Specter of Dann hangs on

The former attorney general from Liberty has filed to run for office again in 2010.

COLUMBUS (AP) — There’s something about Marc Dann.

The feisty former state attorney general, a Liberty Township Democrat who resigned amid scandal in May, can’t help but draw attention.

The question heading into the fall is whether Democrats can deflect the public eye from him long enough to elect their chosen replacement, Ohio Treasurer Rich Cordray. Cordray faces Republican Mike Crites and independent Robert Owens in a special election Nov. 4.

Dann, 46, has been formally rejected by Democrats, who took back their 2006 endorsement of him and joined forces to push him out of office once the scandal broke.

Gov. Ted Strickland, as the state party’s leading Democrat, wanted nothing to do with revelations that Dann and two live-in male aides were having alcohol-tinged pizza parties with young female subordinates at their suburban Columbus apartment. Or that Dann had an affair with an employee. Or that he admitted to reporters that he unwisely hired friends to state jobs and was unprepared to serve as the state’s top cop.

So Dann is gone. But he is far from forgotten.

First, there were reports he’d been discovered selling Fiestaware dishes on the Internet with his wife, reporter and journalism professor Alyssa Lenhoff. Then he was spotted among attendees at a Washington, D.C., gathering of former attorneys general — which Dann explained as a simple networking opportunity among others around the nation who’d previously held the office. (As far as anyone knows, former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer — another former state attorney general disgraced by scandal — had the good sense not to show.)

Dann has put his house on the market. Dann is considering reopening a his law practice. The reports go on, topped by the kicker discovered by The Columbus Dispatch last week: Dann has filed to run again in 2010.

In an e-mail exchange with The Associated Press, Dann said his future political plans are undecided. They will certainly have to depend on the outcomes of wide-ranging investigations into improper activity by Dann and his aides.

The offices of the state inspector general, state auditor, secretary of state, and federal Equal Employment Opportunity are among those investigating. Details of lewd behavior, office threats and questionable state purchases began with the filing of sexual harassment complaints against a Dann employee, general services director Anthony Gutierrez — but they did not end there.

Filing for state candidacy allows Dann to keep alive his state campaign fund, which he has tapped with gusto even since stepping down May 14. He has spent almost $114,000 since that day on legal fees, campaign computers, cell phone bills, trips, food and other expenses, according to a state filing made last week.

Dann has promised to reimburse his campaign fund for a pricey security system he had installed at his house after receiving threats as attorney general. If the house sells, he pledged, he will pay back whatever added value the house gained because of all the bells and whistles.

The reason he might reopen his private law practice — an endeavor Dann describes as “a work in progress” — is viewed as largely practical: Unlike Spitzer, he hasn’t a deep-pocketed family business to return to. But talk surrounding the move coincided closely with Dann’s filing of a massive request for public records from his former office, currently run by Strickland appointee Nancy Rogers.

Speculation runs rampant as to Dann’s motivations for wanting the records: Is he planning a lawsuit against the state? Against the press? Does he want to stay one step ahead of investigators?

Dann said in his e-mail that he has not yet decided how he’ll use the public documents he has requested.

While Dann mulls, Cordray is amassing cash for his run for attorney general this fall. On Thursday, he reported cash on hand of $1.9 million. Owens has raised $5,600, and Crites, who only entered the race July 25, has not yet reported. any fundraising.

But somehow Cordray lacks the press-grabbing drama of a Marc Dann. The issues he has championed as treasurer — state-backed savings incentives, fairer credit card practices, and foreclosure-fighting Save Our Homes task forces, for instance — somehow lack the flare of a Hawaiian pizza party with young subordinates.

Polls have shown that the Dann scandal is not sticking to other Democrats, including Cordray. The question is what they’ll find that does.