses in polls- Time to draft a GREEN candidate for Senate in 2010??

Tue Mar 17 10:03:15 EDT 2009

please forward to all Green Party lists!

Dear Greens,

Dodd is losing to Republicans in the polls. He is tainted with several scandals and conflicts of interests. Most people can trace the financial meltdown to his BIG money donations and looking the other way as the crooks made off with our money.

We have NOTHING to lose by running a candidate for U S Senate- we can't spoil this race at all! Odds are the republicans will WIN this seat! 

Let us begin to discuss the race. I have one BIG TIME candidate in mind as a draft, and i want to win the race,, let;s begin dicussing this race on the FORUM list serve.

Tim McKee
(860) 778-1304 

courant.com/news/politics/hc-simmons0317.artmar17,0,1206332.story
Courant.com
SENATE RACE 2010
Democrats Go On Offensive Against Simmons
By DANIELA ALTIMARI and CHRISTOPHER KEATING
The Hartford Courant
March 17, 2009

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Rob Simmons' Senate candidacy wasn't even a full day old and Democrats were already on the offensive Monday, portraying the former congressman from Stonington as little more than a clone of George W. Bush.

Simmons is actually known as a fiscally conservative Republican who has broken with his party on several issues, including abortion, gay rights and drilling in the Arctic wildlife refuge.

But that wasn't the message that the Democrats were offering up on Monday.

"Rob Simmons is no moderate," Eric Schultz, a spokesman for the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, said in a press release. "He was a staunch supporter of George Bush's failed economic policies, and this race will be an opportunity to hold him accountable for that record."

It's an argument that worked in 2006 — Simmons lost his re-election bid by 83 votes, largely due to his support of an unpopular war championed by an unpopular president.

But this time around, with Simmons taking on U.S. Sen. Christopher Dodd, Democrats will have to come up with a fresh approach, said Ken Dautrich, a political scientist at the University of Connecticut.

"They don't have George W. Bush to kick around anymore," Dautrich said.

By November 2010, when the Senate race will be decided, Bush is "not even going to be a blip on the screen," Dautrich said. "This election is going to be about the Democrats and it's going to be about Chris Dodd."

Even though it's early in the election cycle, Republicans offered a glimpse Monday of a campaign strategy that promises to focus heavily on the economy.

"People are losing their homes, losing their jobs," Simmons said in an interview. "We need to look to the future, not the past."

Later Monday, during an evening appearance before the Barkhamsted Republican Town Committee, Simmons made it clear that he did not intend to run a polite campaign. He excoriated Dodd for taking out a "sweetheart mortgage" with a bank he regulated, moving out of state to run for president and for owning a vacation cottage in Ireland.

At his talk at the Barkhamsted Senior Center, Simmons used a pile of newspaper and magazine clips as a visual aid, saying they showed how much he relied on political contributions from banks that he regulated as the powerful chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking.

"I am troubled by what I read [about Dodd], but I am also troubled by what I read about the financial services sector," Simmons told the audience of about 30 Republicans. "The person principally charged with overseeing these matters as the banking system was entering trouble was out in Iowa running for president, missing in action, only to return to blame the crisis on someone else."

GOP state Chairman Christopher Healy, who ran Simmons' 2006 re-election bid, issued a press release Monday demanding that Dodd return — or donate to charity — $175,000 in campaign contributions from employees of American International Group, which is currently under fire for executive bonuses.

Dodd could not be reached for comment. But Nancy DiNardo, the state Democratic chairwoman, said that it was Simmons who helped create the current economic crisis.

"Rob Simmons supported every failed Republican policy that was voted out in 2006 and 2008," DiNardo said in a statement. "The last thing the citizens of Connecticut need is someone who will spend his time trying to resurrect these failed policies and undermine President [Barack] Obama's agenda to get the economy back on track."

Simmons launched his campaign over the weekend after consulting with his family and minister. He doesn't have a website, a headquarters or a phone number.

"We haven't even filed our paperwork yet," Simmons said. But he said he felt that it was important to announce his decision quickly, especially in light of a recent Quinnipiac University poll showing Simmons and Dodd in a statistical dead heat in a possible race.

Republicans believe they have their best chance in decades to defeat Dodd — a household name in Connecticut who has grown accustomed to winning re-election by blowout margins.

Dodd has come under heavy criticism regarding his refinancing of two mortgages through Countrywide. He was part of a VIP program, but has said repeatedly that he never sought any preferential treatment as a U.S. senator on the Senate banking committee. Connecticut voters were also stung by his decision to move his family to Iowa to run in the 2008 presidential race.

But Dodd is a nimble and experienced politician. No one is counting him out yet.

"The odds are that he will get re-elected," said Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution. "Being in a Democratic state with a very popular Democratic president and having years of experience, I'm guessing his prospects will improve as time goes on. Obviously, if the markets fail to stabilize, all bets are off."

Mann agrees with other national analysts that Dodd ranks among the most vulnerable Democrats in the Senate. "Dodd knows he's really up against it," Mann said.

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Tim McKee, New Britian, CT (860)778-1304

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