Election 2012
May 7, 2012 at 1:44 pm
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By this ridiculous logic, Atticus Finch would be morally equated with a convicted rapist.
Lawyers are paid to advocate legal positions for clients with legal issues. Lawyers are not actually their clients. Holton should be judged by his perceived capacity to do the job of AG (I didn't vote for him), not by the caricatures some people wish to draw about the many disparate clients of the large firm Holton works for.
Unless Mr. Holton can guarantee that he won't take a job at Lane Powell or a similar law firm after he's done serving as AG, then his performance as AG will be negatively affected. Thinking about his post-AG career, he could be ineffective prosecuting future clients for a powerful law firm like Lane Powell. This may happen either deliberately (unlikely) or in more subtle, unseen ways.
It's the same reason why members of Congress should not be allowed to work as a lobbyist after they retire.
If Holton wins, and then gives any favorable treatment to LP clients in any way, Holton and the party are obviously aware of how bad that would look, and how they would potentially all suffer at the polls for it the next time around. In short, democracy already has an answer for this problem.
He also had to have had conversations with Lane Powell about potential employment there. In those discussions, the prospect of Mr. Holton working in the White Collar Crimes division had to have been discussed, and also, the possibility that he'd run for Attorney General. Don't the citizens of Oregon have a right to know whether a run for AG was discussed? and if it was discussed, shouldn't we know what boundaries, if any, were drawn around his involvement in cases that might put him in a conflict of interest if elected?
And now in this story, we get the tidbit that Holton's clients are "Indian tribes and individuals." Nice to see that the Confederated Tribe of the Umatilla Indian Reservation saw fit to contribute to his campaign recently. It's a pretty good investment/innoculation against future prosecution if Holton becomes the AG.
In the future when Holton is prosecuting Well Fargo for mortgage fraud on behalf of the state, and Lane Powell is on the opposite end of the table, how do you think that's going to work out for us?