The Wake

The damned, dirty Minnesota grouch Mike Hatch

They’ve done it again: MinnPost is raiding former Minnesota Attorney General Mike Hatch’s political image as a public servant for the down-trodden, or, to put it another way, reaffirming Hatch’s public reputation as a hot-tempered, hypocritical bastard.

Here are some excerpts from Eric Black’s old-fashioned investigative report that give us an idea of Hatch’s would-be DFL-minded personality:

Hatch took over an office that had been known, under his predecessors, as a national model among AG offices, for striking an appropriate balance between the political needs of the elected official and the obligation of public lawyers to do high-quality, non-partisan legal work, and turned it into an office driven by Hatch’s political ambitions.

Attorneys under Hatch (with Swanson as one of his top lieutenants) felt pressured to skate on ethical thin ice. They also felt that if they pushed back, they would face consequences from verbal abuse to a sudden loss of standing in the office, up to and including being forced out.

And, of course, my favorite part of Hatch’s demeanor:

Hatch used the f-word and the mother-f’er variation. He called the deputy and his entire division the “biggest bunch of [f’ing] losers” he’d ever seen.

All of this Hatch news comes in light of his protégée and current Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson’s similar top-down iron hand approach to her office. Like Hatch, Swanson continues to refuse the unionization of her staffers and pit them in unethical positions.

Sure, if Nick Coleman is calling Gov. Pawlenty “Tim the Terrible,” then Pawlenty’s certainly not Minnesota’s ideal leader. But a Gov. Hatch would have been worse than a Gov. Pawlenty in the same way that a Hubert Humphrey Presidency would have been worse than a Richard Nixon Presidency in ‘68. Hatch and Humphrey are very similar in the two-edged sword retrospect. One minute Humphrey’s speaking against the Viet Nam War to a rally of college kids, the next minute he’s talking about “staying on course” in front of Big Labor leaders. One minute Hatch and Swanson are running pro-labor campaigns, the next minute they’re refusing labor support for their own staffers. But fuggit - life’s a bitch and soon we’ll all be dead.

As for Hatch’s response to Black’s report, he blames the current controversies on a “small cabal of attorneys” who are trying to unionize the office. According to Hatch, these attorneys hide behind anonymity to “throw mud at their bosses and look for any scribner to serve as their hand maiden.” Bravo, buddy, bravo.

Tags: Big Labor, DFL, Lori Swanson, Mike Hatch, political corruption