For immediate releaseOct. 7, 2008EDITOR’S NOTE

: These stories are produced by University of Montana journalism students under the supervision of Professor Dennis Swibold. They may be used without charge, provided editors retain the students’ bylines. Please contactProfessor Swibold (dennis.swibold@umontana.edu) with any questions. You canalso find this story and others on the upcoming election atwww.montanaschoice2008.blogspot.com.)

Attorney general candidates offer stark choicesBY MARK PAGECommunity News ServiceUM School of Journalism

For Democrat Steve Bullock and Republican Tim Fox, the race to replace AttorneyGeneral Mike McGrath is a clash of experience, ideology and even style.Fox, a 51-year-old lawyer born in Hardin but who now lives in Clancy, sports acowboy hat and cowboy boots and packs a resume that ranges from criminaldefense work to providing legal advice to bankers and state agencies that overseeMontana’s environment and oil and gas resources.Bullock, the 41-year-old Helena man in the button-down shirt and slacks, spentmuch of his career handling civil cases and appeals and working as an advocate for low-income wage earners. Neither has held elective office before; neither has prosecuted a criminal case.But Bullock wears the “insider” label by virtue of the four years he spen

handlingappeals for and administering the state Department of Justice, the office he nowaims to lead.“He knows the position, he’s worked with every division in the Department of Justice,” sa

former Attorney General Joe Mazurek, Bullock’s former boss andnow the treasurer of Bullock’s campaign. “He knows the entire department

and heknows the people working there.”Fox is not impressed. He says his experience handling more than 400 cases as a public defender gives him plenty of insight on law enforcement.Most recently a legal adviser to Mountain West Bank, Fox’s route to state politics has been circuitous. In the early 1990s, under the administration of then-Gov. Marc Racicot, Fox worked for the Montana Board of Oil and GasConservation. He lost the job in a dispute over whether to publish a study his bossdidn’t think was ready.

“He was a young passionate guy wanting to pursue something,” said TomRichmond, Fox’s supervisor at the time. “I guess the older you get, the morecareful you get.”By the mid-90s, Fox was working as an attorney for the Montana Departmentof Environmental Quality under Mark Simonich“Largely a lot of their work was working with the staff in understanding their legal obligations,” Simonich said. “From a legal standpoint the DEQ is a verydifficult agency.”Fox says the work gave him the management expertise necessary to run the750-person Department of Justice.“Being attorney general is first and foremost being a manager,” Fox said. “Ihave experience being a manager.”Bullock’s path to politics started with his work for the Democratic Party in1990. He served as chief legal counsel to Montana Secretary of State Mike Cooneyin the early 1990s and ran Mazurek’s first campaign for attorney general in 1992.From 1997

2001, Bullock worked for the state Justice Department, testifying before the Legislature and representing Montana in cases before the state SupremeCourt and the U. S. Supreme Court, where he successfully defended Montana’sstream-access law.He said he’s the

candidate who truly understands

the

workings of the JusticeDepartment. “I’ve been there,” he added

In 2001, Bullock went to work for a large law firm in Washington

D.C., wherehe also taught law at Georgetown University. He’s been back in Montana for four years, practicing law and grassroots politics. He’s a strong supporter of labor, andhe led the 2006 initiative campaign that increased the

Montana minimum wage.When it comes to the issues, Fox paints himself as a hard-charger who wants tochange state law, not just enforce it. He said he

wants new laws to fight cyber predators and a tougher, clearer law to safeguard Montanans who use deadly forceto protect their homes.Fox said the attorney general can be instrumental in changing the law. Bullock counters that an attorney general’s ability to influence changes in the law islimited. The job, primarily, is to defend state laws, he added.“There are a couple of distinctions that I don’t think Tim appreciates,” Bullock said. “I’m not the great Caped Crusader who can go out there and make the laws.”Still, Bullock emphasizes the need for new tools to fight crime, such asexpanding the Justice Department’s cyber-crime task force and establishing a prescription drug monitoring plan that would give police a heads up whenindividuals jump from pharmacy to pharmacy, trying to obtain controlled drugslike oxycontin.