“As the campaign heats up, Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd is slinging doughnuts — not mud — at Republicans.
At a black-tie dinner to open a New Haven restaurant, Democratic Senator Dodd, surrounded by Republicans, fired the first shot in a doughnut war that saw two former state GOP chairmen and the senator himself hit by jelly-filled missiles.
Is this very important? Important? Not important?
Roger Eddy would like to know, and he says so, in the newspaper ads he paid for in his bid to unseat the freshman Connecticut senator.
The senator’s Republican opponent has made Dodd’s apparent penchant for throwing doughnuts a campaign issue this year.
In fact, in full-page ads he took out two weeks ago in Connecticut newspapers, including The Advocate, Eddy dubbed Dodd, ‘Mr. Donut.’ It accused him of making a Memphis, Tennessee, doughnut shop into a battlefield in 1978 — with jelly doughnuts the weapons of choice. Dodd allegedly was among several people back in 1978 who threw doughnuts and milk cartons around a doughnut shop at 4 a.m.
Dodd has described the ad as, ‘gossip-column stuff,’ unworthy of comment.
The Eddy ad, in the form of a quiz, asked voters how important they thought Dodd’s doughnut-throwing antics were.
That ad prompted Jo McKenzie, a former chair of the state GOP and longtime friend of the senator, to play a practical joke on Senator Dodd, when he showed up the night of October 13, for the gala opening of her family’s New Haven restaurant, Robert Henry’s.
McKenzie, who has previously managed the Inn at Mill River in Stamford, and the Copper Beech Inn in Ivoryton, presented Dodd with — that’s right — a gift-wrapped box of doughnuts.
‘It was just a joke,’ she said. ‘He laughed.’
So did many of the 90 or so guests, who included former Stamford Mayor Thomas Mayers, Rep. Stewart McKinney, New Haven Mayor Ben DiLieto and Orange First Selectman Ralph Capecelatro.
‘The whole place broke up,’ said Dodd’s campaign manager, Rosa DeLauro, who was at the dinner. ‘It was just filled with Republicans and everyone was just laughing.’
But Dodd apparently figured it would be even funnier to throw the joke back in McKenzie’s face.
Dodd hurled a jelly doughnut a short distance across Robert Henry’s dining room and hit her, although not in the face. McKenzie was amused, and retaliated with a doughnut strike of her own.
‘He chucked one at me, and I chucked one back,’ McKenzie said. ‘We had a blast.’
The jelly doughnut struck Dodd — and bounced off him. It then hit Republican national committeeman Fred Biebel of Stratford, the man who served as executive director of President Reagan’s first inaugural.
Sources said Biebel escaped without any jelly stains.”
-Excerpt and images courtesy of the Genealogy Bank Newspaper Archive, Stamford, Connecticut, The Daily Advocate, “‘Mr. Donut’ strikes again,” by Joseph Queen and Andre Thibault, October 20, 1986
