Knit Pick?
As the Jan. 3 Iowa presidential caucus looms nearer, Sen. Chris Dodd has been barnstorming in the true sense of the word. The Connecticut Democrat, who recently moved with his family to the key early primary state to make campaigning for his party's nomination easier, attended several barn parties there in the last two weeks and was invited to have a "true Hawkeye Thanksgiving," in one his campaign office said.
Though the bulk of the Senate Banking Committee chairman's campaign backing has come, unsurprisingly, from financial services industry contributions, he is out to prove he is not in Wall Street's back pocket and that he can appeal to a wide swath of constituents.
The grassroots effort appears to be paying off, at least a little. In an article headlined "Knitting women choosing sides; many like Dodd," the Nov. 20 Chicago Sun-Times reported that Sen. Dodd had won over Karen Thalacker, a Barack Obama volunteer and well-known Democratic activist in Bremer County.
According to the story, the Dodd campaign infiltrated a knitting circle, charming Ms. Thalacker and five other knitters. "Dodd … courted her assiduously," it said. "One of his campaign workers, a young man, even joined the weekly knitting group and with a skein of red, white, and blue wool patiently tried to make a scarf."
But the paper said Sen. Dodd hadn't quite wrapped up the knitter vote.
"A couple of knitters," the story said, "still remain on the fence, but Thalacker is working on that. 'Wendy is still undecided,' Thalacker reports. 'She loves Obama, but she hosted a house party for Jackie Dodd" — the senator's wife — "this weekend and was very impressed.' Another knitter, Elizabeth, a Democrat, is seriously looking at Republican Ron Paul," the story said.
Bair Backers
A movie deal is not in the making, but you may as well call Sheila Bair "The Modifier."
Others — including Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke — have signaled support for broad conversions of troubled subprime mortgages into fixed-rate loans, but Ms. Bair, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. chairman, was the first and loudest to urge wholesale modifications.
Last week her position got a big endorsement when California's governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, said her idea was the model for his deal with four leading servicers to expedite modifications in the state.
"I agree with FDIC Chairwoman Sheila Bair, who says we have to put all" of these loans "on a fast track," he said at a Nov. 20 press conference.
The Terminator was not her only champion. The Wall Street Journal, which had already backed Ms. Bair's modification approach in an editorial last month, listed her fifth in its 2007 ranking of "50 Women to Watch" in business. The paper said Ms. Bair, new to the rankings and the only U.S. regulator to make the list, "urged lenders to quickly team up with Wall Street firms and modify hundreds of thousands of subprime adjustable-rate mortgages before markets worsened and foreclosures snowballed."
Also on the list, published in the Nov. 19 issue of the Journal, were Morgan Stanley co-president Zoe Cruz (ranked fourth); Bank of America Corp. global risk executive Amy Woods Brinkley (13th); Frances Aldrich Sevilla-Sacasa, the president of U.S. Trust, Bank of America Wealth Management (32nd); and Erin Callan, the managing director and CFO-designate at Lehman Brothers (45th).
Gillmor Honored
The Ohio Bankers League honored Rep. Paul Gillmor posthumously on Nov. 7 with a lifetime achievement award, which the trade group had renamed the Paul E. Gillmor Lifetime Public Service Award.
Rep. Gillmor, an Ohio Republican and senior member on the House Financial Services Committee, died from injuries sustained in an accident in his Washington home in September. The chairman of his family's Ohio bank, Rep. Gillmor had been a principal advocate in Congress for banning retailers like Wal-Mart Stores Inc. from owning industrial loan companies.
The award was presented to his widow, Karen Gillmor, at the league's annual meeting.
"Paul Gillmor was very effective but worked quietly, never playing to the camera or microphone," the league's chairman, Robert F. Smith, the president and chief executive of Advantage Bank, said in a press release.
"Not only did his constituents love him, so did his colleagues in Congress — Republican and Democrat alike."
