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MADISON - A former state Department of
Natural Resources chief filed paperwork Thursday to challenge Attorney
General J.B. Van Hollen in next year's election.
Democrat Scott Hassett filed a campaign
registration statement with state election officials. The statement
allows him to raise campaign money and enables him to get on the
ballot if he can collect at least 2,000 signatures on his nomination
papers.
Hassett hasn't officially declared his
candidacy yet, but the filing essentially signals he's in the race.
"It's a good time for me. A lot of
people, friends, people whose judgment I trust, encouraged me to do
this. I just think it's a great challenge," Hassett said.
Hassett faces a formidable foe in Van
Hollen. The Republican incumbent has years of experience in law
enforcement, including serving as a district attorney and a U.S.
attorney. Van Hollen's campaign issued a statement welcoming a
challenge from a "former government bureaucrat" with no
prosecutorial experience.
"Our very different backgrounds
will provide voters a clear contrast next November," Van Hollen
said in the statement.
Hassett, an attorney by trade, ran
twice for state Senate in the early 1980s but lost both times in
primary contests to other Democrats. Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle
appointed him to serve as DNR secretary in 2003.
He began the job during the height of
the agency's struggles against chronic wasting disease in the state's
deer herd. The agency's plan to eradicate the disease by killing every
deer in disease zones generated anger among hunters and landowners,
and a state audit in 2006 ultimately found the herd in disease zones
had grown despite the DNR's $30 million efforts. Hassett has said his
predecessors were overzealous in their CWD approach and put the agency
on the wrong track.
The agency also found itself repeatedly
butting heads with Republican lawmakers who accused it of being too
heavy-handed in enforcing conservation statutes.
Hassett resigned in mid-2007, saying
the pace of the job was getting to him. On Thursday, he hinted there
may have been some friction between him and the governor's
administration, saying he supported the idea of the Natural Resources
Board appointing the secretary rather than making the post a cabinet
position, but he didn't elaborate.
"Those jobs (cabinet positions)
tend to eat you alive," he said. He stressed he remains friends
with Doyle and even chatted with him in April about running for
attorney general.
Van Hollen brings years of law
enforcement experience to the attorney general's office, including
stints as a district attorney and U.S. attorney in Madison.
Hassett said he has many years of
experience at Madison law firm Lawton & Cates law firm litigating
civil and criminal cases, including prisoner, employment and civil
rights cases.
As DNR secretary, he managed the
agency's wardens and referred about 100 environmental protection cases
to the state Justice Department every year.
He said Van Hollen has tried to
politicize the attorney general's office, pointing to a lawsuit Van
Hollen filed just before the November elections demanding state
election officials verify the identity of tens of thousands of voters.
The lawsuit was dismissed weeks before the election.
Hassett accused Van Hollen of taking
part in a national Republican strategy to suppress voter
participation.
"He comes from the hard right wing
of the Republican Party," Hassett said. "I'll be able to
offer the voters a clear choice."
Van Hollen has said the suit was meant
to force state elections officials to comply with the federal Help
America Vote Act. The attorney general said the law requires election
officials to check the names everyone registered to vote since Jan. 1,
2006, against other state databases and remove ineligible voters from
the rolls.
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