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Republican Reagan Dunn Launches Campaign for Attorney General – Says McKenna Will Lead Way in 2012

Article by Erik Smith. Published on Tuesday, June 15, 2011 EST.

GOP Rapidly Fleshing Out Top of Ticket – King County Councilman Has Been Prepping for Months

 


King County Councilman Reagan Dunn.

By Erik Smith
Staff writer/ Washington State Wire

OLYMPIA, June 14.—King County Councilman Reagan Dunn kicks off his campaign for attorney general Tuesday with big money in the bank, a solid round of endorsements, and a resume like you would not believe.

            The dominos are beginning to fall into place, Republicans say, as they fill out the slate for 2012. They’re still looking for a candidate to take on U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell. But Attorney General Rob McKenna’s entry into the governor’s race last week has given the green light to a campaign Dunn has been readying for months.

            He enters the race with a fleshed-out campaign platform, a staff ready to go, and somewhere in the neighborhood of $100,000 in his war-chest, all raised since the first of June.

            “I would say that Dunn and McKenna will be perceived as the best top-of-the-ticket we’ve had in 30 years,” he boasts. But he may not be off the mark.

            Dunn, 40, of Maple Valley, is banking that McKenna’s strong appeal to King County voters will provide a boost to Republican candidates all down the ticket. The state’s most populous county, heavily Democratic, is the big trouble spot for any Republican candidate who runs statewide. Yet Dunn also may be able to stand by himself. He has the same thing going for him that McKenna did in 2004 – two big wins in the county’s eastside Republican stronghold, and six years in office that he says have taught him plenty about elective politics.

 

            A Resume Made for Politics

 

            But it doesn’t end there. You might say Dunn has been prepping for this one his entire life. Son of the late Congresswoman Jennifer Dunn, Reagan has held a variety of positions in both public and private life. A graduate of the University of Washington School of Law, Dunn practiced law four years for a private Bellevue firm before joining the U.S. Department of Justice, eventually becoming a federal prosecutor. He served as the first national coordinator of Project Safe Neighborhoods, the Bush Administration’s gun-violence initiative. And he was part of the agency’s senior staff in D.C., serving as senior counsel to the executive office for United States Attorneys.

            Dunn returned to the state in 2005 to fill McKenna’s old seat on the King County Council, after McKenna left to become attorney general. Dunn won his first race that fall with 62 percent of the vote. In 2009, he carried the same district with 78 percent.

            Last year he was executive director for the bail-reform referendum that gave judges discretion to deny bail for dangerous offenders. And he has played a behind-the-scenes role in Republican politics through the Jennifer Dunn Leadership School for GOP candidates.

Dunn said he’s interested in the state’s top legal job in part because he’s concerned about the direction of state government – a matter in which he says the attorney general plays more of a role than you might think. “He can have a substantial hand in ensuring efficiency and transparency in government,” Dunn said.

            You won’t catch find him disagreeing with McKenna’s policies. That includes McKenna’s independence of the governor’s office, an important point should McKenna win. Said Dunn, “I want to be the people’s lawyer, which this job requires me to be.”

 

            Third Candidate to Declare

 

            Dunn enters a race in which two Democrats have already declared their candidacy and have been actively raising money for their own campaigns for the last several months. Fellow King County Councilman Bob Ferguson has raised $161,324; former Pierce County Executive John Ladenburg, $56,435. Dunn’s total doesn’t show up yet in Public Disclosure Commission reports.

            Another widely rumored potential Democratic candidate, Jay Manning, former director of the state Department of Ecology and now chief of staff for Gov. Christine Gregoire, said Monday he will not run for the position.

            Dunn carries endorsements from McKenna, former Republican Attorney General Ken Eikenberry, and the state’s five living former Republican U.S. attorneys. Former Western Washington U.S. Attorney John McKay said Dunn’s experience in private practice is a critical advantage. “Public service, while it is an important part of your resume, I do think that you need some time in private practice. The attorney general’s office is the largest law firm in the state. He’s got a good blend of experience that I think will lend itself well to his time as attorney general.”

            Said Eastern Washington’s Jim McDevitt, “He’s got experience both as a prosecutor and as an elected official, and he’s earned great respect in both areas.”

 

            Supports Health Care Lawsuit

 

            Because Washington’s top legal office is an independently elected position, the attorney general has broad latitude to pick and choose his battles. Dunn says he supports McKenna’s most controversial decision – to join the national lawsuit filed by Republican governors and attorneys general in 26 states against the Obama Administration’s health care reform initiative. And just in case that one hasn’t been resolved by 2014, Dunn says he’ll keep right on pressing the case.

            On Initiative 1053, the ballot measure that imposes a supermajority requirement on the state Legislature for tax increases, Dunn says he agrees with McKenna that it is constitutional, and will continue its defense. 

Where environmental regulation is concerned, Dunn says he will press for enforcement of the Hanford Tri-Party Agreement that mandates federal nuclear waste cleanup efforts, and he will continue the state’s lawsuit against the Obama Administration for its decision to abandon the nuclear waste repository under development at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. But on the environment there is perhaps one nuance that might separate him from his Democratic rivals. 

             “You know, we’ve got plenty of environmental regulations on the books,” he said. “The issue is whether we are enforcing or not enforcing, so what I want to do is to enforce the regulations that we have, and those regulations that are not meeting their objectives, I want to recommend to the governor and the Legislature where those regulations are not being used and might have a detrimental effect on our economy.”

           

             A Big Administrative Job

 

            Dunn says he backs McKenna’s controversial gang-violence initiative, which ran afoul of opposition in the Legislature from the American Civil Liberties Union and minority organizations. Other positions may not offer such a distinction between candidates. Dunn says he’ll push for more resources for county prosecutors, and he pledges an emphasis on consumer protection, including aid for homeowners facing foreclosure.

            Eikenberry said he is impressed with Dunn’s quick rise and record of accomplishment. “Let me put it this way,” he said. “I have a friend who felt that things came easily to Reagan. But in fact he has worked in a variety of places on a variety of things and I think he is really well prepared and qualified to go ahead and step into an office like the attorney general’s office.”

              The thing you have to remember about the office is that the attorney general needs to be a leader, not a micro-manager, Eikenberry said. The workload hasn’t changed much since he left office in 1992, he said – roughly 25,000 cases at any given time. Legal expertise and political smarts are one thing, but it also takes a skilled administrator to run the office effectively.

            “There is just a ton of room for inspiration and leadership in the office of attorney general, because here you have 400 independent-thinking professionals, every one of whom believes they can probably do a better job than the attorney general, and most of whom could walk out the door and probably get a higher paying job out on the street,” Eikenberry said. “We had some guys who are really good in court work and so forth, in tort cases, and you really need to stay in touch with people like that to know what their cases are. There is a huge opportunity to miss deadlines, to screw up, and allow yourself to become buried, if you are so inclined.”

            The right candidate has to package a broad array of skills, Eikenberry said, and you can’t ask for a better resume than Dunn’s.


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