A few months ago, I broke the story that Marc Dann’s employee, Marquez Brown, the regional public-affairs coordinator in Cleveland, sent an email out to invite Cleveland-area Democrats to walk in a parade with Dann. The contact phone number he listed was directly in his office.

According to The Dispatch Blog’s James Nash, Dann’s employees continue to be political hacks while on still on the clock:

When a junior staffer for Attorney General Marc Dann used his office e-mail account to invite people to join Dann at a St. Patrick’s Day parade, the staffer was suspended for two days.

Dann’s top lieutenant, however, won’t get in trouble for asking employees to volunteer their children to march in a July 4 parade with the attorney general.

The difference?

Marquez Brown, the regional public-affairs coordinator in Cleveland, sent the St. Patrick’s parade invitation to Cleveland-area Democrats. Edgar Simpson, Dann’s chief of policy and administration, sent the July 4 invitation to employees of the attorney general’s office.

Yeah- Parades aren’t political, and are an important, tax-payer funded activity of the Ohio Attorney General. Give me a break.

As a former employee of the Ohio House of Representatives, I can tell you that that this sort of on-the-clock activity would end up with these employees being fired and walked out of the Verne Riffe building by the Sergeant at Arms. But I guess when you’re from Youngstown and have close ties to the Mafia, I suppose your standards would be a lowered a tad.

This story won’t go beyond Nash’s blog post, I assume- Bust just imagine what would have happened if former Secretary of State Ken Blackwell did this? It would be in the paper for more than a year, and the Toledo Blade would assign a reporter to camp out and provide daily updates of “Paradegate.”