Fur is flying in the battle for Ohio attorney general

It's quite clear that the two attorney general candidates, Ohio Auditor Betty Montgomery and state Sen. Marc Dann, don't like each other.
During this campaign, Dann, a Democrat, has made many accusations about his Republican opponent. Some of them true, some of them false and most of them are somewhere in between.
Dann incorrectly accused Montgomery in August of carrying and voting for a bill in 1996 in the state Senate that was "the genesis of the Coingate scandal." After Montgomery's campaign said the accusation was a lie because she wasn't in the Legislature at the time, Dann's campaign acknowledged the error. Even so, the Ohio Elections Commission ruled Wednesday that Dann's campaign made a false statement.
Dann also falsely accused Montgomery in September of not returning a campaign donation from a questionable donor.
Montgomery's campaign hasn't been squeaky clean either. She incorrectly accused a Dann campaign donor in September of being a "convicted racketeer."
Dann is a relentless pitbull who sometimes speaks or acts before he thinks.
As for Montgomery, her reputation is one of honesty and integrity. Montgomery got out of the gubernatorial race in January with polls showing she was losing, and after she admitted raising money was a struggle.
While acknowledging the polls and money issues, Montgomery said she could have won the race if she aggressively attacked the two Republican primary opponents: Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, the eventual winner, and Attorney General Jim Petro.
Montomgery said she didn't want to run a campaign that way.
Apparently Montgomery isn't wrestling with that concern in recent weeks.
Polls show Democrats winning every statewide executive office race in Tuesday's election except attorney general. Polls show Montgomery with a single-digit lead -- a lot closer than it should be between a former two-term attorney general and a person who's been in the state Senate for less than four years.
It appears Montgomery's campaign believes desperate times call for desperate measures.
Mark Weaver, her political consultant, says Montgomery is just defending herself against Dann's false accusations, and ignored the phony claims from her opponent for months before fighting back. It has nothing to do with being desperate, he said.
But Montgomery's campaign strategy is to attack Dann for defending criminal suspects; something that defense attorneys do for a living.
Montgomery is focusing on one case in particular. That case involves Hurley Quackenbush of Youngstown, who pleaded guilty in 2002 to attempted pandering obscenity involving a minor.
Montgomery is airing an ad on television and the Internet criticizing Dann, Quackenbush's attorney, for a partial statement he made at sentencing in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court that the Youngstown man had "good intentions in trying to reach out to the young children in the neighborhood." The commercial fails to include the rest of Dann's statement that doing so is "just not an appropriate role for" Quackenbush.
She also insists that Quackenbush is a "child molester" because two children told police that he showed them nude pictures and touched them inappropriately.
Police filed charges against Quackenbush including gross sexual imposition, but a grand jury didn't include that and others in the indictment. An assistant prosecutor said at the time there was no evidence the man engaged in sexual contact with the boys.
Even so, Montgomery's campaign insists Dann praised and protected a child molester and they believe the victims despite the lack of evidence.
Judge R. Scott Krichbaum, who oversaw the Quackenbush case, said questioning the integrity of criminal defense attorneys is "outrageously inappropriate."
John S. Smith, president of the Ohio State Bar Association, said attacking lawyers for carrying out their constitutional duties are "ugly and shameful campaign tactics."
Even Petro recently said, "What a lawyer does in defense of a client should not become a negative issue in a political campaign."
Yet Montgomery's campaign seems to believe otherwise.