They were both outgoing Irish-American politicians from big families with powerful fathers. They served together in the U.S. for nearly three decades and when last year, when a gravelly ill Ted Kennedy could no longer lead the healthcare battle, he turned to his friend Chris Dodd.
On Monday night, Kennedy’s widow, Victoria Reggie Kennedy, came to Connecticut to thank her husband’s longtime colleague and close friend.
“Çhris Dodd has always been unafraid to dream the big dreams and unconcerned with the slings and arrows that come his way in the process,” Kennedy told a crowd of more than 1,300 Democratic activists at the party’s annual Jefferson-Jackson-Bailey dinner at the Connecticut Convention Center.
“He has an indomitable spirit that has kept him fighting the good fight helping to make this nation a better and fairer place.”
Dodd, who flew in for the event immediately after casting a procedural vote on unemployment benefits, appeared humbled by Kennedy’s praise. He noted that this is the final time he will appear before the friendly gathering of Democratic partisans as a sitting elected official, an experience he described as “bittersweet.”
He recalled the countless JJB dinners he had attended through the years, beginning with those he went to with his parents. He remembered hearing John F. Kennedy deliver the keynote speech in the late 1950s, and he remembered seeing Ted Kennedy and John Bailey “holding each others arms and going through the halls, [getting] a great reception.”
The dinner drew dozens of candidates for elective office, who handed out brochures and mingled with members of the crowd. The keynote speech was given by Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, who grew up in Rockville and worked for Dodd as a sophomore in college.
Warner compared Dodd to the University of Connecticut women’s basketball team. Each is an “incredible success story despite occasional…adversity.”
In his retirement announcement in January, Dodd said no one in politics is irreplaceable — to think otherwise is dangerous, he added.
“Well, call me dangerous,” Kennedy said. “Because I can’t imagine the Senate without Chris Dodd.”