I have mixed feelings on this one. What Dann is doing here isn't illegal, but I do think it raises more ethical concerns for the guy who ran on cleaning up this sort of influence peddling. The basics of the story from the
Cleveland Plain Dealer:
Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann is supporting a Democratic legislator's bid for a judicial appointment and will back a longtime campaign contributor to fill the potential vacancy in the Ohio House.
Dann wrote a letter to a judicial appointment review panel supporting State Rep. Sandra Stabile Harwood of Niles to fill a vacancy on the 11th Ohio District Court of Appeals in Warren. The seat is being vacated by Judge William O'Neill, who announced last month that he will run for Congress in 2008.
Dann, a Democrat from Youngstown, was not trying to influence the panel's work, his spokesman Leo Jennings said. The panel will interview six candidates on Thursday and then nominate three to Gov. Ted Strickland, who will make the appointment.
Question: If he's not trying to influence the panel, why did he write the letter?
"We never weighed in on the process," Jennings said, adding that the attorney general is merely seeking to help two longtime personal and political friends who he believes are well-qualified for the respective jobs.
Jennings said Dann would support Michael Harshman - a Canfield attorney who last year gave nearly $7,000 to Dann's run for attorney general and has contributed to earlier Dann campaigns - to replace Harwood, if necessary.
Dann also has hired Harshman's fiancée, Ruth Wilkes, former mayor of the city of Poland, just south of Youngstown, to be his grants management director, according to the Tribune-Chronicle of Warren.
There is the appearance of nepotism at work here and that is a problem that Marc Dann has been facing from the beginning of his short time in office. Again, this is just the sort of thing that Marc Dann campaigned against yet here he is engaging in exactly that sort of behavior.
