For Attorney General: Smith

This year’s lackluster contest for state attorney general will not loom large in anyone’s memory, but the position of chief California law- enforcement officer is an important one. The proper exercise of its duties requires a steady, unbiased and experienced hand; it is no place for on-the-job training. For that reason, among others, we prefer San Francisco District Atty. Arlo Smith.

Smith has spent his 37-year legal career as a prosecutor, and 26 of those years were spent on the staff of the state attorney general, which he joined as law clerk even before he was notified of his bar examination results. Smith went on to become the youngest head in history of the office’s criminal division and, while serving in that capacity, he took a leading role in launching its organized crime and consumer fraud units. Subsequently, as San Francisco’s elected district attorney, Smith has managed his own large staff of lawyers and investigators, while compiling a respectable, though not spectacular, prosecutorial record. In the process, the Democratic candidate has demonstrated a firm, balanced respect for both public safety and constitutional rights.

Smith’s chief opponent, former Republican congressman Dan Lungren, has never prosecuted a single criminal case or worked as a criminal attorney. As a member of the GOP minority in the House, he cast a number of curious votes that raise legitimate questions about whether he would have the kind of balance needed in this job. He voted against reparations for Japanese Americans interned during World War II, against reproductive choice, against the collection of statistics on hate crimes, against attempts to strengthen worker safety laws, against fair housing measures, against federal assistance to the homeless, against the Clean Water Act, against the Superfund toxic cleanup measure and against strengthening the Clean Air Act. He is in favor of offshore oil drilling.

No one of these votes by itself should be used as a single-issue litmus test. But as a whole they portend an approach to public policy inappropriate to the lawyer who must, after all, offer sound legal advice to the governor and other top state officials.