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"In 10 years, 2009, you will rue the day you did this," Mr. Pearson quoted Mr. Dorgan as saying. "This is a harbinger of bad things to come."
He said that Mr. Dodd, who is now the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, and other lawmakers made a poor decision in approving the revision, which he believes led to the crisis of last fall in the financial services sector.
The 1999 legislation was sponsored by U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.), and U.S. Reps. James Leach (R-Iowa) and Thomas Bliley (R-Va.)
Mr. Pearson said in a recent interview that Glass-Steagall, which was established during the Great Depression, "created silos" for banks, insurance companies and brokerage houses.
"Human nature didn't change over the decades," he said. "What worked its way into the system again was greed."
Mr. Pearson said that 5 percent of the mortgages were subprime in 1999, and by July 2007, when the real estate market crashed, the figure had escalated to 30 percent.
Mr. Dodd, who has been easily elected five times to the U.S. Senate, the longest career any Connecticut resident has had in the upper body, has, according to Washington Post political columnist Chris Cillizza, been in a "free fall" for more than a year as he has had to answer questions about the refinancing of two mortgages, a transaction on a home in Ireland and conflicting answers regarding his role in bonuses for executives at AIG, which has received federal funding during the financial crisis.
"He's become the banks' senator," said Mr. Pearson, who has a law practice in Stamford and represented some major tennis players years ago, including former Greenwich resident Ivan Lendl, who captured eight grand slam titles.
"He had a legislative record for the first 20 years that was distinguished," he said of Mr. Dodd. "The last 10 years was not so distinguished."
Mr. Pearson said that he believes that Mr. Dodd has become too complacent over the last decade, noting that he was wrong, for example, in moving his family to Iowa in late 2007 as he prepared to compete in the Democratic presidential caucuses there.
"He's been there too long, too," he said when reminded that U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Stamford) moved his family to New Hampshire in early 2004 before the presidential primary there.
"I think that they both should go," he said of Connecticut's two U.S. senators.
Mr. Dodd, who has been known for his ability to easily interact with colleagues from both parties and is a recognized leader in child-care legislation, was trailing all three potential Republican challengers in a poll conducted by Quinnipiac University.
Mr. Cillizza has rated it as the second most likely U.S. Senate race in the 2010 election to change parties. Mr. Dodd was elected to a fifth term in 2004 by about a 2-1 ratio.
In addition to Mr. Pearson, who was the Democratic candidate in the Fourth Congressional District in 1988 and also served as the second selectman in Greenwich, Merrick Alpert, a software executive from Mystic who has worked as an aide to former Vice President Al Gore, formally entered the race earlier this month.
Fox News commentator Michael Barone has stated that few senators have rebounded from the low approval ratings that Mr. Dodd has had in recent polls.
However, state Democratic Chairman Nancy DiNardo has distributed a news release in support of the senator's re-election bid, and Democratic State Central Committee member Audrey Blondin of Litchfield said last month that none of the more than 50 party leaders that attended a question-and-answer session in Torrington with Mr. Dodd indicated that they would support Mr. Pearson's campaign.
At this juncture, Mr. Pearson said he has an exploratory committee and will make a decision by this fall as to whether he would formally seek the party's nomination at the convention next May.
He said that he is currently meeting with Democratic town committees across Connecticut and giving interview with reporters.
Mr. Pearson said that he spoke with state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and former U.S. Senate candidate Ned Lamont, who also live in Greenwich, about seeking the party's nomination before he embarked on his exploratory committee.
He said that he has been raising money, including contributions from executives of Forbes 400 firms.
Mr. Pearson said he supports Democratic President Barack Obama's $787 billion economic stimulus package as well as the $700 billion economic rescue of the financial institutions that then-President George W. Bush, a Republican, signed last October, indicating that both measures were needed to revive a sluggish economy.
"The government has to be a bigger player than it was in the Franklin Roosevelt administration," he said regarding the challenges resulting from the economic crisis.
Mr. Pearson said he shares the concern of some columnists, such as Robert Samuelson of The Washington Post and David Brooks of The New York Times, regarding the massive projected budget deficits for at least the next decade.
However, he said that he believes the federal government could lower the deficits by enacting health-care reform that improves technology and emphasizes prevention.
Mr. Pearson said that funding for better health-care information technology in the economic stimulus package is a good start toward giving physicians the data that can allow them to determine more quickly what steps need to be taken to cure a patient.
"Right now they may do tests that are not necessary," he said regarding the limited information that is sometimes available in a patient's medical history.
Mr. Pearson said that more Americans need to engage in strenuous physical activity, noting that he plays tennis regularly.
He said that he is concerned in particular about the increase in child obesity and believes companies should be given incentives to provide opportunities for their employees to exercise during their work breaks.
Mr. Pearson said that health care is a "major driver of inflation, indicating that it represented 8 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in 1979 when Democratic President Jimmy Carter tried to tackle the problem and has now grown to 16 percent of GDP.
Regarding savings in federal entitlements, he said that Mr. Carter made "a good argument" in a 1998 CNBC interview regarding a proposal not to provide Social Security benefits to retirees who are wealthy.
"However, they have paid into the system," Mr. Pearson said.
He said he would support efforts to increase the maximum threshold on Social Security payroll taxes.
Under the current system, only slightly more than the first $100,000 of an employee's income is subject to the payroll tax, meaning that a millionaire would have roughly 10 percent of his earnings subject to Social Security levies.
On foreign policy, Mr. Pearson said that he opposes Mr. Obama's commitment of additional military forces to Afghanistan.
"We're getting into another Vietnam," a reference to the controversial military conflict of the late 1960s and early'70s, he said.
Mr. Pearson said he is not sure that the United States can turn Afghanistan into "a democratic nation."
He has long had an interest in government, having worked as a congressional intern at age 17. He can vividly recall dates and events, noting, for example, that he and another intern had a long conversation with former Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater the year before his 1964 campaign, and he was in the White House when Democratic President John Kennedy's body was brought back after he was assassinated in Dallas.
