History of the attorney general

The office of attorney general, now considered such a prize by ambitious politicians like Susan Bysiewicz and others, wasn’t even a full-time job until the 1980s.

It’s also the only Connecticut constitutional office that doesn’t have its roots in Colonial times. We have had governors, deputy or lieutenant governors, treasurers and secretaries of the state since those offices were established by the Fundamental Orders of the Connecticut Colony in 1639 and there have even been comptrollers since 1786.

But the Legislature didn’t establish the office of attorney general until the turn of the century — the 20th century — after governors and other state officials had been complaining for decades that it was time for the state to have its own lawyer instead of farming the job out to private law firms.

In 1898, the Legislature passed the law that has been so troubling to Bysiewicz, with its requirement that “The attorney general shall be an elector of this state and an attorney-in-fact of at least 10 years active practice at the bar of this court.â€

The first attorney general, Charles Phelps, came to the office on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. He had a secretary and was paid $4,000 a year. The Legislature didn’t add two assistant attorneys general until 1927 and didn’t get around to making the state’s lawyer a full-time job until 1982 when it raised his salary from $30,000 to $50,000.

Consumerism was all the rage in the 1970s and early ’80s and state Sen. Joe Lieberman, who became the first full-time AG in 1983, was the first to make the attorney general the people’s lawyer, as he launched crusades with a consumerist flavor.

Lieberman also made the activities of his office very public, quickly learning the value of using announcements of legal actions as photo opportunities and after only five years, he ran successfully for the U.S. Senate. Clarine Nardi Riddle completed the two years left in Lieberman’s second term and was succeeded by Richard Blumenthal, who made the people’s lawyer into an art form as he held the job for nearly two decades.

There have been 23 attorneys general since 1899 and many of them saw the office as a springboard to judgeships as governors rewarded hard-working attorneys general with lifetime jobs. Robert Killian, a rare exception, moved on to be Ella Grasso’s lieutenant governor but then made the mistake of challenging his boss’s second-term ambitions and Grasso defeated him in a primary.

Should Bysiewicz survive the self-inflicted wounds she has suffered and succeed Blumenthal, she will be the first woman elected attorney general. (Nardi Riddle was an interim appointee to complete Lieberman’s term when he went to the Senate.) A victory by Bysiewicz or one of her challengers, former Senate Majority Leader and gubernatorial candidate George Jepsen or state Rep. Cameron Staples, would also continue a 52-year Democratic winning streak for the office.

The last Republican elected attorney general was John Bracken, a Hartford Republican who may also have the distinction of being the last Hartford Republican, a nearly extinct species, elected to a major office of any kind. Bracken was elected in 1954 when Democrat Abe Ribicoff won his first term as governor by a slender 3,000 votes and couldn’t carry the rest of the Democratic ticket with him.

Republicans hoping to be the one to snap that Democratic streak are state Sen. Andrew Roraback, a respected and moderate legislator known for never having missed a vote in a 16-year career, John Pavia, the state party’s finance chairman, and Martha Dean, a conservative who lost to Blumenthal in 2002 by 300,000 votes and could be the only woman in the race if Bysiewicz falters.

Dean didn’t get off to a very successful start when she criticized Blumenthal’s anti- business, “gotcha†lawsuits but couldn’t provide a single example when asked by consumer reporter George Gombossy what Blumenthal suits she wouldn’t have filed.

“Just a suggestion,†Gombossy suggested, “when someone accuses someone of improprieties, it’s always a good idea to have at least one example.â€

Dick Ahles is a retired journalist from Simsbury. E-mail him at dahles@hotmail.com.