Why the office of Attorney General matters

The next piece of the Subodh Chandra transcript--reminding me of another reason not to like John Kerry...

Subodh Chandra: This office matters as *much* as the governor's office. This office matters because it is our last abilitly to protect people, and if you're a Democrat this office matters because, by losing this office for the last three elections, we have lost our ability to protect people. That's why I ask you to care about this. I ask you to tell your friends to care about it. Because, we are all victims of the soft bigotry of low expectations. What they have done is lulled us into a belief that this office doesn't matter! So that we don't invest in it--we don't try to keep it. And let me assure you of one thing, my fellow progressives, the Republicans care about this office.

In Pennsylvania, in the year 2004, Kerry was up by 4 points in the polls. The Democrat, like myself, a former federal prosecutor, who was running for Attorney General, was up by 2 points in the polls. The Republican was the general counsel of Waste Management, Inc., the biggest corporate polluter in Pennsylvania. Kerry pulled out at the last minute, realizing he was going to coast to victory in Pennsylvania. The Republican Attorneys General Association, which was founded by big tobacco, big polluters, big insurance companies, big pharmaceutical companies and funded by them, then laundered half a million dollars into the Pennsylvania AG's race at the last minute. Corporate money, illegal there as it is here, laundered in through a shell entity, and they turned the election around. And even though Kerry won Pennsylvania, the Republicans won the Attorney General seat. They care about this office.

Because they don't want to see tobacco litigation again, they don't want to see another Elliot Spitzer again, they don't want to see the mutual fund industry held accountable again, they don't want to see pharmaceutical companies sued, as they have been by the Attorney General in Illinois, because of their discriminatory pricing. The elderly and vulnerable here pay three times the price they do over the border in Canada. That's why the office matters.

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