Is it just me, or are there a lot of folks who are Attorney General of their state seeking nomination in gubernatorial races?

In early April, AG Thurbert Baker announced his bid for Georgia’s governorship. South Carolina’s AG Henry McMaster is considered a front-runner to replace Mark Sanford next year. If the gubernatorial election were held in Virginia today, AG Bob McDonnell would probably win. Oklahoma AG Drew Edmonson is thinking about going for the governor’s mansion in 2010.

Now consider the current list of southern Governors that used to be the Attorney General of their state: Mike Beebe in Arkansas, Charlie Crist of Florida, Kentucky’s Stephen Beshear and Missouri’s Jay Nixon. But the trend isn’t limited to the South. Since 2002, Arizona, Washington, Wisconsin, Michigan, Oregon, and New York have all elected someone who once served as the state’s top law enforcement official.

So what’s behind this trend of using the AG as a stepping stone for the state’s chief executive officer position? I offer the theory that it may have something to do with the increasing prosecution of public officials for corruption that is driving this trend.

To determine this, I compare the states that have elected an AG since 2002 or have an announced AG candidate for a state gubernatorial office (or at least dropping lots of big hints) with states that have not elected an AG to the gubernatorial office. I score their rankings on the list of surveys for public official convictions per capita (from 1998 to 2007) and “reporter’s scores” of corruption perception.

Both are provided by the New York Times in the article “Illinois is trying. It really is. But the most corrupt state is actually…” written on December 13, 2008 (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/weekinreview/14marsh.html).

At first glance, there’s not much support for the theory. The top two states in numbers of public official convictions have elected an AG as governor. But when you divide state public official convictions by the population, the 14 states that elected or are considering an AG for governor differ little from those that haven’t had an AG in the gubernatorial mix in recent years.

Of course, as my political science students discussed in class, the convictions data might be a little misleading. Much like the controversial study on race and NBA fouls, there was no data on the “non-call.” What about the state public official who engages in graft, and never gets convicted? So I also looked at reporter perceptions of state corruption. And the results are revealing.

Of the 14 states that have elected or may elect an AG in the near future, nine (or nearly two-thirds) of them rank in the top 25 of reporter perceptions of corruption. Only one state that chose someone with AG experience (Oregon) is among the five “least corrupt” states, according to the New York Times survey.

So McDonnell, Baker, McMaster, and Edmonson may be onto something. A “top cop” may be just the ticket to police the growing public concern over political malfeasance. And who knows what will happen in 2010 or 2011 for Texas AG Gregory Abbott, Alabama’s AG Troy King, North Carolina’s AG Roy Cooper, Kentucky’s AG Jack Conway, Louisiana’s AG “Buddy” Caldwell and Mississippi’s AG Jim Hood.