Sen. Dodd accused of making racist comment

WASHINGTON, April 7 (UPI) -- A mini-scandal has erupted in Congress as some Senate Republicans question whether comments made by Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., were racist.

In a speech on the Senate floor last Thursday marking Sen. Robert Byrd's 17,000th vote in the body, Dodd said the West Virginia Democrat, member of the Ku Klux Klan before taking office and opponent of the 1964 Civil Right Act, "would have been right during the great conflict of Civil War in this nation."

Dodd's comments struck some as similar to remarks made by former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., that led to his losing the position.

The comments were made as part of large praise of Byrd's great service as a Senator, which Dodd said, "would have been right at anytime."

Lott claimed at a private party for former Sen. Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday that if Lott's 1948 segregationist presidential bid had succeeded, "We wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years."

While some Republicans on Capitol Hill and conservative blacks pundits have ripped Dodd's comment -- in light of the Lott scandal -- Democratic leaders dismissed such comparisons.