Doddering Dodd
Senate Democratic leadership sources say that there are already
internal discussions between Senate Majority Leader
Harry Reid and some members of
his inner circle about how to handle Sen. Chris
Dodd and the growing concern that his personal
finance and conflict of interest scandals will continue to
grow.
“Right now, Dodd is the poster boy for Democratic politics,”
says a leadership aide. “There are serious doubts that he should be
allowed to continue in the Senate.”
Dodd at this writing trails former Republican congressman
Rob Simmons by double digits in early polling for
his 2010 reelection bid. Dodd’s special treatment for home
refinancing, his purchase of an estate in Ireland, which also
received favorable treatment from the financial sector, and his
wife’s conflicts of interest with ties to failed insurer AIG, as
well as Dodd’s role in allowing AIG executives to collect
contracted bonuses, have made him a political target for
Republicans across the country.
Dodd has refused to bend or apologize for his actions, and there
is a growing sense among Democratic leaders that he should not be
seeking reelection but instead should announce his intent to
retire. “There are several congressional and state-level Democrats
who could more readily challenge Simmons and win,” says a staffer
for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Recently, the
DSCC launched an attack on Simmons, but at the same time, the
staffer said, it was an attempt to measure just how much trouble
Dodd was in: “If the messaging doesn’t work, we have a good idea
that it isn’t so much Simmons as it is about Dodd himself. From
there, who knows where this goes?”
AIG in a Hole
Some House Republicans are attempting to determine who or what
entity may have started the run on AIG, the collapsed insurer,
which last fall was the epicenter of the U.S. financial collapse.
“There was an initial run on AIG that put it in a hole that it
couldn’t climb out of,” says a Republican staffer on the House
Financial Services Committee. “We are trying to pull the string to
see where it leads.”
The run began because an entity inside AIG known as AIG
Financial Products sold insurance protection to banks and brokers
on more than $400 billion of mortgage collateralized debt
obligations and other fixed income assets. The initial run on AIG,
many believe, was caused by rumors that the firm could not meet the
initial margin calls.
“It would be interesting to see who lit the fuse on the AIG run,
and whether there were other intentions in starting the collapse,”
says the aide, who would not go into greater detail. The
assumption, say some congressional staffers, is that there were
political motivations for pushing AIG over the edge, given the
timing of the margin call.
Meet the Team
As expected, senior Obama adviser Valerie
Jarrett is directing much of the political and “third
party” outreach from the White House to such groups as MoveOn.org
and Americans United for Change (AUFC), as well as the Democratic
Nation al Committee.
Jarrett routinely holds meeting with leaders of those groups in
offices outside the White House, and has been spotted meeting with
officials from labor’s SEIU, among other Obama-backing
entities.
But Jarrett isn’t pulling all the strings. Her chief of staff,
African- Lithuanian-American Michael
Strautmanis, a longtime aide to disgraced former
Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich as well as an early
organizer for the Obama campaign, is, according to White House
sources, the key driver for AUFC outreach and activities.
“Michael is the one who passes along the polling data we have,
and gives us the external polling data we get from other groups,”
says one source. “Valerie isn’t making the day-to-day decisions;
Michael is.”
Both Strautmanis and White House deputy chief of staff
Jim Messina work closely with
chief of staff Rahm Emanuel in coordinating the
messaging and advocacy programming that were used to create the
impression of support for the Obama budget.
A White House official with knowledge of the coordination plan
says that Strautmanis, Messina, and Jarrett communicate routinely
with about five different groups, all of which were integral to the
Obama political machine last fall.
Americans United for Change is the key entity, however, as it is
now fully integrated into the DNC. A number of AUFC officials, such
as former AUFC president Brad Woodhouse, are now
DNC employees, and AUFC has been leading the coordinated campaign
efforts against Republican congressional leaders.
Getting Evan
While President Barack Obama has publicly
called off attacks against Sen. Evan Bayh and
other moderate Democrats who raised doubts about the White House’s
budget and stimulus package, he has privately told aides to keep up
the pressure on Bayh’s Moderate Democrats Working Group.
“We’re not going to let this thing go,” says a White House aide.
“Bayh is raising funds and seeking PAC underwriting for his
organization. If that’s the kind of game he wants to play, to throw
sand in the gears of our legislative efforts, then we have ways to
complicate matters for him, too.”
Bayh has told colleagues that he hopes to have about 10 members
in his working group, which will meet regularly. At one time Bayh
was thought to be a possible Obama running mate or cabinet member.
Now, he may be setting himself up to be the president’s most
visible Democratic critic.
Present Tense
House Republican whip Eric
Cantor has become the man conservatives love and
love to hate, depending on the day of the week. Cantor angered
conservatives recently by voting “present” on legislation related
to limiting executive bonuses.
He claimed that he did so not because he didn’t want to vote
against the bill, but because his wife is an executive of a bank
that received TARP bailout money. Now Democrats are attempting to
determine if Cantor’s wife received a bonus for her work in the
2008 fiscal year.
Cantor has been walking a fine line on such issues ever since he
persuaded a number of fellow House Republicans to vote for the Bush
administration’s initial financial bailout plan, when many wanted
to vote on principle against it.
Mr. Know-It-All
Department of Energy secretary Steven Chu is
not making a positive impression on his staff inside the
department. Chu arrived with a reputation for being brusque and
acting like he was the “smartest guy in the room,” according to
current career Energy staffers, and he’s done nothing to soften
that impression. “He may be the smartest guy, but he’s also the
most obnoxious,” says one staffer.
