Some candidates running for California attorney general are off to a dismally disingenuous start.
They seek to use their official designations on California’s ballots to mislead voters into thinking they are something they are not.
One top-tier Republican candidate, John Eastman, teaches law at Chapman University School of Law and is its former dean. His lawyers will appear in Sacramento court today asking that his occupation be listed as “assistant attorney general.”
Another Republican, state Sen. Tom Harman, is defending his designation as “prosecutor/attorney/senator.” Two out of three isn’t enough. He is hardly a prosecutor.
Candidates in both parties seek to stretch their occupational designations. Seeking a fourth term in Congress, U.S. Rep. Jim Costa, D-Fresno, calls himself a “farmer/representative,” an apparent effort to minimize the fact that he spends a lot of time in Washington.
Such designations may poll well. But they fail that fundamental examination – the giggle test. It is especially onerous that candidates for attorney general would play fast and loose with the facts.
Attorneys general oversee a huge staff of investigators and lawyers, who defend the state and its taxpayers against lawsuits, sue over consumer fraud and environmental degradation, and investigate and prosecute serious crimes including public corruption.
The attorneys general argue cases before the highest courts in the nation, and, significantly, they represent the state in death penalty appeals.
Honesty is not too much to ask, starting with how they introduce themselves to voters in their official ballot designations.
Harman, an Orange County Republican, is an attorney and senator, who earlier this year took a one-week class so he could volunteer on Fridays in the Orange County District Attorney’s Office in minor proceedings. His claim to be a prosecutor is an insult to people who are.
Eastman’s “assistant attorney general” claim is spurious, too. In addition to his work as a law school dean and teacher, he represents clients. One of these was South Dakota, which hired him to defend the state in a case where an inmate claimed his religious freedoms were being violated.
More valuable than the $20,000 fee, South Dakota bestowed a fancy title on him – assistant attorney general. In South Dakota.
In his suit, Eastman insists that the rules set forth by the California secretary of state permit him to be called “assistant attorney general,” but, darn, they do not permit the further designation of “South Dakota.”
This is the very definition of a frivolous lawsuit. When he appears in court today, we can only hope that the judge exacts swift and certain justice, and sends professor Eastman to the back of the class.