How politics works: Senator Christopher Dodd and his cosy Irish cottage

This article from the telegraph uk

Posted By: Toby Harnden at Feb 24, 2009 at 05:44:00 [General]
Posted in: Foreign Correspondents
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Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Christopher Dodd, COTTAGE, Edward R. Downe Jr, Galway , Inishnee, Ireland, Irish, Kevin Rennie, Roundstone, William Kessinger

An intriguing item here from the dogged Kevin Rennie of the Hartford Courant that highlights a classic example of why ordinary citizens become cynical about politicians and the way business in Washington is conducted.

Silver-haired Senator Christopher Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, has already been getting a lot of heat for his two 2003 VIP mortgage loans from Countrywide, one of the major actors in triggering the current financial crisis.

Seeking Senate re-election in 2010, the 2008 presidential candidate (he dropped out on the first day of voting after finishing seventh in Iowa, where he had moved with his family as a way of courting voters) is now in a bit of a sticky spot with another accommodation- his "cottage" on the lovely Irish island of Inishnee.



Some digging from Rennie (a lawyer and former Connecticut state legislator) reveals that as well as there being a cloud over Dodd's properties in Connecticut and Washington DC, considerable murkiness surrounds the financial arrangements for the purchase of his "cottage".

As Rennie outlines, Dodd became part owner of the 10-acre Galway property in 1994 along with Missouri businessman William Kessinger, whom Dodd knew through investor Edward R. Downe Jnr, who had pleaded guilty the previous year to insider trading charges. The mortgage was listed as "between $100,001 and $250,000". Downe was a witness to Kessinger's purchase.

In 2001, Dodd circumvented the US Justice Department to help get his pal Downe a full pardon on President Bill Clinton's last day in office. The following year, Dodd bought off Kessinger's two-thirds share of the "cottage" for, Dodd said, $127,000.

Ever since then, Dodd has continued to list the value of the property as "between $100,001 and $250,000".

Check out the picture of Dodd's "cottage" (provided to me by Rennie), where he spends summers and which is looked after during the rest of the year by a caretaker. It's not exactly the humble tumbledown abode with a leaky thatched roof, a fireplace with peat thrown on it and donkey tethered outside that the Senator might like you to envisage.

The nearby village of Roundstone is a celebrity hangout. When he's there, the Sunday Times reported in 2007, he's likely to "rub shoulders with [RTE's] Pat Kenny, Bill Whelan of Riverdance, Lochlann Quinn, the former AIB chairman, and the singer Brian Kennedy".

Given the Irish property boom, a conservative estimate would be that the house would be worth approaching $1 million, and very possibly much more than that.

So why hasn't Dodd declared a more realistic true value of the property? No doubt he didn't want to highlight the fact that he had a third splendid pile, to go along with his residences in DC and Connecticut, as he sought the presidency (remember how all those homes harmed John McCain?). Maybe he knew it would mean further scrutiny of his connection with the pardoned crook Downe.

Now that President Barack Obama - whom Dodd enthusiastically endorsed for president over Hillary Clinton - has declared a new era of ethical government in Washington, his former Senate colleague will order a fresh, long overdue reappraisal of its value. Or perhaps the Senate Ethics Committee will look into the matter.

Call me cynical, but I wouldn't advise you to hold your breath.

Added by me.

Not to mention the fact that Dodd had a job as a lawyer for 2 years before he was elected to the house for 6 years and then to the senate for now 29 years. A job that now pays only $168,500 per years, and less in previous years. How can he afford these several multi million dollar homes?