Saving General Dann:Can Dann’s Production Outweigh His Problems?

Pluribus Media OhioNews Bureau

OPEDITUDE

COLUMBUS, OHIO: During his first term as president, Abraham Lincoln was bombarded by critics of one of his generals, who despite his winning ways was scorned for his many personal and professional shortcomings, on and off the battlefield. The more the general won victories, while Lincoln’s other more famous and more professional generals floundered, the more pointed became the disparaging remarks by the general’s critics.

But Lincoln, who had yet to meet his winning general from Ohio but who confessed to him that his battlefield judgments were right when the judgments of the man from Illinois were wrong, pushed back from the critiques of his critics, saying, he liked this Mississippi Valley general because “he fights.” In addition to what many of the general’s critics said were his unorthodox ways was their moralistic claim that he was a drunkard. Taking this alleged liability and turning it into an attribute apropos for wartime, Lincoln famously said the general’s brand of whiskey should be determined so that a large amount of it could be sent to the Union’s other generals so they too could win victories like him.

The comparison between President Lincoln and Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland is far fetched. But the connection between Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann and Ulysses S. Grant, the winning drunkard from Ohio who was elected president in 1868 but whose administration has suffered with historians who say it failed because of the many corruptions Grant allowed to take place on his watch, may not be such a stretch.

Marc Dann, the pugnacious fighter from Youngstown, Ohio, is hand-cranking his way forward on railroad tracks that an odd coupling of elected Democratic and Republican officials from Gov. Ted Strickland to the head of the Ohio GOP will use to chase after him on an impeachment train they hope will have so many riders and gain so much speed that Dann, unable to produce his way past his problems, will be caught and run over by it.

But trains can and do get side tracked. Should such a slow down affect the time and pace at which the impeachment train leaves the Statehouse station, if it ever leaves as some speculate it might not, maybe, just maybe the citizens of the state, especially consumers who haven’t had someone fight as hard and furious for their interests as Dann has in the mere 15 months he’s been on the job, will benefit from Dann’s winning ways much as the Union did from the many wartime victories General Grant brought it. An impeachment train interrupted, as seems to be occurring now as state political leaders and newspaper editorial boards rethink whether they should pursue such a pell-mell course that could recalibrate the impeachment game board for future officeholders who commit misdeeds and misdemeanor, may give General Dann the sliver of daylight he needs to become the reborn and redeemed kind of fighter Ohio citizens and taxpayers need to level the playing field between them and the Olympic might of corporations bent on fleecing them going forward as previous Ohio attorneys generals have allowed them to do.

In the week since Marc Dann made his emotional mia culpas for having engaged in an extramarital affair with a young, subordinate female staffer in his office, the casting call for the morality play now underway in Ohio has included virtually all of Ohio’s top statewide elected officials and a majority of its elected legislative leaders, who have reserved a seat on the impeachment train they aim to thrown Dann under if they can just get it fired up enough to pull out of the Statehouse station.

I HEAR THAT TRAIN A COM’IN, IT’S COM’IN ROUND THE BEND

The two engineers operating the throttle of the impeachment train are Gov. Ted Strickland, the first Democratic to hold the office in 16 years, and House Speaker Jon Husted, a term-limited Republican angling for higher office who will control the game board in the House, the station where impeachment trains are boarded.

Stokers shoveling coal into the fire box are Rep. Kevin DeWine, the chairman of the Ohio Republican Party who issued an immediate call to Dann to resign, Bill Batchelder, a Republican and former judge who aspires to replace Husted if Republicans can retain their Majority party status this year and Bill Harris, a Republican who will control the game board of the trial in the Senate should the impeachment train pull into that station.

Riders in the dinning car are Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat whose heavy-handed style on election matters has turned supporters into opponents, Democrat Treasurer Richard Cordray, who political pundits are predicting would be the best person to move into Dann’s spot if he resigns or is forced out of it, US Sen. Sherrod Brown, who has been a team player so far, and two Democratic legislative leaders, Joyce Beatty, the term-limited leader of the House Minority Caucus, and Ray Miller, the new leader of the Senate Minority Caucus who has had his own spat of problems related to overdue, unresolved campaign finance reports. There are others riding on the impeachment train, of course, but they are mere legislators, pawns who will follow prevailing winds.

With Dann’s confessions about his personal and professional short comings – that included the hiring of two long-time friends and confidants who he fired last week in the aftermath of an internal agency investigation that showed an agency-gone-wild atmosphere that set the stage for sexual harassment and misconduct, misuse of government property, illegally carrying an firearm, the possible suborning of perjury, running a private business on state time – the amalgamation of hitherto disparate political partisans into a seemingly unified force that seems hell bent on firing up the impeachment train has been the subject of news media reports for the past week.

For a state like Ohio that on any given day lists to the political right, the lingering image of an agency that has been described as an “Animal House” for lawyers has lead to the banishment of Dann from his own party, as happened Saturday, when the Ohio Democratic Party voted 90-1 to politically excommunicate Dann from its membership. Within days of his confession, ODP had scrubbed its Web site of any Dann droppings.

What a difference two weeks makes in politics. Newspaper editorial boards who have beat the drum for Dann to voluntarily step down and who will be on board the impeachment train if it ever gets up a head of steam, are now calling for cautious, thoughtful consideration of what happens next. Ohio’s Greatest Home Newspaper, on Sunday, ran an editorial urging legislators and others who have been foaming at the mouth over ousting the General from his frontline post to wait until independent investigative reports are concluded and then judge wisely whether plunging the train into the deep, dark tunnel of impeachment is the best course, given what may be waiting for it at the other end.

But for Dann, who probably shouldn’t have admitted but did that he was both surprised he won the office and unprepared to run it once he had it, the chorus of voices calling for him to step down least he be impeached is creating a din that’s drowning out the work he has done in his short tenure in the office.

CAN DANN’s PRODUCTION POWER PAST HIS PROBLEMS?

Notwithstanding the overt partisan political maneuvering that’s taking place, based on the presumption that Dann will be gone one way or another – through resignation, impeachment or voter petition – the legal work Dann has accomplished in office – his one good reason to stay on the job in the hopes he can have a second chance to make a first impression and redeem himself in the hearts and minds of voters and taxpayers in the process – should be given its day in court, despite those who have criticized him for not doing more. It makes sense and can be argued that if he’s produced the track record of legal accomplishments he has in 15 months, he can do as much or more in the time remaining before he really faces impeachment at the hands of Ohio voters in 2010.

The Office of Attorney General forwarded a list of its major accomplishments and priorities in 2007, which bear repeating here:

• Personal negotiation of $175 million AOL/Time-Warner securities case
• Leading role in Predatory Lending
  • First AG in country to file suit against a predatory lender, New Century, to stop foreclosures
  • Ongoing criminal and civil investigations of lenders, appraisers, foreclosure rescue scams
  • Developing legal theories to hold securitizers, investment banks, ratings firms accountable
• Catalyst for passage of laws needed to implement Adam Walsh Act, among the first states in the nation to do so
  • Completed reclassification of 35,000 sex offenders, 18,000 non-incarcerated, 17,000 in DRC and DYS
• Reform of the process used to award outside counsel contracts
• Aggressive action forced insurance broker Marsh McLellan to produce thousands of documents they had withheld related to antitrust/price fixing case
• Led the successful effort to eliminate estimated $200 million a month in illegal electronic gambling in the state
• Member of the NAAG executive committee that forced MySpace to reveal that thousands of sex offenders had pages on the social networking site. Committee continues to work with both MySpace and FaceBook to enhance safety and security of those using the sites.
• Began screening CCW applications to ensure that mentally persons could not obtain permits. This was required by law but had not been done by the previous administration
• Played major role in strengthening health care systems in Youngstown and Cincinnati by using charitable trust authority to participate in negotiations involving Forum Health Care and the Health Alliance
• Initiated student loan investigation
• Filed more environmental cases (57) than any other AG in the first year of their term
• Substantially strengthened consumer protection section, 42 active cases vs. 12 under previous administration
• Worked with federal and local authorities to apply for and secure $8.2 million Byrne Grant that will fund Ohio Gun Crime Center and other activities designed to impede the traffic in crime guns, reduce gang activity and violent crime in Ohio cities
  • Includes first of its kind mobile NIBIN unit that will facilitate testing of guns held by law enforcement across the state
• Filed amicus briefs in two important U.S. Supreme Court cases, Stoneridge and Tellabs, arguing to protect the rights of individual and institutional investors
• Using charitable trust authority to hold failing charter schools accountable
• OCIC task force broke up violent dog fighting ring in Dayton
  • Received Humane Law Enforcement Award from the Humane Society of the United States for this and other efforts to protect animals
• Much more aggressive in securities fraud and Medicaid fraud cases
• Initiated aggressive enforcement of Ohio’s prevailing wage laws ending 12 year period in which this important law was ignored by governors and AGs.
  

THE IMPEACHABLE DREAM

For all those who are banging the drum now for Dann to step down or be impeached, they were quite silent in years past calling for the same treatment of other officeholders were complicit in misdeeds or misdemeanors in office. Examples are former Gov. Bob Taft, a Republican, who was actually convicted of four misdemeanors while in office related to failing to truthfully make additions to receiving golf outings and gifts from lobbyists on his campaign finance reports.Misdeed, misdemeanor, malfeasance or misfeasance? You make the call.

A second example would be that of Joe Deters, a Republican, who was the Ohio Treasurer when former broker Frank Gruttadauria pleaded guilty to bribing an official in his office. Deters, who left office in the wake of this scandal to become the prosecutor in Hamilton County in southwestern Ohio, had been talked about as a candidate for the AG's office. Reports at the time quoted Deters saying he did not know the the person Gruttadauria bribed and said his office "never awarded business based on political donations from Gruttadauria or any other broker." Republicans never urged Deters to step down and never mentioned the "I" word about him. Deters won his statewide office even though his background was in law enforcement. His campaign to become AG, needless to say, were dashed with this bribery scandal.Misdeed, misdemeanor, malfeasance or misfeasance? You make the call.

A third example, this time from one of the major players in this years passion play, was House Speaker Husted, who in 2005 called on a friend to fly him and his son to the big game where where the home-town Ohio State University Buckeyes were playing the University of Miami. Writing in the Dayton Daily News, Statehouse reporter Bill Hershey put it this way:

"When incoming House Speaker Jon Husted needed a way to get to San Antonio on Dec. 29 to represent Ohio at the Alamo Bowl, he asked Tim Day of Dayton-based NCR Corp., if he could help. Day, vice president for NCR government affairs, based in Washington, did. He arranged for Husted, R-Kettering, to travel on the company's Lear 55C, seven-seat corporate jet, to watch Ohio State play Oklahoma State, and to reimburse NCR...Catherine Turcer, legislative director for Ohio Citizen Action, a government watchdog group, said the arrangement should have raised this question for Husted: 'Would they be doing this for me if I were not speaker of the House?'...This is the second time in less than a week that Husted's relationship with lobbyists he also regards as friends has drawn attention," William Hershey, Dayton Daily News.

Misdeed, misdemeanor, malfeasance or misfeasance? You make the call.

When James Conrad, then head of the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation, let a deal involving now-convicted Tom Noe of Coingate fame go forward that cost the state millions of dollars, Republicans didn't ask for his head on a plate, as they are of Dann today. The following chart shows a list of others who were party to the far-reaching Coingate corrupt scandal:

Ohio Public Officials Involved in Noe Scandal
Official	Position	Charge	Fine
Maggie Thurber	Lucas County Commissioner	One misdemeanor ethics charge for failing to disclose money for campaign fund-raiser	$1,000
Betty Shultz	Toledo City Councilman	One misdemeanor ethics charge for failing to disclose money for campaign fund-raiser	$1,000
Donna Owens	Former Toledo Mayor; gubernatorial appointee	One misdemeanor ethics charge for failing to disclose money for campaign fund-raiser	$1,000
Sally Perz	Former State Rep., gubernatorial appointee	One misdemeanor ethics charge for failing to disclose money for campaign fund-raiser	$1,000
Bob Taft	Ohio Governor	Four misdemeanor ethics charges for failing to disclose golf and gifts, including some from Noe	$4,000
Brian Hicks	Former Taft Chief of Staff	One misdemeanor for failing to report vacation stay at Noe’s Florida home	$1,000
Cherie Carroll	Former aide to Hicks	One misdemeanor for accepting meal from Noe	$1,000
H. Douglas Talbott	Former Taft aide; gubernatorial appointee	Two misdemeanor ethics violations for failing to disclose a loan and a meal from Noe; misdemeanor charge of laundering Noe money into three Ohio Supreme Court races	$3,960
Doug Moormann	Former Taft aide; gubernatorial appointee	One misdemeanor for failing to disclose $5,000 loan from Noe	$1,000

Larry Householder, who rose from obscurity in a small, rural county to become Speaker of the House and who got into trouble along the way, didn't suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune now being hurdled at Dann for his bad judgment. Nor did the others listed in this published report.

For so many to be talking so quickly about doing so much to just one man flies in the face of the many people who committed many similar if not worse offense but who received far less in the way of harsh treatment by those who are now suddenly see gambling going on in the casino that is Ohio politics. It would be one thing is Ohio politicians and the newspapers who claim to cover it objectively, fairly and in a balanced manner were even remotely consistent in their meeting out of criticism and calls for justice, but that is not the case by a country mile. If Dann were just another elected official who was getting his due as others before him had, the reason behind this OhioNews Bureau Opeditude would be moot. But it seems that Ohio officials, elected and appointed, ought to revisit their own history on impeachment and what rise to the level of asking for it before they get on board the impeachment train. Ohio has been derailed in many ways, from the loss of jobs to the loss of young brains moving elsewhere to a population that is becoming older and poorer and to a government now starring down the barrel of a $2 billion dollar shotgun in budget imbalances. For an unfortunate affair between a statewide officeholder and a subordinate female staffer to drown out the din of the state's other problems is maybe a bit much, even more a morally righteous that thinks banning gay marriage and putting adult business entertainment establishments out of business is not only the right thing to do but good for business. Speaking as an Ohioan from birth, this correspondent thinks Dann's misdeeds don't amount to a hill of beans when compared to the real hill of beans we're sitting on that isn't getting any smaller any time soon.

About the author

John Michael Spinelli is a former Ohio Statehouse government and political reporter and business columnist. He now serves as the OhioNews Bureau Chief for ePluribus Media Journal. Find ONB archives here. If readers have a news tip or story idea about Ohio politics or government, contact the OhioNews Bureau at: \n This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it This e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it