Turn On The Lights, Watch The Roaches Scatter, Part 36

How has the election and the several states' attorneys general races affected the case against Foreclosuregate?  It's still very much go...unless you live across the river in Ohio, that is.

One instrumental voice, however, will be missing from the investigation’s executive committee, which includes 13 of the 50 participating attorneys general: Richard Cordray of Ohio, who narrowly lost his bid for re-election to Mike DeWine, a former United States senator.

Mr. DeWine, a Republican, declined to say Wednesday whether he would join the investigation when he takes office in January. “We will take a look at that,” he said in a telephone interview.

During the campaign, Mr. DeWine made other issues his priority, including problems with Ohio’s crime lab, corruption in Cleveland and the new health care law. “When I was out with regular people, shaking hands, very few people would talk specifically about the mortgage fraud issue,” Mr. DeWine said. 

Yeah, Mike DeWine there doesn't know anybody who's lost their homes to this mess.  It's not like Ohio has been ravaged by the housing market collapse or anything.  But to Ohio's new AG, it's no big deal.  He'd rather go after Cleveland Democrats than worry about potentially thousands of Ohioans who lost their homes.

Mr. Cordray, the losing Democrat, has successfully sued Wall Street for more than a billion dollars. He has suits pending against GMAC Mortgage, a major lender, and has challenged banks against papering over paperwork omissions and instead address the roots of the problem.

But his advocacy did not translate into a winning campaign issue, said David B. Cohen, a political science professor at the University of Akron.

“Cordray was really at the forefront of the whole foreclosure mess but the inattentive public, which makes up the majority in Ohio and the country in general, wasn’t listening,” Mr. Cohen said. “They were mad at the party in power.” 

And hey, Ohio voters basically turned the state blood red.   Somehow, I don't see anyone in the state's new power structure worrying too much about foreclosuregate when there's local political revenge to be sought for 2006.