GOP warming up to Van Hollen

MADISON (AP) - Some Wisconsin conservatives didn't know whose side J.B. Van Hollen was on two years ago.

The Republican attorney general dropped an investigation of the state GOP's biggest target - Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle - issued legal opinions that ran counter to GOP stances and canceled prayers in a service for murder victims.

Since then the attorney general has swung back to the right on several issues, including voter identification, guns and benefits for gay couples, making some wonder whether it's all about politics and the next election.

Van Hollen denied criticism from conservatives factored into his moves. He continues to interpret state laws as they're written, just as he always has, he said.

"We don't take a partisan approach to any of these things," he said.

Still, the 2010 election is only a year off. Van Hollen has said he anticipates running for a second term as attorney general and hasn't ruled out a bid for governor.

His latest moves appear designed to appeal to bedrock Republican supporters, said Charles Franklin, a University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor.

"Early on he was clearly willing to take some positions that annoyed the GOP base," Franklin said. "In the recent decisions, he seems to have seen the law in the same way conservative Republicans do."

Van Hollen vowed during his campaign to uphold state laws on their face, regardless of his political beliefs. He went on to defeat Democrat Kathleen Falk and took office in early 2007.

He then dropped a Justice Department probe into whether state regulators approved the sale of the Kewaunee Nuclear Power Plant because utility executives donated to Doyle's campaign. Van Hollen's predecessor, Democrat Peg Lautenschlager, launched the investigation in 2005, but Van Hollen said he could find no wrongdoing.

One of his legal opinions said it was not likely that Wisconsin's partial-birth abortion ban could be enforced. Another opinion determined that the state university system can legally consider race in admission decisions. He scratched a prayer and a hymn from a state Capitol service for murder victims after the Madison-based Freedom From Religion Foundation objected.

Influential conservative radio talk show hosts Charlie Sykes and Jeff Wagner in Milwaukee questioned whether Van Hollen had "gone native" in liberal Madison. Wagner wrote that if Van Hollen was going to run the Justice Department that way, Falk should have won.

But since then, Van Hollen has come in line with traditional GOP positions.

He filed a lawsuit two months before the 2008 election demanding that state officials follow federal law and verify the identity of tens of thousands of voters. He served as GOP presidential hopeful John McCain's state chairman. He sent assistant attorney generals to the polls to watch for problems.

In April, he said Wisconsin residents could legally carry firearms in the open. During state budget deliberations this past winter he argued against plans for releasing prison inmates early, saying the move would jeopardize public safety. He also fought budget measures calling for police to collect racial profiling data, arguing it would cost too much.

In August he refused to defend in court another budget provision that granted rights and benefits to gay couples, saying the plan violates the state constitution's ban on gay marriage or anything similar.

Now the GOP faithful are coming around.

Sykes said Republicans have warmed up to Van Hollen. The attorney general's decision to honor the gay marriage ban won a lot of conservatives over, he said.

"He has picked his battles very, very carefully. He's been very deliberative in that," Sykes said. "That initially disappointed some conservatives. But the decision on domestic partnership was a defining decision."

Wisconsin Republican Party Executive Director Mark Jefferson said not every conservative is pleased with Van Hollen, but many now realize he puts the law above his political philosophy.

"No question he has a lot of support among the GOP," Jefferson said. "J.B. has said he can't just carry the party's water on everything and we respect that."

Democrat Scott Hassett, who is running for attorney general in 2010, said in an e-mail that Wisconsin voters want an attorney general who will fight for the people, not adhere to the party line.

"Van Hollen has an established record as a hard-right, partisan politician who does the bidding of the Republican Party and who engages in the most cynical kind of politics: saying one thing while doing another," Hassett said.

Van Hollen said the series of pro-GOP decisions was a coincidence and he calls things as he sees them. If he wanted to cater to the party, he would have early in his term, not now, when he's more established, he added.

"We haven't changed the way we've done things here at all since I've become attorney general," he said.