The Chris Dodd who introduced the Senate version of Wall Street regulatory reform was no "friend of Angelo." Or Citigroup. Or Goldman Sachs.

Dodd's status as a "friend" of Countrywide C.E.O. Angelo Mozilo may have helped the Senate banking chairman shave a few points off his mortgage (it's since been cleared by the Senate ethics committee). But it cost him big-time at home.

So did a legislative provision he added to the stimulus bill that had the effect of locking in bonuses for the most loathed AIG executives.

Missteps like those had brought his approval ratings to an astonishingly low 40 percent. So, by the time he rolled out his financial regulatory overhaul last month, Dodd was in no mood to be friends.

He picked a fight with nearly everyone in the financial world, stripping the embattled Federal Reserve of its regulatory powers and alarming banks with a strong Consumer Finance Protection Agency.

"This is not a time for timidity," Dodd told reporters. "I will not stand for attempts to protect a broken status quo, particularly when those attempts are made by some of the same special interests who caused this mess in the first place.”

But Dodd's sharp left turn might not do much to alter the final shape of the financial regulatory overhaul. And his populism might not save him at the polls.

Close observers note that even when Dodd has gone after financial interests like credit card companies, it hasn't paid dividends in popularity. And financial firms say that despite the influence he wields as chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Committee, the ways of the Senate will dull his pitchfork. Indeed, they already have.

"Members of Congress all become self-preservationists around election time," said one financial-services lobbyist. "But the move to the left has been counterbalanced by his own party. That's how the Senate works."

Dodd and his supporters scoff at the idea that his more controversial provisions are there to help his reelection. After all, how many Connecticut voters care how many banking regulators there are, or how the federal government handles "systemic risk"?

The ones who do care, aides note, are probably the Wall Street commuters who live in the western part of his state, who don't like it. More important than any one complex provision, they say, is getting a bill passed.

"We're just trying to do the best job we can writing the bill," Dodd told Portfolio.com in a brief interview last week as he headed from the health care debate on the floor into negotiations with a handful of key banking committee members in a small room in the Capitol.

Some have even suggested that Dodd simply started off with fireworks for the television cameras before buckling down to real bipartisan negotiations.

But Dodd's get-tough persona hasn't worked in the past, even on more "kitchen table" issues like credit cards. He succeeded in getting a bill passed last spring requiring credit card companies to provide notice well before hiking rates and fees. He started bragging about it in television advertisements shortly thereafter.

His polls didn't budge, noted Jennifer Duffy, analyst with The Cook Political Report.

"They thought the credit card bill was going to take care of all their problems," Duffy said, "and obviously it didn't."