It is Wednesday, March 25, and with the start of the next FEC financial disclosure quarter rapidly approaching, it is decision time for a whole host of candidates for federal office.  April 1 means a clean slate for fundraising efforts – and three months to prove that a candidacy will have the financial firepower necessary to compete in 2010.

In the race for the United States Senate, the Chairwoman of the Connecticut Democratic Party, Nancy DiNardo, all but guaranteed that embattled U.S. Senator Chris Dodd will stand for re-election in 2010.  From the Stamford Advocate:

“Sen. Dodd is running. He is the Democratic candidate. I am supporting him,” DiNardo said. “People will remember what Dodd has done in the past and continues to do in D.C. and Connecticut.”

The statement is probably as clear as you can get.  Senator Dodd is beaten, but not broken.  His father would be so proud.  Meanwhile, a dozen young buck Democrats remain bottled up like airplanes on the tarmac, just waiting to fly.

And whose name will appear opposite the Senator on the November 2010 ballot?  The answer to that question remains unknown, though today’s news sharpened the race a bit.  The anchor of CNBC’s popular program “Kudlow & Company”, Mr. Larry Kudlow, took his name out of the running last night on his show (quote according to the Courant).

“In my heart, I know that I belong right here,” Kudlow said at the start of his show. “This is my love.”

Mr. Kudlow has been a popular feature at the last two Prescott Bush Awards Dinners.  Appearing just ahead of Presidential candidate Fred Thompson in 2007, Kudlow gave a vigorous defense of free markets and free enterprise to a packed room at the Stamford Sheraton.  In 2008, Mr. Kudlow appeared ahead of Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, enthusiastically promoting the Kudlow Creed: “Free market capitalism is the best path to prosperity”.  For now, however, it seems that the Kudlow Creed will stay on CNBC.

But as one potential candidate exits, another enters – or appears to, anyway.  The former Ambassador to Ireland for President George W. Bush, Tom Foley, seems likely to enter the race according to a piece that ran in the Greenwich Time and Stamford Advocate newspapers. 

Mr. Foley has an extensive, and impressive, resume: he is a friend of President George W. Bush’s from Harvard Business School, a successful businessman, a turnaround artist who was tasked with fixing Iraq’s ailing economy with the Coalition Provisional Authority, and then Ambassador to Ireland.  Chairman Chris Healy was quoted in the article:

“I think he’d be a great candidate,” Healy said. “He’s an experienced businessman. He’s been overseas doing some work for the government. He has a very good sense of what’s needed in the economy.”

There are still 587 days until polls open on Election Day 2010, but the jockeying for position is already well underway.

The final candidate worthy of mention on the merry go round is one that got off the ride last night with his head held high – the Minority Leader on the Bloomfield Town Council Joe Merritt.  Merritt ran hard in the politically challenging 15th State House District.  The district is a Democratic stronghold – to the point that in no precinct in the 15th can you add the number of Republican registrants to Unaffiliated registrants and equal the number of Democrats. 

A Republican victory in the seat was a longshot from the beginning, and made more so when it was the powerful Chairman of the Democratic Town Committee in Bloomfield, David Baram, running against him.  Despite the headwinds, Joe ran a good campaign and fared better than anyone expected – garnering a respectable 38% of the vote.  He has earned his praise.