Marc Dann (born March 12, 1962) is an American former politician of the Democratic Party, who served as the Attorney General of Ohio from 2007 until his resignation on May 14, 2008.
Law career and state Senate
Dann earned a B.A. in 1984 from the University of Michigan and a J.D. degree in 1987 from Case Western Reserve University. He practiced law in Youngstown, Ohio, and became active in Democratic Party politics.
Dann ran for the Ohio state Senate in the district then comprising Trumbull and Geauga counties. He finished third in the party primary behind eventual winner Tim Ryan and a local township trustee. From 2001 to 2002, Dann served as a member of the Liberty Local School District board of education.
After Ryan won election to the Ohio State Senate in 2002, Dann convinced the state Senate's Democratic caucus to appoint him to fill the balance of Ryan's term. He easily won election to a full term in 2004. He was reprimanded in 2004 by the Ohio Supreme Court for handling a 2002 alimony case without proper preparation.
Dann was a leading figure in the exposure of a variety of ethics and criminal scandals in the administration of Republican Governor Bob Taft, who became the first sitting governor in Ohio history to plead guilty to a crime. Dann was a leading critic of "Coingate," an investment plan in which $50 million of the state's workers compensation reserve fund was given to Republican Tom Noe, a politically connected coin dealer. When the Coingate scandal broke, Taft, who was a regular golf partner of Noe's, denied having knowledge of the Bureau of Workers Compensation (BWC) decision to invest money in Noe's coin funds. Dann demanded, then sued to see memos, e-mails, and other communications transmitted between Gov. Taft's office and the BWC.
Dann was a vociferous critic of then-Attorney General Jim Petro, a Republican, who had been notified by the Securities and Exchange Commission more than two years earlier that the SEC had serious reservations about investment practices at the BWC. Dann charged that Petro ignored those warnings and the misuse of funds at the agency continued unabated until the Toledo Blade and Dann began to expose the corruption.
Attorney General
Dann announced his candidacy for Attorney General of Ohio on November 14, 2005, saying he would use the office to both help local police and prosecutors deal with street crime and to actively and aggressively pursue white collar criminals.
Dann won 71% of the vote in the Democratic primary against former Cleveland Law Director Subodh Chandra. He won the general election in November 2006 by upsetting Ohio State Auditor Betty Montgomery, a former attorney general. In the general-election campaign, Montgomery tried to distance herself from the scandals of the Taft administration, while criticizing Dann for wanting to use the attorney general's office as a platform for activism.
In a television advertisement, the Montgomery campaign attacked Dann for the above-mentioned 2004 reprimand and for defending a man convicted of showing nude pictures to children. Dann responded to the latter attack by saying he was simply doing his job as an attorney.
Dann received 2.04 million votes to 1.83 million for Montgomery, a margin of 52% to 48%. He ran up huge margins in traditionally Republican areas and also won bellwether counties such as Franklin and Stark. Before her defeat by Dann, Montgomery had never lost a statewide election and had been the top Republican vote-getter in the previous two non-presidential statewide contests. He was sworn in as the 47th Ohio Attorney General on January 8, 2007.
Controversies
Dann had been questioned by some for supporting Capri Cafaro's successful bid to fill Dann's unexpired term in the state Senate. Cafaro, heiress to part of the Cafaro shopping-mall empire, had never won election to office. In addition, Cafaro's father, J. J. Cafaro, had pleaded guilty in 2001 to bribing then-Congressman Jim Traficant to push legislation that would benefit his aviation-equipment company. Capri, then in her early 20s, was president of the aviation company but was not charged with any wrongdoing. In a related trial, Capri testified she had never conspired with Traficant.
As of October 18, 2006, the Cafaro family had contributed $30,500 to Dann's campaign for attorney general, in addition to the $26,000 they had donated to his state Senate campaigns. Of that money, $10,000 came from J. J. Cafaro. Dann defended his recommendation of Capri Cafaro by saying he believed she was the only qualified candidate to replace him.