Redfern described the Dann scandal as only “collateral damage.”
Nice way to minimize a situation that has blacked the state’s eye Redfern, this should be an election year slogan for any GOP candidate running. Too bad the George Forbes situation has been swept under the rug and that would be until now. Why isn’t his daughter or their firm facing any charges?
That’s right I have to keep reminding myself this is the party which looks out for the little guy, that is when taking his money to make sure their friends are being taken care of. You wouldn’t want to post any of those jobs as they were to be posted for every qualified individual to have a shot at them would you now?
Just as with Mayor Mike “Slick” Coleman, there still hasn’t been any real exposure about the girlfriends of drug dealers receiving jobs while their men do time? Then again that would require the Columbus Dispatch, John Wolfe and his merry little band of info ignorer’s to actually expose the core corruption in Columbus on the local level in the city.
Fallout just beginning for Democrats
Posted by Mark Naymik/Plain Dealer Politics Writer May 14, 2008 22:40PM
The Democrats finally got rid of Marc Dann, but they will have a harder time purging the former attorney general’s legacy from this year’s elections.
Gov. Ted Strickland and Democratic Party Chairman Chris Redfern dismissed the notion Wednesday, but their recent actions speak louder than words.
They kicked him out of the party, filed articles of impeachment against him and refused to head off an Ohio inspector general’s investigation into his office initiated by Republicans.
This only reinforces what a liability he had become to the party that promised in 2006 to clean up state government.
“I don’t know that it damages the Democratic Party,” Strickland insisted during a news conference following Dann’s brief resignation speech. “This was not the failings of the party. I think the party responded strongly and forcefully and has taking steps to clean our own house.”
But Dann didn’t make it easy. He heightened the tension — and the damage — by insisting for five weeks that he had done nothing wrong beyond giving in to personal weakness and displaying some poor judgment.
On May 2, Dann, 46, admitted an affair with a subordinate only after a separate investigation of harassment charges against one of his top managers threatened to expose it. The harassment investigation also exposed Dann’s lax management and blind loyalty to his friends who worked for him.
The scandal, compared to the two-year Republican investment scandal that began in 2005, didn’t need much buildup. It involved sex and patronage, easy concepts for voters to grasp that instantly made newspaper cartoons and editorials.
Redfern described the Dann scandal as only “collateral damage.”
“Our response was appropriate, swift and responsible,” he said.
Both sides were playing politics around the Dann scandal.
The Democrats wanted him out in a hurry out of self-preservation. Republicans wanted to keep the story alive. And they won.
The impeachment is over. But the inspector general’s investigation is just beginning and will continue to generate headlines toward the November elections.
Even if it doesn’t, the Republican Party will.
“This embarrassment is far from over,” GOP Deputy Chairman Kevin DeWine declared Wednesday. “Marc Dann’s resignation is overdue, and the investigation into his mismanagement and corruption must continue.”
Dann left the attorney general’s office totally alone, just 17 months after arriving as the Democratic Party’s surprise star.
No one, not even Dann himself, believed he could topple State Auditor and former Attorney General Betty Montgomery in the 2006 election. He knocked the Republican Party behemoth out by literally bullying his way into office. He campaigned that year with abandon, shouting to anyone who would listen that he would clean up government and champion consumer causes.
Dann quit Wednesday after the inspector general searched his office, hauling out computers and leaving him and his office virtually paralyzed, an image sure to play this fall.
Dann didn’t even tell his staff before delivering his resignation from the governor’s office. When he was done, he walked out a side door, alone.
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