After a brief introduction at a Dino Rossi fundraiser and a few e-mails and phone calls with his staff, Rob McKenna made time in his busy schedule to answer a few questions for Red County. I called him while he was on the road to an event in Pasco, talking "hands free," of course.

In my interview with McKenna, running for re-election as the state Attorney General, I came away with a very clear sense of the difference between a public servant and a politician. As hard as I tried to "win over" McKenna's partisan confidence, he simply wasn't interested in speaking from the tome of partisan politics. He is a man on a mission: several missions, in fact.

RC: What are your priorities for a second term as Attorney General?

McKenna: No question, we are focusing first and foremost on the escalating problem of prescription drug abuse, especially opiate, pain relievers like Oxycontin. It's become a real problem. 20% of teenagers admit to abusing prescription drugs. Deaths from prescription drug overdose are second only to automobile deaths in our state.

RC: Your last big drug abuse campaign was against methamphetamine labs. Is that still going on?

McKenna: We were actually very successful in that we reduced the number of meth labs in 2001 from 1,890 to less than 50 today. We did that by increasing
controls on the sale of pseudo ephedrine type over-the-counter drugs (like common decongestants) and working with the legislature directing money toward rural counties who then created an aggressive task force against tracking down the labs, increasing sentences and making substance abuse treatment more accessible.

RC: Is it harder to go after prescription drug abuse or easier?

McKenna: A mixed bag. I think it just requires a different strategy. We are focusing on linking all the pharmacy databases across the state so that we can track patterns and look for people buying them from multiple sources.Also, because this is a problem that's plaguing our teen population especially we are really trying to focus on prevention and education of our young people.  The AG's office is sponsoring the first ever statewide Youth Prevention Summit on October 17th and 18th in Yakima. What's even better is that we are funding it from money that we got from a lawsuit against the drugs companies that were breaking the law in the production of Oxycontin and in obstructing the process and availability of generic drugs to the consumer.

RC: OK, help me understand a little more about what the attorney general's job
is. I've heard conflicting views that the AG is the lawyer for the citizens and I've heard that the AG's only jurisdiction is to protect state government. Which is it?

McKenna: The lawyers that work for the state are not prosecutors. They almost always represent either the citizens in consumer protection (in anti-trust, consumer safety or consumer fraud cases) or they represent the state of Washington such as
in our suit against the prescription drug companies. Actually, what we spend most of our time doing [I felt a distinctive sadness in his voice] is representing about 8000 children in foster care situations.

RC: [My interest is piqued as this is an issue near and dear to my heart. I went into a diatribe about applying a "one strike you're out" when it comes to certain crimes against children, then had to reel myself in]. I didn't realize that was part of the AG's office. I have friends that are foster parents and they have just been through hell trying to keep their kids from severely abusive parents. It seems like the stated purpose of the law in this area is to reunify the children with their parents at all costs, regardless of the fitness of the parents. Am I wrong about that?

McKenna: This is absolutely the hardest part of the job, no question. The law swings back and forth with regard to preferring to err on the side of the parents
for some time and then swinging the other way and preferring to err against the
parents. You can imagine how carefully we need to tread when it's something as sacred as parental rights. Taking children away from their parents should not be
an easy thing for the state to do.
     On the other hand when you see the horrific level of physical, emotional and sexual abuse that we see, it is a gut wrenching experience. Just really terrible. I'm a father of four children and it is just hard to see this dark side of humanity and then try and act as though this is just one more legal issue, like any other. It's just really the toughest part of the job, no question. Mostly we get involved at the point of trying to get kids in foster care placement and terminating parental rights. So, by the time we're involved, the case has been made many times over against the parents.

Here is where I tried to get him to go partisan, not because I was playing a game, but because of my own bias against our blue state. McKenna never budged in my direction, not because he was playing a game, but because I think he just does not think in those terms.

RC: I assume that the legislature and or the Governor might disagree with your priorities or have philosophical disagreements with your agenda, being that they are liberal democrats and you are a right of center Republican. How have they made your job more difficult?

McKenna: Actually, I really have to give the legislature credit. They have been very open to my legislative proposals regarding consumer protection and 75% of the bills that have come from the AG office regarding open government have been adopted. So, they've actually been good to work with in that regard. In another case, our office informed the Governor's office that their interpretation of an environmental law was incorrect and we were very happy that they cooperated fully into the matter. So, I'd say, despite our political differences in other areas, we have had a good working relationship.

Rob McKenna's work ethic as a public servant, rather than a partisan politician, is probably most evident by the number of democrats that also support his candidacy. In the August 19th primary where Democrats voted in much larger numbers, McKenna's opponent, John Ladenburg fared about 14 points behind McKenna. Still, he's not taking that lead for granted as his campaign schedule is brutal.

Follow these links for information on the Atttorney General s Office  and his re-election campaign