My man Senator Christopher J. Dodd had all but owned Connecticut politics for much of his adult life, and he was reared to it.

Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, on Wednesday with his wife, Jackie, and their daughter Christina.

From The New York Times:

Mr. Dodd had all but owned Connecticut politics for much of his adult life, and he was reared to it. His father was Thomas J. Dodd, a three-term senator whose career ended ignominiously: After he was censured for converting campaign funds for his personal use, the Democratic Party dumped him in 1970, and he ran as an independent, clearing the way for Lowell Weicker, a Republican, to capture the seat.

The younger Dodd, who idolized his father, served in the Peace Corps in the Dominican Republic before law school and won election to Congress in the post-Watergate Democratic avalanche of 1974. Six years later, pursuing what many saw as an effort to redeem the family name, he campaigned for Senate, biking across western Connecticut and pressing the flesh in union halls and shopping centers, handily defeating James Buckley in the race to succeed the retiring Senator Abraham A. Ribicoff.

The gregarious and shrewd Mr. Dodd was in many ways a natural in the Senate, aides and colleagues said, whether dismantling a nominee before the Foreign Relations Committee in his first few months on the job, championing early childhood education, or pressing legislation on voting rights, health care or the environment.

[H]is failed presidential run in 2008 — for which Mr. Dodd, the Senate banking committee’s chairman, pulled up stakes and moved to Iowa even as the mortgage crisis mushroomed — drew ridicule back home.

But Mr. Dodd was hammered harder, and repeatedly, over the low-rate mortgage loans he received from Countrywide Financial; he eventually received something of a scolding from the Senate ethics committee, though it found no evidence he had knowingly sought special treatment. Then, early last year, a revision inserted into legislation by Senator Dodd — he said it was at the urging of Treasury officials — appeared to clear the way for bonuses for executives of American International Group, the troubled insurance company that received billions in federal bailout money.

As Republicans went on the attack, Mr. Dodd waited months before addressing questions over his personal finances — and was stunned by his reception in his home state.

Mr. Dodd spent heavily, running $600,000 in commercials over the summer. But he stumbled, too, producing campaign videos portraying him as the bane of lobbyists, even as the pharmaceutical industry’s lobbying arm ran its own commercials praising him and mailed brochures on his behalf to 100,000 Connecticut homes.