Ohio AG Wanted to be Like His Idol Elliot Spitzer...and Succeeded!

About a month ago, I wrote about the apparently sleazy doings of

Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann, a former Democratic state senator has been keeping a sexual harassment investigation of one of his friends and top managers, Anthony Gutierrez, an internal investigation, despite the potential conflict of interests. (He finally stepped aside Wednesday.)

One woman complained that Gutierrez pressured her to have drinks after work. Gutierrez receives a call from his boss the Attorney General, inviting them to his apartment for pizza. Dann is there with yet another female employee, Dann’s scheduler Jessica Utovich , allegedly wearing pajamas…

“The woman said she felt intoxicated, rested on Gutierrez’s bed and later awoke to find three buttons on her pants undone and Gutierrez next to her in his underwear.”

(…)
And the “scheduler”?

In January 2007, after about two weeks in office, Dann hired Utovich as his scheduler at an annual salary of $35,000. Seven months later, her pay was raised to $45,000 and her duties expanded.
(Pajama modeling???)

In the last few days, Marc Dann has admitted having an affair with Jessica Utovich. Gutierrez and Dann's top staffers have all resigned or been fired, and the governor, Ted Strickland (D) is calling for Dann’s resignation. Dann, like a good Democrat caught with his hand in the ethical cookie jar…doesn’t want to leave! Strickland has threatened Dann with impeachment. Dann still doesn’t want to go.

A colleague in Columbus said that while campaigning for Ohio’s top cop, Marc Dann said he wanted to pattern himself after New York’s Elliot Spitzer. Heh. He succeeded beyond all expectations!

The Dayton Daily News has done yeoman’s work in documenting the details of this sordid affair. They have timelines here and here.

Rich Galen has his take on it:

Marc Dann, a Democrat, was elected in the tsunami of 2006 which swept just about every Republican office holder down the Ohio River in the wake of astonishing scandals which attended to the GOP Governor at the time.
Keep that in mind: Scandals swept Republicans out of office in Ohio, and Democrats are now in control.
Marc Dann is a Democrat from Youngstown and after he was elected he hired three of his buddies to senior positions in the AG’s office.
The four of them rented a townhouse in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio which caused an Ohio GOP official to claim that Dann, “turned the attorney general’s office into a raunchy frat pad.”
Putting aside for the moment the obvious redundancy of “raunchy” and “frat pad” it turns out that one of Dann’s buds was sexually harassing the office staff (and possibly running his Youngstown construction business out of the AG’s office) and at least two other pals were either complicit or turned a blind eye.
Not only that, but Marc Dann, the Democratic Attorney General his own self, was using the “raunchy frat pad” to spend quality time with his scheduler - an affair to which he finally admitted late last week.
All four of his subordinates were either fired or quit, including the 20-something scheduler with whom Democrat Marc Dann was having the affair in that raunchy frat pad, but Dann, the Democratic Attorney General has not resigned, and says he will not.

The gift that keeps on giving! You can read the rest here.

Cross Posted at Say Anything