Countrywide Scandal Causing Big Problems For Senator Dodd, But Why Not Senator Conrad?

According to Time, Senator Chris Dodd is suffering mightily in his home state of Connecticut thanks to his having taken sweetheart, VIP loans from Countrywide financial VIP Angelo Mozillo.

Dodd is looking increasingly vulnerable. The silver-haired father of two young girls is facing his toughest re-election fight ever, and he doesn’t even have an opponent yet. (CNBC pundit Larry Kudlow and former GOP Representative Rob Simmons have both expressed interest in running.) In a January Quinnipiac poll, 51% of Connecticut voters said they would not vote for Dodd in 2010. “It’s the subject matter — people are watching their tax dollars go into institutions and they wonder when it’s going to get better and they wonder where it’s going,” Dodd says. “I don’t find people trying to elbow me out of the way trying to take over jurisdiction of the Banking Committee.”
Much of Dodd’s current woes stem from a pair of mortgages that he must wish he had never gotten. His reputation has not recovered from the revelation last year that he received a sweetheart deal on his mortgage, saving upwards of $75,000 courtesy of Countrywide, one of the biggest pushers of the subprime mortgages that have landed the U.S. economy in such dire straits. Connecticut officials say there is no evidence of wrongdoing, and Dodd, who has allowed reporters limited access to his mortgage documents, denies he got any preferential treatment and insists he is going to refinance with a different bank. “I made the mistake of not addressing it earlier,” Dodd concedes. Still, he will not allow reporters to deeply examine the “hundreds of pages” of mortgage documents, saying, “No one has ever showed as much as we have.” But the scandal has left a bad taste with Connecticut voters; in the Quinnipiac poll, 56% said the Countrywide connection made them less likely to vote for Dodd.

What I’m wondering is why Senator Dodd is facing problems in Connecticut, but Senator Kent Conrad who also took sweetheart loans from Countrywide isn’t suffering here in North Dakota.
Now, admittedly, Dodd got a whole lot more from Countrywide than Conrad did, but that’s an issue of scale that seems irrelevant. Bad deeds are bad deeds. If one man cheats on his wife once, and another man cheats on his wife a dozen times, are they not both adulterers?
To be perfectly honest, Senator Dodd has journalists in his state who care about holding him accountable for his actions. Senator Conrad has a bunch of limp-wristed sycophants who re-publish his press releases for him and rarely engage in even the most limp-wristed of criticism of him for fear of losing their access.
Kent Conrad essentially took a bribe from Countrywide mortgage in exchange for favorable action in the Senate. And he’s getting away with it because nobody in North Dakota’s media cares to hold him accountable.