Republican Attorney General candidate Martha Dean's 11th hour lawsuit charging that her Democratic opponent, George Jepsen, lacks the legal credentials to hold the office likely will go unresolved until after Tuesday's election, a Superior Court Judge said Friday morning.
After an hour-long argument in court that focused on the legal foundation for Dean's suit and largely ignored Jepsen's resume as a lawyer, Judge Julia Aurigemma said she couldn't guarantee a decision before Tuesday.
"I am going to take it under advisement," Aurigemma said after the hearing in Hartford. "I don't anticipate an order today."
Dean contends in the lawsuit, filed Tuesday, that Jepsen lacks the professional legal experience required under state law to run for and hold the office of state Attorney General. The mild-mannered Jepsen has been uncharacteristically agitated by the suit and has called it "frivolous," "without merit" and "a waste of the court's time and the state's money."
The suit is essentially a repeat of a political drama from earlier this year when the state Republican Party argued successfully in court that Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz, although an attorney, lacked the 10 years in the "active practice" of law required under state law to act as attorney general.
Bysiewicz had dropped a promising bid to run for governor to campaign for attorney general. A state Superior Court decision concluded that Bysiewicz's legal experience made her eligible to serve as attorney general. But she was forced to withdraw as a candidate after the GOP appealed to the state Supreme Court and won on May 18.
Dean sued four days after the Supreme Court issued a written opinion explaining its Byciewicz ruling and interpreting the state law that establishes eligibility criteria for candidates who wish to become attorney general.
"We conclude ... that ... the [statutory] phrase 'attorney at law of at least ten years' active practice at the bar of this state' means an attorney with at least some experience litigating cases in court," the Supreme Court said.
Dean says Jepsen doesn't meet the standard. Jepsen says he exceeds it.
But Friday's hearings had nothing to do with the merits of Dean's claim. Rather, lawyers for Jepsen, Dean and Bysiewicz, who as Secretary of the State is Connecticut's chief elections officer, argued over whether Dean has the legal authority to bring the suit and, if so, whether a state judge has the legal authority to intervene in an election.
Dean is seeking a variety of legal remedies that are all directed at essentially the same outcome - removing Jepsen from the election. Among other things, she has asked that Jepsen's name be removed from Tuesday's ballot.