Montgomery stunned to silence at her loss as attorney general
Columbus -- On a heady night for Ohio Democrats, no candidate beat the odds like Sen. Marc Dann.
Behind in the polls by as many as 10 points just three weeks ago, the Youngstown lawyer improbably came back to slay the Republican Party's Goliath - state Auditor Betty Montgomery - in the attorney general's race.
Six months ago, no one could have predicted that - except for Marc Dann.
"I know I certainly wasn't in the majority, but I clearly saw and felt and heard from the people in this state a desire for somebody who was willing to stand up to people in power and who was willing to take the office in a different direction," Dann said Wednesday. "I've always thought I was going to win."
Dann's victory was a crushing defeat for Montgomery, a two-term attorney general who won more votes than any other candidate in the 2002 and 1998 elections and would have been the early GOP frontrunner for governor in 2010.
Unofficial results showed Dann winning comfortably - 52.3 percent to 47.7 percent - and even beating Montgomery on her home turf in Lucas and Wood counties.
Montgomery was so stunned that she didn't concede until 3 p.m. Wednesday. By then, she had jetted off to Florida and was declining to take phone calls.
"I don't think she wants to talk to any of us right now," said her longtime adviser Mark Weaver.
In a statement released by her campaign, Montgomery said, "I realize that in a campaign where voters wanted new faces, my experience may have worked against me. I respect the decision Ohio's voters have made."
She said she would remain in public service "in some capacity, as we all have a duty to give back to our communities."
After dropping out of the Republican primary for governor because she said she didn't want to engage in the nasty campaign it would take to emerge victorious, Montgomery waged a brutal ad campaign against Dann in which she accused him of being soft on child predators.
The ads infuriated Dann, who struck back with $1.5 million in TV ads in the last 16 days in which he hammered Montgomery for her long association with indicted Toledo coin dealer Tom Noe.
Dann also was able to offset Montgomery's $5 million war chest by suing Gov. Bob Taft to obtain public records that helped illuminate the extent of the corruption that permeated Taft's office.
"I think it was the perfect juxtaposition of somebody who didn't do her job versus somebody who, you can make an argument, was doing her job for her for the past year," Dann said.
Dann said his first order of business would be "to clean up our internal practices about contracting," including the practice of awarding unbid special counsel contracts.
Lawyers hired by the attorney general historically have been a huge source of campaign cash, circumventing contribution limits by directing hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations through their partners and family members.
To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:
twendling@plaind.com, 1-800-228-8272
posted by Kathie Bracy at 9:06 PM
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