When former U.S. Sen. Joseph Tydings introduced Montgomery County State’s Attorney Doug Gansler last week as his choice for attorney general, he vowed, “No person since Steve Sachs has run with the qualifications of Doug.”

But in the Democratic race to succeed retiring Attorney General Joseph Curran, at least one knowledgeable person disagrees with Tydings: Steve Sachs, the two-term attorney general before Curran. Sachs is backing Gansler’s opponent, Montgomery County Council member Tom Perez, who officially announced yesterday.

“Joe is a great friend,” Sachs said, but in this case, “he’s wrong.”

Tydings hired Sachs as an assistant U.S. attorney in the 1960s, and then, as a U.S. senator, helped Sachs get appointed as the top federal prosecutor in Baltimore.

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Tydings said Wednesday that Gansler, like Sachs, served six years as a federal prosecutor, but he also has served eight years as the chief prosecutor of the largest subdivision in Maryland, an operation the ex-senator called “a national model.” Gansler also “knows the people in Annapolis” and helped involve Tydings in this year’s successful fight to curb pollution at coal-fired electric plants.

Sachs noted Perez’s broad experience in both civil and criminal law, serving as a civil-rights enforcer for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and as a clinical law professor at the University of Maryland. Sachs also pointed to Perez’s “character” and “integrity.”

Perez has been endorsed by two House of Delegates committee chairmen.

In at least one respect, Gansler far exceeds Perez. Running for more than a year, he has raised $1.5 million for his campaign. Perez has gotten about $200,000.

“I don’t think Tom Perez will have as much money,” Sachs conceded, but while “money talks … I don’t thinks money talks very loudly in the attorney general’s race this time.”

Most campaign money is spent on TV advertising, and with the hard-fought contests for U.S. Senate and governor this year, Sachs said voters will be overwhelmed with TV ads. “Tom can do organization without big bucks,” Sachs said. “If I were running this year, I wouldn’t put a lot of money into TV.”

In the past week, Perez has also won the backing of two of the state’s largest and most politically liberal unions, the Maryland teachers and the Service Employees International Union.

llazarick@baltimoreexaminer.com