Marc Dann scored an upset when he won the Ohio attorney general's office after campaigning as a populist reformer who would put an end to "pay to play" politics and cronyism.
Now the first Democrat in the attorney general's office in a generation is facing some of the same charges he hurled against his opponent, former two-term Attorney General Betty Montgomery, and his predecessor, Jim Petro.
Dann accepted $7,750 from gambling interests at a fund-raiser hosted by Castle King, a firm involved in an ongoing lawsuit against the state, according to campaign finance reports. The South Carolina firm hosted a January fund-raiser for Dann even as the new attorney general was attempting to settle a lawsuit against Castle King over the state's definition of "skill-based" games.
The suit was settled in May when Dann agreed to certify several of the company's "games of skill" machines as legal. The agreement unraveled several weeks later when Dann accused Castle King of hiding information about their games.
Dann's spin on this is that the failure of the agreement shows he can't be bought. The bottom line, though, is that the attorney general had no business accepting campaign money from Castle King in the first place.
Republicans, sensing a potentially vulnerable target, say Dann isn't a reformer at all, but a political hypocrite who engaged in "pay to politics" and got caught.
The donation isn't his first misstep after just seven months in office. An auto dealership owned by a campaign contributor was paid $40,000 in state funds when Dann decided that he wanted an SUV as his official state vehicle. He also hired, then fired, a driver who was convicted of involuntary manslaughter. He made headlines, too, when he used an unprintable expletive in an encounter with a Warren newspaper reporter who wrote about the hiring of Dann's foster daughter for a state job. A TV videotape of the encounter made for a perfect You Tube moment.
Dann, a one-term state senator from Trumbull County, made a name for himself at the Statehouse as a self-styled whistleblower in the Coingate scandal involving the Bureau of Workers Compensation, which tarnished the fortunes of Petro, Montgomery and Gov. Bob Taft. Still, his win over Montgomery, one of the GOP's top statewide vote-getters, came as a surprise to many.
Dann won't have to face the voters until 2010, which gives him plenty of time to turn things around. If he doesn't start paying more attention to ethical concerns, though, he's on his way to being a one-termer.