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Feb
18
“Sometimes I don’t know what Ohio looks like, but I imagine that it looks like Marc Dann – who appears to be very Ohio.”
That comment is from my notes taken during Democratic candidate for Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann’s Meet the Bloggers interview, which I attended on 2/9/06. Another MTB interview attendee, who is also a lifelong Ohioan, smiled and laughed slightly when I mentioned this impression of mine. The response? Yup, that’d be about right. For better or worse.
I read and annotated the MTB transcript for his opponent in the primary, Subodh Chandra and will comment on that as well in this post. These candidates presented very differently, yet both possess numerous strengths. As always, this blog post represents my opinion (my very own personal to me only opinion) based on the MTB material either read or witnessed firsthand. Since I attended Dann’s MTB before I listened to Chandra (although I read the excellent reports of others, like this one from Pho), he goes first.
Well – this man looks like a lawyer. No wonder. He is. He looks and sounds like a legislator. And hey, guess what? He is.
Those two facts alone aren’t negatives. But the being a legislator distinguishes him from Chandra, and this year, just a guess, that distinction may mean something to Ohio Democrats who’ve become disgusted, disenchanted, disempowered or demoralized by the formal Ohio Democratic party-ites.
To make such a connection between Dann and the formal party, however, based on his MTB interview’s content, would be unfair. I don’t believe we asked him about that at all, and I have no knowledge about his connections or lack thereof with party officials. Based on this past week, I can only tell you that if he does have close ties, for me, that would make me scrutinize his candidacy more so than I already am.
I experienced Dann as very sincere, very much his own person and very eager. Listening to him talk about his legislative contacts, however, did not play as a positive for me, especially after listening to Chandra talk about his approach to the Attorney General’s job.
It’s not that Dann himself worries me that he’ll overrely on legislators and old relationships which might cause him to make decisions that might not be in the best interests of all Ohioans but rather would pay homage to old friends. But the way he referenced the legislators – when you listen, I think you can hear how, when he talks about them, he talks about knowing them as being a positive. Given that the legislature has been controlled by Republicans for so long, I don’t know – what good has it been to know the Dems or the GOP in the state legislature, especially when it comes to being a state Attorney General? If anything, I think not having a connection is more valuable. But I’m not certain yet.
When I entered the room, I was, I thought, 20 minutes late. But it turned out that they’d only started a few minutes before I’d entered the room. What’s so funny about this is that from the moment I entered the room, I thought Dann was talking so fast, like a debater trying to get in all his points before the red light flashed to end his turn. And so I assumed that they were in the middle of something, when in fact, that was just Dann’s style of speaking. And, again, if you listen, I think you too can hear that “trying to get it all in” style.
There’s no question Dann knows issues, knows facts, has opinions, has ideas. And he’s a Democrat. There was discussion and dissent about his support for SB82 which ruled out home rule for municipalities. I gather that his answer didn’t satisfy our most fervent opposers to SB82, but I mostly listened to his style of answering – and that was rather long-winded and circuitous (as in, he lost me, and if I was the person asking the question, I’d be asking it as many times as it took to get a direct answer – I’m kind of like that).
Dann is all over No Child Left Behind and would step in to render a legal opinion about Intelligent Design. Both good positions, from my position.
[One fun note in my notes: "Why do candidates' aides all look the same? This guy's guy looks just like Hackett's guy." That's one of the nicer notes in my notes.]
Dann slowed down considerably when he responded to Tim Russo’s questions about what kind of an AG he would be (Chandra spoke about Eliot Spitzer). Now that I’ve listened to how much Chandra spent on that issue, I think it was wise and maybe prescient of Dann to have addressed the question with a better pace. I have no idea if he listened to Chandra’s MTB podcast or not, but if he did do his homework, then it showed, and I like that.
Overall, a good candidate, someone I could vote for at this point. Not stellar, but nothing abhorrent at all. Has experience, has passion. But not so new or dynamic.
And that’s where Chandra really drove home his brilliance for me: he sounds new and dynamic, in style and content.
In his MTB appearance, Chandra exudes brilliance in subtle and direct ways. I will underscore this point by revealing that I read his entire 19 page transcript outloud, from 11-12midnight, to my husband, who was enthralled, even commenting and cheering at different points. (My husband and I met in law school, I have friends who work at the USDOJ’s civil and civil rights departments, my family knows Connecticut AG Dick Blumenthal, bla bla bla – so this AG thing is something important and familiar to us.)
Some of the statements Chandra made that turned me on:
The Attorney Generals’s job is to protect us from loss and from harm, and if we have one without the other, we are going to wind up right back where we started.
Great Attorneys General of America…are doing incredible things to protect their citizens and fight for their citizens.
In response to Tim Russo asking whether there will be an open warfare between the state government and the state legislature if Chandra is elected and the legislature remaines Republican: “No. I don’t even know what open warfare means.”
How can you not love someone who says that? (That was my gut reaction when I read this part of the transcript – just being honest.)
I could go on and on, looking at my marked up transcript of the interview. But in sum, Chandra is specific, Chandra has thought everything through – or so it sounded, Chandra isn’t just offering up some ideology to follow if and when he gets into office. He talking about Plan A, and B and C and so on. This is not in the abstract, you need vision first category of planning. This is hit the ground running planning. And he speaks in such terms as, “On Day 1…”
Chandra doesn’t shy away from attacking problems, like the culture of corruption or cronyism, that others are too willing to dismiss as “complex” or “complicated” (two more words that will make me ask you a lot of questions until I get an actual answer). He speaks specifically about how to approach school funding, No Child Left Behind, HB 3, predatory lending.
And the guy made me laugh. God, that feels good when it’s genuine and not because they’re trying too hard. Take this exchange for example:
Scott Piepho: I want to follow up that. I am Scott Piepho. I blog at Pho’s Akron Pages. One of the jobs of the Attorney General is to defend the laws passed by the legislature against challenge. If House Bill 3 passes, it will undoubtedly be challenged, and you may see a situation where the particular structure of House B3 is an issue of first impression. Now that they have pulled back from Day of Election, now that it’s not simply a picture ID, now that they have moved to any proof of residency, there I believe is now, and certainly there may be by the time it gets challenged, competing legal authority. Now are you saying that if it is challenged in Ohio you will not defend it?
Subodh Chandra: You are asking me now too far complex a hypothetical question.
Steve Piepho: Ok.
George Nemeth: We’re bloggers. We do that.
Subodh Chandra: What I am talking about is sort of intellectual rigor. It’s a discussion that’s going on.
Tim Russo: We’ll take that as a compliment.
Subodh Chandra: It’s too much. The stress is killing me.
Love it. (That’s me now, here in the post.)
And how you can remember how to say his name? Abode tundra. (I taught my kids to remember the pediatrician’s name by thinking of him as Dr. Noodle Soup – because his name is Dr. Nudelman.)
The whole discussion about his name and ethnicity, in this day and age, should not have to even happen. That saddens me greatly to think that he has to spend time initiating people to how, even if he looks different, sounds different and has a different sounding name, his desires are the same as theirs and he has everyone’s best interests at heart. How far haven’t we come in this day and age?
But that he thinks nothing of taking the time to make people laugh a little and see his humility a little about it, again, shows the depth of a person, to me, that this candidate is. From my notes, “Shouldn’t be this way. We should be ashamed.” And I do believe that.
When he talks about slashing outside counsel costs at the City of Cleveland, I know firsthand that he did. Much to the chagrin of a law firm I know.
Chandra demonstrates a range of knowledge about how others carry out the AG job, a kind of best practices manual in his head. And his discussion about what assistant AGs in Ohio have been telling him about their work is gripping:
I can also tell you this, that since I launched my campaign, I have been hearing from many Assistant Attorneys General, by phone, by e-mail, by personal visits at the end of events, and they come and they whisper and they say they’ve never been so demoralized and unhappy in their careers. Many people who have been there through many Attorneys General, and they say that this current Attorney General has from Day 1 completely politicized that office, used it as a cash generating machine for his campaign for Governor, and never governed as the people’s advocate. So what they give me a sense of is that there are so many decisions along the lines of what you’ve just identified for utilities that need to be revisited, that need to be undone, and that these lawyers in public service feel that their careers were hijacked for private ends. That’s something we are going to have to sort out from top to bottom, and then go back to the theme we started at, we’re starting ten years behind, so it’s going to require enormous energy and experience to fix those things as fast as possible so we can get caught up to where we need to be.
The final statement I’ll point to that resonated with me is his description of how the moral code that citizens should demand be adhered to by every government employee, elected or not, is flouted by the GOP.
In Columbus the issue is, “Did you report it?” You can take whatever you want, but you’ve got to report it. I am talking about creating completely different professional culture, and I don’t care what the rules are. We are going to go beyond those rules and run a culture of integrity. Now that means that you have to, through your own personal leadership and charisma, if you’ve got it, persuade everyone that works for you and with you to buy into that culture and to be proud of it, and to create that culture, and create a culture that then sustains itself over time. And if you ask anyone who worked with me in the Law Department, they will tell you we created that culture there, to the point where people in other departments would call me, or call others in my department and would spill their guts about improprieties going on in their department, because they knew that they were coming to a place, a safe haven, where they could reveal those things, that their identities would be protected, that we would do something about it.
I didn’t meet Chandra, but to read this transcript, it sure sounds to me like either he gets it, or he is EXCELLENT at pretending that he gets it. Based on what I’ve read about him, however, I’m thinking that he does, genuinely, sincerely and voluntarily get it.
And I’m thinking he’s the kind of person I could vote for, easily.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 1:54 pm February 18th, 2006 in Politics
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