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Dann quit after reality hit him in the face
It seemed as though Marc Dann was the last person in Ohio to realize it was time for him to resign.
And even with the writing on the wall — a really big wall with gigantic letters of legendary announcer Gordon Solie’s classic line, “Five letters, two words, I quit” — Dann tried to turn his resignation into “Let’s Make a Deal.”
“He had no bargaining power and he’s talking about an exit strategy,” said state Rep. Mark Okey of Carrollton, D-61st, who helped write nine articles of impeachment against Dann.
Dann, a Liberty Democrat, offered his resignation, through intermediaries, to Republican legislative leaders Tuesday if they postponed the commencement of an inspector general investigation into the attorney general’s office by 90 days.
Not only did the Republicans give Dann a firm no, Inspector General Tom Charles along with investigators from his department and officials with the Ohio Highway State Patrol marched into Dann’s office the next day seizing computers, Blackberries and documents.
Dann didn’t stick around for long, sneaking past reporters in his office lobby to eat his last meal as attorney general.
Somewhere around that time, Dann was introduced to something the rest of us call reality.
An internal attorney general report that described his office as unprofessional, hostile and lacking proper oversight didn’t force Dann to quit.
He acknowledged an extra-marital affair with his former scheduler and that he wasn’t prepared to be the attorney general, but that didn’t cause Dann to quit.
“In what warped world does acknowledging you weren’t equipped for the job become something positive?” asked Mark Weaver, a Republican strategist who ran the 2006 attorney general campaign of Republican Betty Montgomery. Dann admitted May 2, the day the internal report came out, that he never thought he’d win that race.
Demands from fellow Democrats, including Gov. Ted Strickland, to resign or face impeachment didn’t force Dann to quit.
Numerous newspaper articles about his office before the report’s release, but more so while the investigation was ongoing and after it was finalized, didn’t force Dann to quit.
The filing of the articles of impeachment probably didn’t force Dann to quit. After all, Republican legislative leaders said the Democratic-sponsored bill was going to sit in a House committee and probably go nowhere.
There are numerous investigations into Dann and the attorney general’s office and he didn’t quit.
It had to be the inspector general investigation, and the visit made to his office, that led him to face reality.
Dann was willing to resign if that investigation took effect in 90 days and not immediately. It was the only thing that truly frightened him.
There has to be something that Dann didn’t want uncovered by the inspector general’s investigation or he would have stayed in office.
He went through a lot before the inspector general investigation was approved and stubbornly refused to quit.
The internal AG probe was essentially a surface investigation prompted by sexual-harassment complaints filed by two female staffers against their boss, Anthony Gutierrez, a longtime Dann friend and his neighbor in Liberty. [With both of them back home, I can only imagine how much fun is happening on Northlawn Avenue.]
Transcripts of testimony during the internal investigation shows Ben Espy, who spearheaded the probe, asked AG employees, including Dann, about the sex lives of some employees. But Espy, the office’s executive attorney general, only went so far, saying numerous times that he wasn’t interested in being a moral police officer.
With Charles’ office seizing computers and Blackberries, including Dann’s, as well as documents Wednesday, it was obvious the inspector general meant business.
That also meant that Dann’s roller coaster ride as attorney general, which lasted less than 17 months, was over — and plenty of us were nauseated when it was done.
As an aside, do you think my Dann inaugural celebration coffee mug is worthy anything?