AG has no regrets over cursing at local reporter

The attorney general ‘was responding as a father,’ his spokeswoman said.

YOUNGSTOWN — Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann doesn’t regret telling a newspaper reporter to “go ... [expletive] himself,” his spokeswoman said Friday.

“He maintains he was responding as a father,” said Jennifer Brindisi, Dann’s spokeswoman.

As Dann walked Wednesday from his SUV to a Barack Obama fundraiser in Boardman, he shouted the statement to Steve Oravecz, a reporter with the Tribune Chronicle of Warren. Oravecz was with a group of local reporters and photographers when Dann made the statement.

Oravecz said nothing before Dann, a Liberty Democrat, shouted the statement and didn’t respond after it.

Later, Dann also asked a local television reporter outside the presidential hopeful’s fundraiser to tell Oravecz “[expletive] you.” She relayed that message to Oravecz.

Dann was upset about a Tuesday article by Oravecz about the Ohio secretary of state’s hiring of Mavilya Chubarova, whom Dann raised as his daughter, for a $37,000-a-year job in Columbus. Oravecz had interviewed Dann a day earlier about the subject.

“He’s the attorney general, but he’s a father first,” Brindisi said.

Dann’s initial response to the story when he saw Oravecz “was to protect his daughter. He was most interested in protecting her,” Brindisi said.

Dann felt the article unfairly attacked Chubarova, 22, Brindisi said.

Dann’s wife, Alyssa Lenhoff-Dann, was a co-worker with Oravecz when she was a staff writer at the Tribune Chronicle.