Another Crusading Attorney General Sex Scandal

When Marc Dann was elected to his first tem as Ohio's attorney general in 2006, he quickly fashioned himself as the new sheriff on Wall Street, filling Eliot Spitzer's shoes when he moved to the Governor's mansion in Albany.

Early on, Dann generated publicity by speaking out against the options backdating scandal at UnitedHealth Group and revived an antitrust investigation of insurance giant Marsh & McLennan. He had even received a small check from Spitzer, which, he said, he "almost framed" rather than cashing. How touching.

Well, it seems that Dann's affinity with his role model goes beyond the courtroom: Dann, 46, admitted having an extramarital affair with a 28-year-old staff member shortly after three of his aides were fired or forced to resign amid a sexual harassment scandal.

Okay, so Dann's transgression doesn't quite rank up with Spitzer's being fingered by the feds as Client 9 in a session with pricey call girl Ashley Dupree, but it has an unquestionable ring of familiarity.

"I am embarrassed," Dunn, a Democrat, told reporters. "I have taken responsibility for what I have done." Then, waxing contrite in a Spitzer-like fashion, he called the consensual affair "wrong" and added, "I deeply regret it."

Apparently, Dann did not go as far as to quote Confucius, as Spitzer did when he stepped down in March.

Dunn is not going to follow Spitzer's example by resigning, either. His website posts an email he sent to "all associates" of his office, stating that he got a call from Ohio Governor Ted Strickland, a fellow Democrat, advising him that he and other statewide Democratic office holders, along with the minority leaders of the House and Senate, were planning to ask him to resign today.

"I told him that he and the other officeholders, as well as the members of the legislature, should continue to expect that we will continue to provide high-quality legal services to all of them," Dann wrote to his staff. "I am in the office, and I have rolled up my sleeves and am working on behalf of the state of the Ohio."

Rolled up his sleeves? Under the circumstances, it was most unfortunate of him to have used a metaphor that so much as suggested images of disrobing.

Dann, of late, has zeroed in on the subprime crisis, suing more than a dozen lenders and brokers. But his office has been rocked by several scandals, the sexual harassment probe the most salacious.

A state Republican official complained that Dann had turned the attorney general's office into a "raunchy frat pad."

At least Spitzer, so far as we know, kept his sexual peccadilloes to himself.

by Karen Donovan