Nessel tells it like it is

As Attorney General Dana Nessel told the story to the Planned Parenthood annual action summit last week, she was at a high-level meeting with Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and their top aides when an “unexpected visitor” showed up.

Nessel wasn’t prepared. But as she looked around, she realized that everyone at the meeting was a woman and someone there may be able to assist.

“I looked around and I asked, ‘Does anyone here have a tampon?’ The Governor looked back at me and said, ‘Madam Attorney General, everyone here has a tampon,’” Nessel said.

The 400 or so folks at the Planned Parenthood meeting loved it.  They erupted in laughter and applause at a line that a completely different audience would probably find uncouth.

But, like it or not, that’s what Michigan is getting in its 54th attorney general. An unfiltered, tell-like-it-is attorney who is willing to pick fights with defenders of the male-dominated status quo, the Catholic Church, Michigan State University or anyone else she sees standing in the way of equal rights and justice.

Having watched politicians in action before becoming one herself, Nessel said she was bothered when one would “dance around and around and around” a question without ever answering it.

So, when she decided to run for her first public office last year, Nessel vowed to be more direct and share exactly what was on her mind in as honest a way as possible.

“I’m sort of a person just who says what they mean and means what I say. I like to be as honest with people as possible and, in a way, I guess that’s translated into good quotes. Some people appreciate that more than others. “But, you know, that’s what you’re going to get with me,” Nessel said. “As much honesty from me as possible.

“My training as a trial attorney is that when a judge asks you a question, you answer that question. You don’t answer some other question that nobody ever asked you. And, so, maybe it’s been a little difficult for me to transition into that, but I don’t want to fully transition into that.

“I want to be transparent, and I want the public to know what is going on in this office. This is their office. This is the office of the people. I’m the people’s attorney. I want them to know what we’re doing,” she said.

In her first 100 days, Nessel said she’s been amazed by the quality of the career civil servants in the Attorney General’s Office. Coming from the outside and only being able to bring a handful of her people into the job with her, Nessel said she was concerned she could get push back from the attorneys on staff.

Rather, she said she’s “been amazed by the quality of staff” and the workloads many of them carry. She called the AG’s staff “some of the best attorneys that I’ve ever worked with or against in my whole career. And I have a whole staff of them.”

Nessel told that same Planned Parenthood rally about her decision to promote numerous women within the AG’s office — including new Solicitor General Fadwa Hammoud and Chief Legal Counsel Suzanne Sonneborn — has resulted in a more diverse leadership structure.

When she started the job, she said she was struck by how few women and people of color were in positions of authority when more than 50 percent of the people graduating from law school are women.

“I didn’t hire people or promote people based on their gender or based on their race or any of those considerations,” Nessel said. “I just hired the best people I could, but that included a lot of women, fortunately. We are making an effort to balance out the staff.”

As of now, Nessel estimated that a third of the Attorney General Office’s leadership posts are made up of women. And while “I welcome the great work by the many men who work in the office, I do expect over the course of my term that things will be a little more balanced by the time I leave.”

(Kyle Melinn, an editor of the Capitol newsletter MIRS, is at melinnky@gmail.com.)