In the comments of this post (although I think the comment fits better with this post from earlier the same day), reader Hogan writes:[DeWine]'s been Arshinkoff's most loyal water carrier and would allow Arshinkoff to pick the law firms that get special counsel work from the AG.Let's work backwards... Here we see that Alex has contributed to Mike DeWine before. No bomb shells there, most party officials will have donated to someone of DeWine's position. The FEC site is vast and I was unable to locate records that Arshinkoff worked for DeWine's campaigns, but that also wouldn't surprise me. (That doesn't mean that those records don't exist, just that I wasn't able to find them in the short time I had to look for them.) UPDATE: This Cleveland Scene piece refers to Arshinkoff as having been on DeWine's payroll (amongst other unsavory items...).
In the past, Arshinkoff has demanded ten percent of their contract with the state.
Also, DeWine actually has had Arshinkoff on his campaign payroll. It's in his FEC campaign finance records.
I was similarly unable to locate "proof" of the ten percent claim, but I do know that Arshinkoff's name has been bandied about in the "pay-to-play" scandals involving Jim Petro [alternate link - Thanks Margaret!]. Near as I can tell, Arshinkoff was anti-Petro in that one. But there are plenty of stories in the Cleveland Scene piece to illustrate that Arshinkoff's involvement in statewide power is not a situation that we ought to see repeated.
Would Mike DeWine allow Alex Arshinkoff to pick which law firms get business and which don't? It appears that Betty Montgomery did... If the very thought that Arshinkoff could get his grubby little hands on the Attorney General's office isn't enough for good Republicans to reject Mike DeWine for the office, I don't know what will.
