In town to promote his new memoir, Merrick Alpert went about developing the next chapter he hopes to write — in which he deposes a powerful five-term senator from his own party.
Democratic U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd and his party allies aim to prevent Alpert from making that story a reality.
A series of scandals and embarrassments have made Dodd a target of would-be senators already running hard a year before the November 2010 election. Five Republicans are seeking their party’s nomination. An independent’s running. And one Democrat has emerged to challenge Democrat Dodd in a party primary: businessman Alpert.
Alpert, who lives in Mystic, came to New Haven Tuesday evening for promote both his campaign and his memoir about growing up as the child of a single mom in Colchester, Morning Sun. Before the event, held downtown at Claire’s Corner Copia, Alpert sat down to talk about why he’s running for U.S. Senate.
Alpert said that voters no longer trust Dodd, who has been damaged by recent controversies involving a mortgage on his house provided by a subprime lender he was supposed to monitor as chairman of the Senate Banking Committee; a real-estate transaction in Ireland involving a felonious insider trader whom Dodd helped get a pardon; and CEO bonuses in the stimulus bill.
Dodd can’t win reelection, Alpert argued. So rather than cede the seat to a Republicans, Democrats should nominate him, he said.
He faces a touch fight. After 30 years of building alliances with Democratic interest groups and rising to a top position in the Senate, Dodd has rallied party leaders around his reelection campaign. He has also enlisted the liberal activist groups that play a crucial role in primaries.
State Democratic party spokeswoman Colleen Flanagan charged Wednesday that Alpert is playing into the hands of the Republicans by attacking Dodd for issues that should be left in the past.
Done With Dodd
Alpert, who’s 43, arrived at Claire’s on Tuesday wearing a black leather jacket over a checked button-down shirt and black slacks. He took a seat at a table in the back, placing his black canvas backpack on the bench next to him.
While Alpert has never run for office before, he is not a stranger to politics. In the early 1990s he worked for the Clinton-Gore campaign and then as a staffer for Al Gore and an organizer for the National Health Care Campaign in Oklahoma. He was a policy adviser to Oklahoma Gov. David Walters before moving into the private sector, where he has been a successful entrepreneur. He served as an Air Force officer in Bosnia in 1998 and 1999.
His decision to challenge Dodd for his seat was the result of one particular day earlier this year, Alpert said. It started with a trip to his barber in Hartford who has been cutting his hair for over 25 years. The man told Alpert about how he was struggling to stay afloat as a small business owner.
Then Alpert dropped in on his elderly mother in Colchester. She was at the kitchen table, holding a statement from her retirement investments, which had recently been decimated by the plummeting stock market. “Merrick, half of everything I worked for is gone,” she said.
Then Alpert went home, put his three kids to bed and sat down to watch TV with his wife. Sen. Dodd came on, denying involvement in the bonuses for AIG executives that were included in the stimulus bill. “I watched him stand up there and not tell the truth,” Alpert recalled. “It’s one thing to lie. It’s another thing to lie about lying.”
The events of that day convinced him he had to challenge Dodd for his seat, Alpert said. While the economy lags, Dodd has lost voters’ trust, Alpert said. He described the senator as “out of touch,” “not honest and trustworthy,” and without “empathy.”
“People have already decided,” he said. “They’re done with Sen. Dodd.”
Speaking later about Dodd’s controversial mortgage deal with Countrywide, Alpert said, “If the best we can hope for is that our senior senator is not convicted of a crime. It’s time for a change.”
Alpert said that there are three main planks in his platform. The first is private sector job creation. “I’ve created hundreds of high-tech, high-wage jobs,” he said. Among other investments he founded a software company and a power plant services company, Alpert said.
Dodd, who has served a U.S. senator since 1980, has never created a private sector job, Alpert said. “You don’t look for a lifeguard that doesn’t know how to swim,” he said.
Alpert’s second plank is clean government, an area where he said he is “starkly juxtaposed to the incumbent.” He said that he is in favor of publicly financed elections and term limits. He noted that Dodd, the chair of the senate banking committee, has taken in over $20 million in contributions from financial services companies. “I don’t take any corporate PAC [political action committee] money,” Alpert said.
Alpert’s third key issue is foreign policy, namely “getting us out of Iraq and Afghanistan.” He spoke about his time as a volunteer peacekeeper in Bosnia, a “Muslim nation.” That experience gives him the perspective to approach the two current wars wisely, he said. He said he opposes sending more troops to Afghanistan. “The course we’re on is a failure,” he said. “Dodd has supported it.”
Asked about areas where he agrees with Dodd, Alpert said, “The Family and Medical Leave Act [which Dodd sponsored] was the pinnacle of his career.” Alpert also mentioned support of gay marriage, where he now agrees with Dodd, who has changed his position since last year. The senator didn’t support it when he was running for president, “when we were paying him and he moved his family to Iowa,” Alpert noted.
Alpert also backs a public option in health care reform, as does Dodd.
Alpert called “a canard” and “a red herring” the argument that Connecticut Democrats should vote for Dodd because his years in the Senate give him seniority.
“Did Sen. Dodd’s alleged seniority prevent the collapse of banking” or stop his support for the AIG bonuses and Iraq and Afghanistan? Alpert asked. “Sen. Dodd’s seniority benefits Sen. Dodd … He picked a good committee from a fundraising standpoint.”
“Credit card reform is a great example of the difference between appearance and reality,” Alpert said, referring to Dodd’s recent bill. “It does not cap the overall fees you can be charged.” That oversight is a result of the “millions of dollars” that Dodd has received from the financial services industry,” Alpert said. “This is a bill they can live with.”
Alpert said that after decades in Washington, Dodd has lost the trust of Connecticut voters, who will no longer vote for him. “That’s my absolute belief. There’s no way he can win.” POlls have shown Dodd even with or behind the leading Republican challenger, former U.S. Rep. Rob Simmons. That’s unusual for a long-term incumbent.
On the other hand, Alpert described himself as a “nightmare for the Republicans.” With his background as the child of a single parent, a self-made businessman, the husband of an immigrant wife from Colombia, and the father of three children, Alpert said, he is the “electable Democrat.”
“Republican Talking Points”
Far from being a “nightmare for the Republicans,” Colleen Flanagan claimed, Alpert sounds like he’s ready to join the GOP.
Flanagan is the communications director for the state Democratic Party. In a phone call after Alpert’s visit to town, she rebutted some of his criticisms=.
Alpert described Dodd as having been in office too long. “I find that sort of line of attack to be questionable,” Flanagan said. The senator has a “record of delivering results,” she said. She described Dodd as a “leading voice on health care reform” and regulatory reform.
Four of the first five bills signed by President Obama came from Sen. Dodd, Flanagan said. Those included the credit card act and a tobacco regulation bill intended to prevent cigarette companies from marketing to children.
And “there is no stronger advocate for keeping jobs in Connecticut” than Dodd, Flanagan argued.
“Last week he won a huge victory on the C‑17,” she said. The senator worked to make sure that the most recent Defense Appropriations bill included money for the 10 C‑17 aircraft engines, which are manufactured by Connecticut’s Pratt and Whitney company. “Those jobs could have gone out of state or out of the country,” Flanagan said.
Dodd’s success on the appropriations bill resulted his seniority and his relationships in the Senate, Flanagan said.
In response to Alpert’s criticisms of Dodd’s acceptance of finance company contributions, Flanagan said, “I would encourage Mr. Alpert to read the newspaper.” Dodd has been “leading front and center” to protect consumers from predatory financial services, she said. The senator is talking about creating a Consumer Protection Agency that would help prevent predatory lending and mortgages, she said.
Flanagan said that Alpert sounds “a whole lot like the other Republicans” when he brings up the scandals that have dogged Dodd recently. The Senate Ethics Committee investigated his mortgage deal with Countrywide and cleared him of any wrongdoing, she said. Talking about mortgage misdealings and AIG bonuses amounts to “parading Republican talking points,” she said.
“The Republicans would like nothing more than for this election to be about issues that have already been dealt with,” Flanagan said.
Alpert later defended his critiques of Dodd as part of a healthy democratic (and Democratic) process. “I am of the belief that Democratic debate and a vigorous primary helps the Democratic Party and the United States. I didn’t give Sen. Dodd a sweetheart mortgage deal” or “a house in Ireland in exchange for a presidential pardon” or “convince him to move his family to Iowa,” or give bonuses to AIG.
“Senator Dodd needs to learn to take responsibility for his actions,” Alpert said.
This is a debate Connecticut Democrats should be having, AFTER the current legislative session concludes.
What everyone needs to realize is that Dodd's U.S. Senate seat is seriously at risk. If the party decides to back Dodd for another term, we're all going to have to pull together and work our butts off to make sure we don't lose the seat to the Republicans for the next six years. (Connecticut is once again looking to be a primary battleground for national politics.)
Personally, I'd prefer it if Dodd retired in favor of Atty. Gen. Dick Blumenthal. In one fell swoop we could put an end to this madness, as Blumenthal would bury whoever they put against him.
But I understand the loyalty to Dodd, who has been a lion in the U.S. Senate, and now stands as potential heir to the Kennedy legacy of fighting for the interests of the less fortunate in America.
As to Alpert, he lost me when he gleefully went on FoxNews, the very day of his announcement. And Ms. Flanagan is right, Merrick repeats way too many of the GOP's talking points to ever go anywhere in Democratic circles.