Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 29, 1993 TAG: 9301290329
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ROB EURE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
NEW ATTORNEY GENERAL CAN'T AVOID THE SPOTLIGHT
Steve Rosenthal froze like someone staring down the headlamps of an 18-wheeler on Thursday, as he entered the room where he was to give his first news conference as Virginia's attorney general.The first question from behind the cameras and notebooks was whether he would consider running for the office he'd inherited from Mary Sue Terry.
"No," Rosenthal muttered.
Reporters are used to hearing "no" said in a couple of sentences, so they asked again.
"No," said Rosenthal, who later added what had become obvious. "I am not a politician."
Stephen David Rosenthal, 43, actually became only "acting" attorney general Thursday. He will drop the "acting" part today and be sworn in as the 37th person to serve as the state's top lawyer. Terry, elected twice, quit to concentrate on her run for governor - she is unopposed for the Democratic nomination - and the General Assembly unanimously chose Rosenthal on Thursday to complete her term.
"I'm not used to cameras," Rosenthal admitted later. He's easygoing by nature, happy to talk about his work, his family or his upbringing. He emphatically does not see himself as someone whose future is a life of politics and campaigns.
As Terry's chief deputy for the past year, Rosenthal has been responsible for supervising her public-policy initiatives and the legal work of the 137 lawyers in the office. So there shouldn't be any surprises when he moves Monday to her corner office and red leather chair in the Supreme Court building.
"My first priority is to continue the tradition Mary Sue started seven years ago," he said. "I think the public . . . has gotten a much closer view of what the attorney general's office does."
He is protective of his former boss and rates working for her as his best career opportunity.
It wasn't his only career opportunity, though. Rosenthal's first stop after Washington and Lee Law School was at the premier Republican law firm in Western Virginia.
In 1976, the just-graduated Rosenthal was set to move to Charlottesville to work as a law clerk for U.S. District Judge Ted Dalton.
The judge, however, suggested Rosenthal might make a good addition to his old firm in Radford. His son, John Dalton, was preparing to run for governor the next year and the firm needed a new lawyer to handle the work.
Rosenthal went, and now the Radford firm can add an attorney general to a list of ex-partners that includes two federal judges, a congressman, a Virginia Supreme Court justice and governor.
As governor, John Dalton appointed Rosenthal to the state Board of Corrections and set in motion the events that brought him to the attorney general's office.
Serving on a committee examining the escape of seven death row inmates from Mecklenburg Correctional Center, Rosenthal met H. Lane Kneedler, an assistant dean at the University of Virginia Law School. After Terry was elected in 1985, she made Kneedler her chief deputy. He hired Rosenthal.
So, what is Rosenthal, Democrat or Republican?
Not entirely without political skill, Rosenthal chose his words carefully. Even when Dalton gave him the corrections job, "philosophically, I was what a Democrat is now," he said. "I believe in fiscal conservatism, but with a heart."
Next January, when a newly elected attorney general takes office, Rosenthal's not sure what he'll do. "It's too early to speculate," he said.
He seems undisturbed that he will actually take a pay cut with his promotion. He was earning $102,000 a year as Terry's deputy tbut will make the $95,000 set by law, plus a $300-a-month stipend, as the boss.
He also gets a state-supplied car, but Rosenthal said he's not thrilled at the prospect of parking his BMW in favor of the 1986 Buick the taxpayers provide.
Keywords:
PROFILE