Dodd: Home on the Trail

by Jason George

DES MOINES -- Presidential candidate Sen. Christopher Dodd is on the phone with a New Hampshire radio station, explaining his plan for getting out of Iraq and trying to ignore the war that has erupted around the corner.

"Gracie hit me!" shouts Dodd's daughter Christina, 2, as playtime with sister Grace, 6, comes to an abrupt end.

"This is a plan -- " Dodd continues.

"Agggggggh!"

"I've been calling for this plan -- "

"Stop it!"

Listeners 1,200 miles away might wonder if the senator is phoning from a day-care center, but this is actually an everyday morning at Dodd's new Des Moines digs, the house where he has set up camp with his wife, Jackie Clegg Dodd, and their two girls until Iowa's caucus next Thursday night.

While other campaigns rely on buses, hotel rooms and frequent flier miles to make sure the candidates see their families, only the Dodds have grown roots on the trail. Since they moved to Des Moines at the beginning of November, Jackie has run the house, taking the girls to school, the grocery store and gymnastics classes, while Dad crisscrosses the state, campaigning to be leader of the free world.

Somewhere a reality show producer weeps.

The Dodds say the unusual relocation decision grew out of wanting to see each other during the hectic season. "It was just a lot of time on the road, and we're not the fancy campaign traveling on our own jet," said Jackie recently, before the family sat down to an early breakfast.

"When you're traveling with two little ones, your first priority is to create stability for them."

It may be a form of stability, but the house buzzes with activity around the clock. Volunteers come and go, and Dodd often holds meetings and interviews in the living room. Consider that when the five-term senator from Connecticut enrolled Grace in a local kindergarten, it made some of the biggest news of Dodd's campaign.

"Enrolling your kids in an Iowa school because you're spending so much time campaigning here is probably a first in the history of Iowa caucus politics," wrote David Yepsen, the Des Moines Register's influential political columnist. "But Dodd needs to do something special in Iowa. Among the six leading Democratic presidential candidates, he's at the bottom of the pack."

But the polls don't matter much at the house, where Dad gets climbed on and hugged whether he's a front-runner or not.

Over the summer, all four Dodds visited Iowa and stayed in a hotel, and Mom and Dad quickly realized that a pack-and-unpack daily routine wasn't going to work. Jackie looked at rental houses online, and a staffer winnowed down the choices in person. They decided on a two-story, 1929 brick Tudor that the Dodds say has been perfect.

The family rents the furniture inside their new home, but they have made the place their own: Construction-paper snowflakes hang from chandeliers, and pictures of the sisters in mid-giggle perch on end tables. The Dodds even put together a swing set out back.

Despite the settling in, everyone seems ready to get back to Connecticut: As Jackie discussed the swing set's popularity (before the snow came), Christina blurted out, "My friends are at home!"

Silence.

"And she has friends here too," Mom said, turning to her 2-year-old. "Christian is a friend, right?"

"No," Christina said strongly. "He's a baby."

After breakfast, the girls headed up to their room, and Dodd did interviews for the next half hour by phone and in the living room with a local television station. In between journalists peppering the candidate with questions, the girls scurried down the stairs and into Dad's arms with an inquiry of their own.

Thrusting a DVD in his face, they squealed, "Can we watch 'Casper'?!"