Connecticut Senator Draws Voters’ Ire for His Bonus Role

By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ and THOMAS KAPLAN
NYT

Clarence Randolph, a 50-year-old dump truck driver from New Haven, has been out of work for two months.

He is not happy that financial firms bailed out by the government are paying bonuses to their executives. And he does not understand why one of his senators, Christopher Dodd, allowed it to happen.

“Why would he do it?” he said as he was about to enter the New Haven Free Public Library to search online for jobs. “Why are they going to take taxpayers’ money — my money — and give all these people bonuses? I think that’s terrible.”

Across Connecticut, anger is erupting against Mr. Dodd, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, whose stature in Washington once reflected the state’s beneficial ties with the financial industry. Now, he finds himself a symbol of the political establishment’s coziness with tainted corporations and a target of populist wrath over their excesses.

(More here.)