Tim Russo: Hi. This is Tim Russo from DemocracyGuy.com, and we are here at Talkie’s Coffee in Cleveland, Ohio with Subodh Chandra and Marc Dann, Candidates for Attorney General in the State of Ohio in the Democratic Primary. Thanks for joining us, guys.
Candidates: Nice to be here. Thanks for doing this. This is great.
Tim Russo: The first question that I would like to ask, and then we’ll just open it up, because it’s sort of like winging it as we usually do here at Meet the Bloggers, Subodh, when we interviewed you on Meet the Bloggers, you sort of talked about the Eliot Spitzer model for an Attorney General; and when we talked to you Marc, you said that that might not be the best for Ohio. Can you both sort of expand on that for us a little bit?
George Nemeth: Subodh, go first.
Subodh Chandra: Well I don’t know that when you talk about an Eliot Spitzer model that we’re not talking about trying to simply replicate somebody else’s work, because every Attorney General in every state is confronting the challenges before that state, and they’re trying to use the authority that they have under the laws of that state to protect their citizens. The job of the Attorney General is to be the people’s lawyer and run the people’s law firm, and if we’re doing that here in Ohio, we’re going to have significant special interests to battle and to pursue and to hold accountable. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. There’s certainly nothing anti-business about enforcing the law, because what it does is create a level playing field for businesses and individuals and government officials who are in fact complying with the law. So it’s not that I’m looking at any one particular state or Attorney General as absolutely the model that one wants to replicate. Whether it’s Eliot Spitzer in New York, Dick Blumenthal in Connecticut, Lisa Madigan in Illinois, Tom Miller in Iowa, other states have understood that they need to put their Attorneys General offices in the hands of experienced lawyers and prosecutors to do the job. It’s not an office to be held, but it’s a job that needs to be held.
Tim Russo: Marc?
Marc Dann: Well the question you actually presented to me when I was here was that Subodh Chandra says that he wants to make the Attorney General’s Office the largest public interest law firm in the country, and that was the question I was responding to, and I said I don’t think Ohio is going to tolerate the Attorney General’s Office as the largest public interest law… I’d love to run that, by the way, and if anybody wants to offer me that job, I’m anxious for it, to run the largest public interest law firm in the country, but what I believe is that, as the Attorney General, we need a lot more Eliot Spitzer in how we do business as a state, and in how our Attorney General operates as a state, but we need to do it in an Ohio kind of way. So what we need to do is look at every action we take, whether it’s in the agency representation role, whether it’s in the regulatory role, or whether it’s in the what I call the Plaintiff’s side of the office, the Consumer Protection, the Anti-Trust, Environmental Protection side of the office, where we’re taking, initiating, actions on behalf of consumers and individuals and the State as a consumer. We have to make sure that there’s a direct relationship between that action that we’re taking and improving the quality of life for people in Ohio. Otherwise I just think that the job goes beyond the scope, and I think to some degree, as the New York Attorney General, you have a little broader portfolio, because you have all the world’s financial markets in your state, so things are a little bit different. But I think that we need a lot more energy. We need a lot more creativity in the way that we represent our agencies and we represent the State as a consumer and the State’s consumers through the Consumer Sales Practices Act and the other empowerment tools that the Attorney General has, but I don’t think that we can just be the largest public interest law firm in the country.
Tim Russo: Just a quick follow-up on that.
Subodh Chandra: By the way, I don’t think I said the largest. I think I said best. Size doesn’t matter so much.
Tim Russo: Just a quick follow-up on that Eliot Spitzer. I know we’re talking a lot about him.
Marc Dann: __
Tim Russo: Go ahead, guys. I mean this is a debate. He just announced an action against H&R Block, this being tax season, about H&R Block selling products to consumers that really wasn’t what they presented as them being, and did you guys follow that? Do you know if there’s any connection to Ohio, and how many Ohio consumers were harmed by this?
Subodh Chandra: Yeah, I don’t know whether Ohioans were harmed by this, but what it does is it raises a question as to why the 7th biggest state in the country, Ohio, always needs to look to New York, Mississippi, Minnesota for leadership. The fact of the matter is, we’ve had Attorneys General in Ohio for the last 12 years who’ve done so little that nobody even knows what they do, and nobody understands the significance of the office when, in fact, if we use this Attorney’s office as the people’s law firm, we could in fact protect Ohioans from harm, whether it is a particular scheme that another Attorney General uncovers, that we would join in that. The tobacco litigation was certainly something where Betty Montgomery missed the opportunity to participate in it from the outset. I don’t know what part of the marketing of tobacco to children she found appropriate, but apparently it wasn’t serious enough for her to be concerned about it. Natural gas prices, you’ve had a number of Midwestern Attorneys General say that there’re serious market irregularities occurring, and we should have been a part of the release of that report asking to take action. When Dick Blumenthal sued the federal government over the No Child Left Behind Act, saying it’s an unfunded federal mandate, Ohio should have been a part of that. When a bunch of Attorneys General sued the biggest predatory lender in America that’s wreaking havoc right here in Ohio, Ohio’s Attorney General should have been a part of that. Are we beginning to get the picture here? We have an Attorney General’s Office that has been giving aid and comfort to special interests, instead of fighting those interests on behalf of Ohioans and protecting them from harm.
Tim Russo: Marc?
Marc Dann: Yeah, I agree with that, and we need to do a lot more of those kinds of things, but again, the only governor on that is the… Not the governor Governor, but the restrictor on that is there’s just got to be a direct relationship to the quality of life of people in the State. The predatory lending issue is a great example of that. I mean part of the big problem here is that it’s not just about the individual who loses their home to a predatory lender; it’s about the neighbors whose quality of their neighborhood declines as a result of that loss. There’re so many different places where the State has a stake in the quality of life, because our best ability to bring business into the State isn’t related to our tax code. It’s related to improving the quality of our educational resources in the State, and improving the quality of life for people in the State. So the AG, as driver of economic development, can be using those powers, using that role to improve the quality of life, so that we become a more attractive state, because we need more decent paying jobs in the State. I mean that’s the bottom line, and we all have to work towards that, whether you’re Attorney General, Governor, Auditor, or Secretary of State.
Tim Russo: Tim Ferris?
Tim Ferris: Hi there, guys. Tim Ferris, Blogger Support atGloriaFerris.net. With regard to consumer affairs, recently Frank Jackson, the Mayor of Cleveland, Ohio, opened up an office of Consumer Affairs at the municipal level. Is this something that needs to be done at the municipal level, or is it something that could be done at the state level more efficiently?
Subodh Chandra: That’s what the Attorney’s General Office is. That’s what it’s supposed to be. The Attorney General’s Office is supposed to be enforcing the Consumers Sales Practices Act on behalf of the citizens of Ohio. That office, by the way, has been open for a few years. What Mayor Jackson did was beef it up, and it did allocate some additional resources to it, but it has been open for a few years, and it was closed for a while, and it had been opened decades ago. But that’s what the Attorney General is supposed to be doing, and that’s what we haven’t seen happen.
Tim Ferris: Is this is a duplication on Frank’s part of the actual job that you should do?
Subodh Chandra: Oh no, I don’t think so, because I think what you’re talking about is again, some local solutions and local problems, and when I was Law Director actually a number of times, we would try to reach out to the Attorney General’s Office for help on a particular consumer problem, and we didn’t usually get very much help from the Attorney General’s Office, but there’s not necessarily duplication, but there’s supplementation, in terms of being able to attack particular local problems. One of the problems, of course, is that when I was Law Director of the City of Cleveland, the State failed to live up to its responsibilities. The predatory lending example is probably the biggest example that I can think of where when the State failed to act, we had to pass an ordinance to protect our citizens, as did Dayton, because entire neighborhoods were boarded up, and the elderly and vulnerable of our city were being thrown out of their homes by unscrupulous lenders. State fails to act. We pass the ordinance. The State then passes a law written by lending lobbyists to try to protect the lenders. They sue Cleveland, and then Jim Petro joins them. This wasn’t just a situation where he was looking the other way. He was actively doing us harm, and chose the predators over those who were preyed upon.
Tim Russo: Marc?
Marc Dann: I think the Attorney General’s Office has a huge job in 2007, assuming one of the two of us is in that job, of reaching out to the community, including people in the City of Cleveland, whether it’s through their Consumer Affairs office, or in lieu of them having a Consumer Affairs office, because people do not know what the Attorney General’s role and responsibility is in consumer protection. In protecting victims of crime, I mean the outreach has been minimal. What they’ve done is stockpiled the Victims of Crime funds in the Attorney General’s Office, used them for pet programs that might be good PR. One in particular that came through my Committee was an identity theft program, which I certainly want to try to help people who are victims of identity theft, but it was costing $700 per victim in the staff and Public Relations folks that Petro hired to provide identity theft cards, when a police report would do for most credit card companies that somebody had taken your identity. So instead of using these tools for political advancement, actually use these tools for protecting consumers, for protecting victims of crime, and opening up the doors to that, working with local cities. I opened an office in my State Senate District, you know, in Ashtabula City Hall, so that people would have a place to meet with their Senator and a place to drop off information and mail and back and forth, and I think that that’s the kind of thing the Attorney General should do all over the State, but in a meaningful way, in partnership, perhaps, with offices like the Cleveland Office of Consumer Affairs.
Tim Ferris: Ok, thank you.
Tim Ferris: Russell?
Russell Hughlock: This is Russell Hughlock from the BuckeyeStateBlog. Jim Petro, the current Attorney General, has come under some criticism from the right for ballooning his budget within the office, and also from the right and the left for in part ballooning his budget through cronyism and awarding outside contracts to campaign contributors. How are you going to reconfigure the AG’s Office to accomplish the things you want to do, you know, in respect to what you have inside and what you go outside for, and how can we be assured that there won’t be pay-to-play when you’re Attorney General?
Subodh Chandra: Well this kind is a form of something that I’ve already done once. When I took over as Law Director, the City of Cleveland had spent more money than the City of Los Angeles on outside lawyers. We whacked it down from a high of $7.4 million in the year 2000 down to $850,000 in my last four years as Law Director in the year 2004. Now some of that, a greater expense might have been attributable to the Cleveland Browns Stadium, but we had huge projects, like the Cleveland Convention Center, in the later years as well. You can do it if you manage your money properly, if you use techniques like saying, “We’re going to hire lawyers who only for their unique expertise, but when we could do the work in-house, we’re going to do the work in-house.� We did it; we saved the money. This is not something I think that you want to see learned on Day 1, because there is such huge savings that need to be incurred, because if you think about what Petro has done, not only is it a big political lie, to claim that you’re a fiscal conservative and outsource the work at greater expense, but he’s done serious damage to the State by doing so, because he passes those bills outside of his budget to the universities and the other agencies, and it comes out of their budget. And so for the universities, that’s money that could have been used for education, for scholarships, for reduced tuition. There are real victims here, when you have that kind of pay-to-play culture, and as Marc has said so nicely, the phraseology that he uses, “it’s a corruption tax,� and it’s absolutely inappropriate. So we can do this. I’ve done it before. One of the other things I think that we have to do, if we’re going to address this, is change the way that decisions are made about how to allocate counsel, or which counsel we’re going to choose. If anybody were to look at my record as Law Director, they’d be hard-pressed to find any correlation between the people who donate and the people who receive contracts, because there was no such correlation. You’ll see large contracts going to people who made no donations, and you’ll see the opposite, and the reason for that is, because we just didn’t do it that way. We simply looked at a particular issue, said, “Boy, do we need outside lawyers for this? Who are the best people in town to do this work? Go get them. Get a Request for Proposals from them, and have them look at it.� I’ll close with this thought, which is, I do not believe, as my primary competitor seems to, that somehow we need to set up some new bureaucracy to set standards to help us decide how to choose counsel, because all you have to do is have a policy on how you choose counsel, and you don’t need other people’s input. That’s a substitute for legal experience and judgment and breadth and depth of exposure in all the different areas of law where you’re going to need to be able to pick lawyers, and I don’t need that kind of judgment substitute, because I have it. I have the experience.
Tim Russo: Marc?
Marc Dann: Well I’ve laid out the way that I’m going to choose special counsel as Attorney General. It’s going to start with a broad effort early in the Administration to pre-qualify firms in a transparent way, ask them for a set of qualifications, essentially create a list of firms that are interested in doing work for the State of Ohio, and then in a very transparent process, send out Requests for Proposals and responses that will all become public records, so that if I’m favoring certain law firms who are campaign contributors, it will be a public record and people will be able to see the competitors for those particular projects, will be able to look and see at what rate and at what level of experience the work is being awarded, and so by creating transparency, I think we can create accountability in the Attorney General’s Office, and I think that’s sorely missing right now. The other thing is that we’ve got to really think about this outsourcing of legal work that Petro has done to significantly benefit his campaign to the tune of about $6 million over the last four years, three and a half years, is, if you’re frustrated by the Petro ads, if you really want to be aggravated by the Petro ads that ran right after the election, then think about the fact that you paid for them. It’s public financing, but in the wrong context. Public financing for incumbents, and that’s wrong, and we’ve got to change it. But it’s not just ‘cause it’s wrong. What it’s done is robbing the Attorney General’s Office of the kind of attractive jobs that we’re able to keep government lawyers, even at the relatively low pay scale, because if you’re contracting out the interesting work, you’re losing those lawyers that might be able to stay for an extended period of time, make a better contribution, and work can be done, as Subodh did at the City of Cleveland, significantly less expensively by in-house lawyers in many cases. So looking at those and changing that structure.
But here’s the other piece. Let’s take the Attorney General’s Office as again as an economic development driver. Fifty… of the $129 million in outside counsel that Petro’s hired, according to the Dayton Daily News, $50 million of that was for intellectual property work. You know, why not think about creative ways to maybe bring in some very bright intellectual property lawyers, maybe pay them more than the Governor makes, but bring them in, instead of working 18-hour days, maybe they’ll work 12-hour days in the Attorney General’s Office, and they can mentor some of the best and brightest law school graduates from Cleveland State and Ohio State and Case Western and from around the country? I think we could create a very competitive place where a lot of the work in intellectual property is duplicated between universities, yet the big plum in each community is who gets to represent Cleveland State or University of Akron, or Youngstown State University in my community. It shouldn’t be about politics. And I think the Plain Dealer stories speak for themselves about what’s happened in that regard, whether it’s been politics or campaign contributions, either way it’s wrong. What it needs to do is take a fresh look at how this is all structured, so that at the end of the day, not only can we have an accountable transparent process, but we can have one where we can maximize the impact that we have.
Tim Russo: Jack?
Jack Ricchiuto: Jack Ricchiuto, JackZen.com. Good afternoon. You’ve got a choice of questions, because I can’t follow rules, so, the questions…. and you could answer the same one together or a different one. The questions are: What are your priorities in the first 90 days of office? Question B is: What do you think are the key differences between the two of you?
Subodh Chandra: I think we’re going to need to address both questions. I mean let me address the priorities question first.
Jill Miller Zimon: I’m going to interrupt you for one second. You can take the first question, because I’ve got a variation of the second one.
Subodh Chandra: Ok.
Marc Dann: Ok.
Tim Russo: Thanks, Jill.
Subodh Chandra: On the first question, the issue of priorities, on Day 1, I would send a letter to every member of the General Assembly and to the Governor, regardless of party, and tell them that there’s a new Chief Law Enforcement Officer in town, there’s a new Sheriff in town, and I expect them to come into compliance with the decisions on school funding that say that our system of school funding is unconstitutional, and unconstitutionally reliant on property taxes. What will they then do? Ignore me. And what we would do is then begin to implement a strategy of working with our new Governor representative, and it will probably be a Democrat, finally, I think. Present that to the General Assembly for their consideration. If they ignore that, we’ll present another and another, until they have shown willful noncompliance and go back to the courts. I think the Attorney General’s catalyzing role in trying to make sure that people comply with the rule of law is critical. And the other piece of it, of course, is ending this Culture of Corruption and cronyism. That’s a Day 1 responsibility. That’s one that you do by drawing on the experiences I’ve had as a member of the U.S. Department of Justice, where we had a completely different culture. You didn’t get to take goodies, as long as you reported them. You just didn’t take goodies. We change the culture. We make it a place that people can come and whistle blow misconduct throughout State government in the Attorney General’s Office. Day 2 then is all of the other challenges: predatory lending and all the fights that we’re going to have to take on against special interest.
Tim Russo: Marc?
Marc Dann: Well I would first begin the process of implementing this transparent process for the selection of special counsel and begin a review at top to bottom of all the special counsel assignments in the State to make sure that we have appropriate people even in the short-term representing the State’s interests as it relates to the various representations that are… And there’re literally thousands of them around the State, and different contexts. Secondly, I would create a Public Integrity Unit in the Attorney General’s Office that could be a place where people could go when there are problems in state government, to provide resources and help to local prosecutors in the event that there needs to be a criminal prosecution regarding governmental misconduct, but to provide just like BCI does in terms of forensics and technical resources, to provide that kind of technical resource support to other folks, whether it’s the Ethics Commission or the Legislative Inspector General, or whoever else is doing their work, to make sure that they have the resources to get to the bottom and root out the systematic corruption, because even if we change the people at the top, we’ve got years of socialization going on that we’re going to have to undo in state government that is causing us to have to pay this corruption tax and sort of get to the bottom of it.
I’ve already started, by the way, to do what Subodh’s talking about. I’m sending a letter out to my colleagues on Monday addressing the issue of the Capital Reappropriations Budget, which has a provision in it creating a new type of school levy. That new type of school levy will allow people to put on the ballot a school levy that increases with the property values of a community. This flies directly in the face of the… And it’s already passed the House, by the way, by a 98 to 1 vote. It’s coming to the Senate as part of a broader package, and the fact is, what it does is exactly fly in the face of the DeRolph decisions and the State Constitution, because we’re increasing the reliance on local property tax, and we’re increasing the disparity between districts with growing valuations of property and those that don’t. In my community, where my wife serves on the School Board and my children go to school, our valuations are not growing nearly as fast as in other places in the State, so this new levy means nothing to us, but it’ll again in kind of a rich get richer mentality that’s caused us to be in the school funding mess to begin with, so…
Tim Russo: Before we go to Jill, I have a quick follow-up on this. We interviewed Jim Petro yesterday, and he told us that he believes the State is no longer in noncompliance.
Marc Dann: What was in his coffee?
Tim Russo: What is your response to that? He basically said that the unconstitutional balance between State taxes and local property taxes is no longer an issue.
Subodh Chandra: This is the State that sent John Glenn around the world as a response to Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin. This is the State that used to be at the cutting edge of virtually every industry at the heart of American life. If Jim Petro believes that our educational system meets the constitutional standard of fairness and equitability required by our Constitution, then he has gone beyond any standard of malpractice in his legal judgment that I have certainly ever experienced as a lawyer. I cannot believe that that is his sincere judgment. That statement simply fits a pattern of politicizing and making claims and defending interests that are indefensible. If that is in fact an accurate reflection, and I have no reason to doubt you, of his views, I say shame on him for his poor judgment as a lawyer. Shame on him for his failure to lead as Attorney General in trying to save our state from the mess that we’re in, and heaven help all of us, if that kind of judgment continues to lead this state.
Tim Russo: Before we get from you Marc, you both believe that if another case were brought today, that the Supreme Court would still rule Ohio’s school funding system unconstitutional?
Marc Dann: You know, let me qualify that, because the Supreme Court has also become much more political than it should be in the State, and that any of us, anybody who is serious about government and law ought to be comfortable with, and so my hope would be that if they followed the law and read the Constitution, and followed Stare Decisis, yes. They would find that the current school funding system is unconstitutional, about to become slightly more unconstitutional next week, because I have no doubt that this is going to stay in the Reappropriations Bill. But the bigger question with Petro is that he doesn’t understand the most fundamental job of a lawyer, and that is to sometimes have to deliver the bad news to your client. And in a political context, I can see and certainly the longer we’re campaigning, I think Subodh and I both see how easy it is to tell people what they want to hear, and that is just not our job, either as a candidate, I think, or as Attorney General, and that means that sometimes you’re going to be uncomfortable and sometimes you might not win the next office, and that spending your career as Attorney General running for Governor, as Jim Petro has, and Betty Montgomery frankly did before, is not the mindset that the people of the State need. They want somebody..we deserve a lawyer who’s willing to tell us the truth, for better or for worse, for bad or good, even if it doesn’t benefit them.
Tim Russo: Jill.
Jill Miller Zimon: Thank you. Jill Miller Zimon. I blog at WritesLikeSheTalks.Blogspot.com. I’m going to follow up on what Jack had asked about the differences, but I want to ask it a little bit different way. Hypothetical. I’m a voter. I’ve read about both of you. I’ve been able to meet both of you. I like both of you. I want a Democrat as Attorney General. I go to vote and I’m thinking, “You know, either one of these is definitely going to be better than what we’ve had. I just can’t decide.� Can you please state three things that you feel qualify you to be a superior candidate?
Subodh Chandra: Well, I’ll take that first. The thing is, this is just a hiring choice, like anything else in life. We overcomplicate things when we think that it’s a political choice, a ballot choice, which it is as a practical measure, but it’s a hiring choice, because the Attorney General is supposed to be the people’s lawyer, running the people’s law firm, and because the interests that are at stake in the Attorney General’s work is actually undertaken as opposed to ignored, as what we’ve seen in the last 12 years. Because all of that is at stake, this is simply about hiring the person that you would choose as your lawyer, if your own life, liberty or property were at stake.
In my own case, I bring to the table considerable experience in complex litigation, in complex white-collar prosecutions, on criminal law and civil law, and then also the experience in running a large law firm. The difference is one… I could see how it would be confusing, because you’ve got two intelligent people sitting at a table who all tell plausible tales about their experience and passion and wisdom, but the difference is simply, what does the job require and why does it require that? The job requires a greater level of experience and expertise than what we’ve seen in this Office from politicians with law degrees, because the very nature of the threats to Ohioans have increased in their severity.
Jill Miller Zimon: I’m going to interrupt you because I want you, I’d like you to distinguish yourself from your opponent. I don’t mean to be mean…
Subodh Chandra: I’m doing that.
Jill Miller Zimon: …and pit you against each other, ok, but…
Subodh Chandra: I’m doing that. I’m doing that.
Jill Miller Zimon: …because you’re distinguishing yourself for sure from the Republicans, but…
Subodh Chandra: No, I’m also doing it from my primary opponent, because the threats that are facing us are ones in which teams of lawyers will be coming at us. If we take on the natural gas industry and their pricing, if we take on predatory lenders, as we should, if we take on insurance companies, if they are price fixing, if we take on these interests, we will be facing huge teams of extremely funded lawyers, well funded lawyers from some of the biggest firms in America coming at us in hoards, hundreds of lawyers. And I have led such teams in fighting those interests as Law Director. I have handled prosecutions against corporate defendants, and the fact of the matter is that years ago, it might have been appropriate for a bright lawyer coming from a general practice background, he’s handled divorces, personal injury, some personal bankruptcies, he’s handled those kinds of individual problems. It might have been appropriate, as long as they kept up with the law and they were bright, to be able to take the helm of the Attorney General’s Office. Today that is not the case, because how is somebody without experience in complex criminal procedure going to be able to deal with Homeland Security issues if we have a terrorist attack on this state and there’s a sudden need to advise local law enforcement, as I did when we had a blackout and I was with the City? How is somebody going to handle the death penalty appeals of the State and supervise them? How is that person going to fully understand how to reform the State’s crime lab?
Tim Russo: Well let’s find out how, Marc. You’re sitting right here.
Marc Dann: Sure. Thank you. That’s a great question. You know, you look at both of us I think from where we come from or what choices we’ve made in our legal career, and Subodh has primarily represented big institutions and corporations; I’ve primarily represented ordinary people, and there is a difference.
Subodh Chandra: That is not true, by the way. I’m just telling you. Go ahead.
Marc Dann: Primarily, and if you look at the resumes and look at the careers, there may have been an individual, and I’ve represented Bank One one time. So in fact I’ve represented a bank in my legal career as well. But I think having a lawyer with an orientation towards ordinary people, who have looked in the eyes of people that have gone from $25 an hour to $15 a hour and have caused them to be in financial distress as a person, I think that’s a huge preparation for serving as Attorney General. I’ve taken on big corporations with legions of lawyers. I sued Pennzoil for a guy that oiled the roads and had the mix of the… He was trying to the right environmental thing, by instead of putting oil on roads wanted to put a more sophisticated Pennzoil additive on the road and the thing didn’t work and he almost lost his business over it, and I took on Pennzoil in federal court and beat them and got a settlement for them that allowed my guy, Bill Weaver, to stay in business oiling roads for townships in the summer. Not oiling them, but using hopefully environmentally preferable methods to do that. I’ve taken on big banks, seven big banks who fired employees at Ajax Magnathermix in our area and didn’t pay them the 60 days that they were supposed to pay under Howard Metzenbaum’s Warren Act Bill, and when the District Court said no, I took them to the Court of Appeals in the Sixth Circuit and won a decision that’s going to allow those people potentially to receive their compensation. So I’m not afraid to take on those challenges, just like I wasn’t afraid to sue the Governor as a member of the Legislature, and the fact is I wrote the Homeland Security Bill as Senate Bill 9 and the Terrorism Act in Ohio, and I was the primary Democratic co-sponsor of that bill and shepherded it through. And many people in this room may disagree with what we did in that bill, but the fact is we had unanimous Democratic support in the Senate for that bill. So I’ve taken a policy leadership role. Part of the Attorney General’s job is going to be about accessing resources, accessing budgetary resources, and experience in politics and policy is as important as experience in legal affairs. I’ve got to tell you something. The first thing I’ll do as Attorney General is to hire a guy like Subodh, who has represented big institutions like the State and corporations, and I will listen to him about some of those kinds of issues. I’m smart enough to know what my strengths and weaknesses are, but I’ve got two things that the people of the State are ready for. I’ve got guts and honesty, and that’s what I’m going to provide as Attorney General. I think that’s what’s gotten me so far in the Legislature.
Subodh Chandra: You know what? Before we move onto the next question, this really is the heart of this interview, so I want to respond a little bit, and then we can mix it up. The fact of the matter is that if we continue to treat the Attorney’s General Office… If we treated County Engineers offices the way we’ve been treating the Attorney General’s Office in this state, then there would be bridges falling down all over Ohio. Giving guidance as a policymaker about where to build a bridge is great, because that’s legislative leadership. Legislative leadership is about setting policy, being a generalist, having good ideas. It is a far cry from executive leadership, where you have to implement that policy. And the difference between a County Engineer and an Attorney General’s Office is that an Attorney General faces hoards of lawyers on the other side, has to organize the team, manage the team, marshal resources, make snap complex legal judgments on the fly every day. It is not the same as legislative leadership where you’re free to opine on just about anything you want to, but you don’t, you’re not individually accountable for the implementation of those policies. This is not about… In a sense, and if I can say so respectfully, the question “Who is better qualified?� isn’t really the right question, because the right question is, what is it that Ohioans are facing? What is it that they’re facing now? What is it that they’re going to face? And can they afford at this point, when we’re 12 years behind in our legal work, can they really afford untested leadership, for somebody to try out what they may have read in a book, to try out their theories in a way that they implement policy, as opposed to having actually done it and being able to do it from Day 1?
Marc Dann: You know, if I can respond.
Tim Russo: Quickly, yeah. We’ve got a lot of bloggers here who want to ask questions.
Marc Dann: Right, right, but he’s running for First Deputy Attorney General, and God bless him, ok? The Attorney General makes policy, makes decisions, sets the direction for the office, accesses the resources that are necessary, and moves the state forward and, frankly, you know, guys with Yale law degrees are a dime a dozen. Guys with the heart and passion to do what’s right for the people of the State of Ohio are a little tougher to come by, day in and day out, and I think that’s what this is about.
Subodh Chandra: It’s not about where you went to school.
__: I think we’re going to have to cut it off.
Subodh Chandra: It’s not about where you went to school. This sort of faux populism routine really avoids the issue. It’s about preparation to do the job, and there’s people with all kinds of different schooling that can be brought to the table. The question is, are you ready to do the job? I’m sorry. Go ahead.
Tim Russo: Jeff.
Jeff Coriell: Jeff Coriell with Ohio2006Elections.Blogspot.com. The two of you…
Marc Dann: Can’t you guys just pony up for the regular domain name? I know it’s $30 bucks a year or something.
Jeff Coriell: Should I spell that for the record?
Tim Russo: I think we’ll get it.
Jeff Coriell: Are you satisfied with the Administration of capital punishment in this state? If not, how will you as Attorney General fix it? And will you commit to us today that if, as Attorney General, you determine that the death penalty is not being applied fairly or justly, that you will call for a moratorium on the enforcement of the death penalty?…. I think Marc should go first.
Marc Dann: That’s fine, because I’ve already offered an Amendment to have a study of the application of the death penalty in Ohio. I believe it’s something we need to study and we need to study right away, and that the Attorney General should be an advocate, and here’s why. The Attorney General is the representative of law enforcement at the top level in state government, and the Attorney General’s Office should… In order for the fair administration of the death penalty to take place, it needs to take place in an environment where the public and juries are confident that it’s being fairly administered. And so true proponents of the death penalty… And by the way, I am not a proponent of the death penalty on a policy basis, but as Attorney General, I’m absolutely committed to enforcing the death penalty, as it exists in Ohio, and improving it, and improving the administration of it, as it exists in Ohio, because that is the job of the Attorney General, to carry out the law. And I’ve got to tell you something, and it caused me… Before I decided to run for this office, that caused me a few sleepless nights before I was ready to be able to commit to do this, because I believe there is a significant distinction between the two, and it’s an important distinction. But those who want the death penalty to be administered in Ohio ought to want there to be a truth and fairness approach to how we do it, and honesty, and bad cases to be tossed out and good cases to provide and to move forward. And I think it’s in the interest of all sides to get to the truth about the application of the death penalty in the State, and so as Attorney General I would advocate for that. The Attorney General opposed that when I offered that Amendment to the bill.
Tim Russo: Advocate for a review, or advocate for a moratorium, if the review shows that it’s unfair?
Marc Dann: Well that would be the next step, and if there’s an unfair application of anything going on in Ohio, I think just like we did with landfills in the bill that I pursued, I introduced a bill to have a moratorium on new construction landfills, until we figured out what to do next. So at the moment, at that time, with that information, I think we have to kind of look at that issue and what it yielded, and of course sometimes that’s in the eye of the beholder, too, so I don’t want to commit to a moratorium unless the data supports what needs to go on, but we ought to be collecting the data and we ought to be doing it now.
Tim Ferris: Subodh?
Subodh Chandra: There is nothing tough on crime about executing innocent people. In fact, it is a terrible thing to do, not just because of the morality involved, but because when you have a wrongfully convicted person on death row, by definition you have the true perpetrator running free. And so if we have a problem in the administration of the death penalty in Ohio, we need to face up to it and we need to address it quickly. Now I have heard estimates from very well respected lawyers that the State of Ohio is losing about a third of its death penalty appeals in the federal courts. The federal courts are by no stretch of the imagination liberal anymore, so if even those courts, and if even the Sixth Circuit is reversing a third of those appeals and sending them back, then we may very well have a problem in Ohio that needs to be addressed.
What I would do is… Again, anybody can study anything or order a study, and certainly these issues need to be studied so we gather facts, lawyers and prosecutors gather facts before they make a decision. The hard part is going to be what to do? What’s the implementation? What are the reforms? And that’s where the experience I have in criminal prosecution is going to be useful. The ability to speak the same language with the County prosecutors and helping them improve their practices. The issue of indigent defense is a huge issue here in Ohio, because one of the reasons that we’re seeing these kinds of reversals is because of incompetent representation. And the Attorney General, as the top prosecutor in the State, should be committed to justice, not just convictions, which is a standard… And I know you’ve experienced in the Department of Justice…
Tim Russo: What about the moratorium?
Subodh Chandra: If a moratorium is appropriate, then it’s appropriate. I mean in Illinois, they found a moratorium appropriate when they studied their system and they understood that they had problems, and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend such a moratorium here in Ohio. I also would not hesitate to make recommendations to the Governor if I thought that a particular case… you don’t just blindly defend the case, as it goes up on appeal. If you believe you have an innocent person on your hands, you make a recommendation to the Governor on clemency. But the underlying heart of this is that these, one of the reasons we have a problem with indigent defense in this state is because death penalty cases are the most complex kinds of cases to be handled. So the notion that somebody who has no exposure to the complexities of criminal procedure can somehow be in charge of this incredibly critical function for the State of Ohio is laughable. And I can understand why one who has no prosecutorial background might want to de-emphasize the importance of that function in this office, but it is a critical function of this office, from running the State’s crime lab, handling the death penalty appeals, advice to local prosecutors.
Tim Russo: Subodh, let me stop you right there. Marc Dann, we know what your position is on the death penalty as a policy issue. What is your position on the death penalty?
Subodh Chandra: And I understand there are many people in the Democratic party that may disagree with this, but I support the death penalty as a proportionate punishment for certain types of crimes. The best example that comes to my mind, as someone who was born and raised in the Oklahoma City area, was Tim McVeigh and the Murrah Center bombing. I think that was an appropriate application of the death penalty. But I just want to underscore, that does not mean that I will ever do what your classic politicians with law degrees do, which is to grandstand on the issue, to claim “Hey, my death penalty’s bigger than your death penalty.� It is the ultimate punishment; it therefore deserves the ultimate due process.
Tim Russo: Marc, I’m guessing you want to respond?
Marc Dann: Yeah, I just want to respond briefly. I served as the ranking Democratic on the Senate Judiciary Committee for almost three years that I’ve been in the Senate, and as a member of the Committee for that period of time, I’ve dealt with law enforcement bills, prosecutor’s bills. I’ve actually tried cases on both sides, as a prosecutor and as a criminal defense lawyer. I understand criminal procedure, and the fact is that I think Subodh is really being unfair to me and to my experience to allege otherwise. The fact is that these are policy issues, and the Attorney General’s role, and this is a policy-driven role, and I have more than enough preparation in the system to do that, and that that I don’t have, I’m smart enough to hire.
Tim Russo: Daniella.
Daniella Lindquist: Hi. Good afternoon. My name is Daniella Lindquist, and I have a blog. It’s called AmericanPinkCollar.Blogspot.com. We have to say “blogspot,� otherwise you can’t find us on the web, so that’s why we do it.
Marc Dann: Unless you pony up the six bucks and buy the domain name.
Daniella Lindquist: Well maybe that’s coming.
__: That’s right. Ok.
Russell Hughlock: Can we all have contracts when…?
Daniella Lindquist: My question is really hypothetical, and I would like you to both imagine that you are Attorney General and that you find out that the highest Governor, yeah, the highest official government worker, I guess we would say the Governor, is involved in corruption, is involved in stealing, is involved in all kinds of activities that are totally reprehensible, but he is on your party. What would you do?
Marc Dann: Well I have said repeatedly, since I started this, that it doesn’t matter who the next Governor is, that one of the things, the real failings of the current Administration is that somehow Betty Montgomery and Jim Petro and Ken Blackwell have determined that loyalty to party is more important than their loyalty to the people in the State of Ohio, or more disgustingly, loyalty to their campaign contributors, with all due respect to my campaign contributors that are here, but the loyalty to campaign contributors are more important than loyalty to the people of the State. As Attorney General, I simply wouldn’t tolerate that. If somebody is doing wrong, if the SEC sends me a letter saying the Governor’s appointee is being screwed by their stockbrokers and they’re overpaying them in exchange for campaign contributions, I’m going to take action. I’m going to take action. Now remember, the Attorney General’s Office, even if I create a Public Integrity Unit, as I intend to do, and make sure that we have the tools and resources, it’s a uniquely local function to bring criminal cases against public officials. There’re a few exceptions to that, but that’s the basic rule. So again, we’re hypothetical here, so I’m assuming your hypothetical is going to meet the general, not the specific. And so work with the local prosecutors, work with the FBI and bring the appropriate people in and gather the information and documents, and remember at the end of the day my fiduciary duty is to the people, not to the Governor. The client is not just the Governor. The client is not just the State. The client is the 11 million people that live in the State.
Tim Russo: Subodh?
Subodh Chandra: Enron’s lawyers didn’t get to say, “Ken Lay made me do it.� Neither did Arthur Anderson. One of the most critical errors in judgment that (and Marc was alluding to it) Jim Petro made was when he claimed… And it was one of the things that prompted me into this race, was when I was reading the newspaper and Jim Petro was saying that he couldn’t investigate the Bureau of Worker’s Comp, because they were his clients. Flat out wrong. Flat out wrong, because he did not represent… As a guy who teaches legal ethics to students, and one of the things you teach them is that a lawyer for an entity represents that entity and not the individual personalities within that entity. Those people you only represent in their official capacity, not their personal capacity.
So for example, when I was Cleveland Law Director, I would have certain clients that I would advise on a day-to-day basis, because they were all officers of the City, but at the same time we might be doing an internal investigation as to those same officers or their supervisors, based on complaints about criminal conduct or other malfeasance. It’s perfectly appropriate. If you feel that you are in a true conflict of interest, then you farm it to outside counsel, but Jim Petro did neither. He gets a warning letter from the SEC. He writes them back telling them to pound salt. It was outrageous. It was ridiculous, and it really was… And I don’t use these words lightly. It was a form of malpractice against the people of the State of Ohio. What we can ultimately do, if we have an Attorney General with the experience of doing internal investigations all the time… I think that Marc said something very telling in this debate, and I don’t want it to be lost, and that is somehow that hiring people to do these things, you know, and staying up at a big policy level is somehow a way to deal with the office. I strongly disagree with that. Not that I’m a micromanager, but there is no substitute for having experience and exposure to executive administration and the most complex areas of law at the top of the chain. Why? Because you have to make judgments about whom to look for, whom to hire, what kind of people, what do they need to know, what kinds of outside attorneys do you need, what kind of experience do they need to have, and there’s no substitute for judgment and experience in making those decisions.
Marc Dann: But let me respond to that just real briefly. I mean the reason I saw Tom Noe, the rare coin dealer coming, is because I’d sued guys like that in my practice, and I knew a con artist when I saw one, and I was able to then, unlike all the other members in the Legislature who could have stepped up in the way that I did and gone after those records and gone after this systematic scandal, I understood what to see and what to do. So it all comes from your orientation. And you know, Subodh, with all due respect, you can’t know everything, and I think knowing that you don’t know everything is a really important qualification for this job.
Tim Russo: We have time for one more question. Russell.
Russell Hughlock: The question I have, I think you both said during this debate that both Petro and Montgomery had spent their entire time in the AG’s Office with aspirations for higher office, and they’ve done nothing. Do either of you two have aspirations for higher office?
Subodh Chandra: I can tell ya this. I’ll never run for Auditor. We started this today sort of discussing Eliot Spitzer. Let me talk about him. Here’s a fellow who had never run for public office before. He is a prosecutor and a lawyer who handled complex litigations, and looked at the New York Attorney General’s Office as this empty vessel. Nobody’s ever heard of Dennis Vacco. That’s the guy that he beat. This Dennis Vacco was another Betty Montgomery and Jim Petro, a do-nothing. And so Spitzer transformed that office by sticking to the law, sticking to the evidence, and figuring out a way to make that office work for people in his state who’d been victimized, and as a result, he wound up making it work for all of America. If I do that in public service as Attorney General and people say, “Well you should be considered for some other public service opportunity,� I wouldn’t rule it out, but I’m not structuring my life around it. I’ve always viewed the Attorney General’s job as a job. Not an office to be held, but a job to be done, and the thing about jobs to be done is you do them in service to other people. I am uniquely and exclusively interested in the Attorney General’s Office at this point in my life, because I think the challenges facing Ohioans in this state right now require somebody with real meaningful experience to solve it for them. There’s no other office that interests me, because I’m not interested in holding office. I’m interested in doing a job.
Tim Russo: But you’re not ruling it out?
Subodh Chandra: No. Why would I do that?
Tim Russo: Marc?
Subodh Chandra: Why rule out future employment of any kind?
Marc Dann: Including working for me.
Subodh Chandra: That I can rule out.
Marc Dann: When I ran for State Senate in 2000 after (Tim, you know a little more about this than most people here) and lost to a 25-year-old who never had a job, who became now our Congressman, Tim Ryan, who is a wonderful guy and a great Congressman and a supporter of my campaign for Attorney General and basically has become a very good friend of mine, you don’t take anything for granted in this business. You know, public service is an honor, and having the opportunity to serve in the Senate for me is a huge honor, and every single minute I feel very lucky to have the chance to do it. Being put in a situation this year where I’ve had a chance to make an impact on hopefully changing over the government through the public records requests, the lawsuits that I’ve brought through the framing of issues (I do do framing, by the way) of issues in a way that people can hopefully better understand them, for bringing to the forefront the cost of his corruption tax, the lost opportunity, the failure to invest and lowering tuitions, shifting the paradigm of school funding, all the things that you can do, if you aren’t overspending for everything you buy in state government, it’s been an incredible opportunity, so and the chance to run for Attorney General, an office that I served in in West Virginia, and an office that I great respect, is an incredible honor for me, so I can’t even conceive of that next opportunity coming, but I’m with Subodh. If there’s a chance that something comes along and I have a chance to lose to Tim Ryan again at some point in the future, I’ll seize it.
Subodh Chandra: Being a patrol officer isn’t the same as being Police Chief. Being a podiatrist who is working in a hospital isn’t the same as knowing how to do neurosurgery. The law has become sufficiently complex, and these jobs have become sufficiently complex that I just don’t think it’s enough to point to an experience as an Assistant Attorney General, in a tiny practice, and say that that is the same as being able to…
Marc Dann: I’m sorry. Is this rebuttal time now?
Tim Russo: You go right ahead.
George Nemeth: It’s after 2:00, so __.
Tim Russo: We’re just worrying about your schedules.
Marc Dann: That’s fine. Well thank you.
Tim Russo: Well thank you both for debating on Meet the Bloggers.
Marc Dann: This is a great crowd, by the way. Thank you for coming today.
Bloggers: Thank you.