Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann has been issued an ultimatum to resign. State Democrats have issued a letter stating that the Democrats of the Ohio House will introduce a resolution to impeach Marc Dann.
Signatories to the letter are: Ohio Governor Ted Strickland, U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown, Ohio Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher, Ohio S.O.S. Jennifer Brunner, Ohio Treasurer Richard Cordray, Ohio Senate Minority Leader Ray Miller, Ohio House Minority Leader Joyce Beatty, and ODP Chair Chris Redfern.
Took Redfern long enough to get on board.
Rep. Joyce Beatty comes out smelling like a rose, because she tackled the thorny issues of Matt Barrett AND Marc Dann, and she’ll be a key player if Dann refuses to resign. Kudos to her from me.
[update] Hat tip to JMZ at Writes Like She Talks for informing readers that state Democrat leaders are severing party ties to Marc Dann, which is a step in the right direction.
Buckeye RINO 
May 5, 2008 at 12:30 pm
But they cant force him out, right? That is the way I understand it.
May 5, 2008 at 1:00 pm
Only by way of impeachment. Unfortunately, the state Dems will be able to have it both ways if Dann doesn’t resign quickly. No one would expect impeachment proceedings to wrap up before the window for holding special elections closes.
So, with Dann’s current refusal to resign in response to the ultimatum, the state Dems can look as though they are doing the right thing, yet, at the same time, winking at Dann for taking them off the hook for stalling for time. Right now, the Jim Friedman firm is hard at work scrubbing the AG office of evidence of what could be far worse charges of misconduct against Dann, and without those worse charges to jolt the system into working faster, impeachment will probably be inexorably slow, and will have to be based on the flimsy evidence already provided by the AG office’s own investigation of the AG office.
May 5, 2008 at 1:01 pm
What I meant by “forcing” Dann’s hand is that no one is offering any political cover to Dann anymore.
May 5, 2008 at 1:22 pm
Can someone please tell me why the state inspector general is sitting this one out? Why are the R’s not asking those letter signatories to get the state inspector general involved and someone who can actually punish folks for lying in a deposition?
Take a gander at the actual text of Espy’s investigation transcripts…They all lie and Espy let’s them get away with it.
May 5, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Publius4ohio, I wish I had an answer for that. I am quite frustrated.
May 5, 2008 at 1:43 pm
The state Inspector General has no oversight authority over the Attorney General. There is actually no one with any type of oversight authority over the office.
Impeachment proceedings will not take forever. It takes a simple majority of the House to impeach and 2/3 of the Senate to convict and remove from office. An official can be impeached for any type of misdeed – and this certainly qualifies as a misdeed.
May 5, 2008 at 1:59 pm
I certainly hope you are 100% correct. Thanks for commenting.
May 5, 2008 at 2:09 pm
http://books.google.com/books?id=mQQ_eD1C2CsC&pg=PA145&lpg=PA145&dq=ohio+history+impeachment&source=web&ots=Wu44VPfVv6&sig=UMTVRRoev8T5qabCh22poSHAnoQ&hl=en
That’s a good start, referenced on Buckeye State Blog this past weekend.
May 5, 2008 at 2:41 pm
But how does that assure us that proceeding with impeachment will go quickly once it’s begun? How can we gauge how fast it will take to culminate in a vote of the state senate?
May 5, 2008 at 3:08 pm
It’s been almost 200 years since the last impeachment, so we really don’t have any idea how long it will take (the last impeachment was in 1820 from my research).
May 5, 2008 at 3:55 pm
Looks like I am wrong – there have been a few more attempts to impeach people, notably an attempt to impeach a governor. Doing some more research.