Hood: I Don’t Know Any Lawyers Who Wanted To Touch HCR Lawsuit

Attorney General Jim Hood spoke about his decision to say no thanks to a request by Haley Barbour to file suit against the new healthcare legislation on behalf of the state about a month or so ago. Hood appeared to indicate that he likes the law on the surface saying he “can’t let his bias and where his heart…get in the way of his job.” He also said he “had trouble getting a constitutional lawyer to actually talk to him about it.” Hood spoke with Mississippi College School of Law professor Matt Steffey about the possible suit.

If statewide elections were this year rather than 2011, I could see Hood’s Republican opponent gaining serious traction with this (but I wouldn’t necessarily call it a winning issue at this point). I imagine the GOP will bring it up and focus on it, but the question that we don’t know the answer to yet is 1) if healthcare will still be on the mind of voters and 2) will voters still have a sour opinion on the legislation?

Hood won nearly 60 percent of the vote in his 2007 re-election battle. Trying to erase that big of a deficit will obviously be a challenge but there are a couple areas Republicans will force Hood to answer to: the attorney scandals from 2007-08 (and Hood’s lack of reaction) and a couple national issues (healthcare and possibly voter ID).