Connecticut Sen. Christopher Dodd shares a laugh with David Duffy, right, at the home of Dodd’s sister, Martha Dodd Buonanno, and his brother-in-law, Bernard Buonanno Jr., at left.

The Providence Journal / Connie Grosch

PROVIDENCE — Connecticut Sen. Christopher Dodd, a dark-horse candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, harvested about $100,000 in contributions last night at an East Side house party hosted by his sister, Martha Dodd Buonanno, and her husband, Providence lawyer Bernard Buonanno Jr.

Dodd, who said he hopes to raise $5 million in the three-month period that ends March 30, received a friendly reception from a turnout that included Rhode Island Democratic Senators Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse and former Sen. Claiborne Pell.

A veteran senator who in the 1990s served as chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Dodd is trying to break out of the second tier of Democratic presidential aspirants and into the rarefied group now occupied by Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, the party’s 2004 vice presidential candidate.

Dodd is known for an easy humor and ebullient stump style. He joked that his standing in national polls is rivaled only by “margin of error,” but emphasized that he is not tilting at windmills in his quest for the nomination.

“Why am I doing this?,” said Dodd, who at 62 is the married father of two young children. “This is not a warm-up for some future endeavor.”

An opponent of President Bush’s Iraq war policies, Dodd has called mistaken his 2002 Senate vote authorizing the president to send troops to Iraq. Dodd now says he would move immediately to bring troops home from urban areas of Iraq and gradually redeploy and bring home the rest of them.

“I would be moving our troops out of urban areas tonight,” he said.

Reed said he has worked for many years with Dodd and respects him, but he says he is not ready to state a preference in the presidential sweepstakes. Whitehouse has not taken a position, either.

Dodd is a Providence College graduate (Class of 1966) and the son of the late Connecticut Sen. Thomas Dodd. The only major state political figure who at this point is supporting Dodd is U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy, the 1st District Democrat.

Kennedy could not make last night’s fundraiser; he was en route to Pittsburgh for a congressional hearing this morning. Lt. Gov. Elizabeth Roberts and Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline also attended.

A onetime Peace Corps volunteer, Dodd is fluent in Spanish. Responding to questions, he said the U.S. should stop the flow of illegal immigrants from Mexico but should try to do so without building a wall.

Dodd also said that a path should be laid out for the estimated 12 million immigrants who are in the country illegally to attain citizenship. And he said that one of his first priorities as president would be to wean the country’s economy off its dependence on foreign oil.

“I think the country would like to be part of an idea like energy independence,” said Dodd. “I think the country is willing to do it.”

Dodd said he had no problem acknowledging that his 2002 Senate Iraq vote was a mistake. “I’m Catholic, I’ve been to confession,” he quipped.

smackay@projo.com