COLUMBUS, Ohio (Map, News) - A Democratic political consultant questions why two former U.S. House members who voted against impeaching President Clinton 10 years ago are now jumping on a bandwagon to force Ohio's attorney general to resign or be forced from office.

Clinton's case rings similar to that of Attorney General Marc Dann, a fellow Democrat from Youngstown who has admitted to an extramarital affair with a subordinate and is being challenged for inconsistent statements made under oath.

Congress impeached Clinton, as Democrats are now threatening to do to Dann. Yet Clinton, who was subsequently acquitted in the Senate, never resigned.

"Every case is different," said consultant Jerry Austin of Cleveland. "Now you have the Akron Beacon Journal and The Youngstown Vindicator saying, 'Wait a second, not so fast. What has he done that's impeachable?'"

Austin said Ohio Governor Ted Strickland and U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, both Democrats, voted against impeaching Clinton after he was charged with perjury.

"Maybe the question to them is 'What's the difference?'" Austin said.

Strickland and Brown are joined by nearly every Ohio political leader - both Democrats and Republicans - in wanting Dann to resign.

Dann's situation comes not long after that Ohioans watched as their then-governor, Republican Bob Taft, was convicted on ethics law violations, yet never resigned.

Political strategists say the fate of a politician sullied by scandal often has to do with how directly the wrongdoing is tied to his personal acts and whether his conduct ever affected the performance of his job.

The divide between Dann and his critics on both counts is wide.

Strickland says Dann has clearly met the threshold for removal, in part due to his statements to investigators looking into complaints that an aide in his office sexually harassed subordinates.

"There were what I perceived to be some inconsistencies in the testimony, a failure to recognize the seriousness of some of the things that apparently had happened, failure to exercise proper oversight and management of the office," the governor said after leading a Democratic charge Monday to get Dann out of office.

Dann, 46, has not been convicted of a crime and he doesn't believe he has committed any act that warrants either resignation or impeachment, according to public statements both Dann and his father-in-law, Bentley Lenhoff, have made in recent days.

"Any impeachment proceeding can be nothing but a vindication of Marc Dann," Lenhoff said in a Tuesday interview with radio host Rob Mangino of WKBN-AM in Youngstown. "It's all out there right now, there's nothing hidden."

Dann told the editorial board of the Akron Beacon Journal on Monday: "We've done great legal work. No one has challenged that." He said if he believed his presence was detracting from the office, he would reconsider stepping down but that he's "nowhere near that point now."

Republican consultant Mark Weaver said transcripts of a sexual harassment probe at Dann's office that concluded Friday refer to personal acts by Dann that call his judgment into question. Among them are allegations Dann served drinks to subordinates during off-work hours, made personal and suggestive statements in office e-mail and allowed the hiring of a friend as a section chief despite knowledge that he had a drunk driving conviction.

"With Taft, there was not the direct link back to his behavior that was creating the problems," Weaver said. "People who accuse Taft of wrongdoing ... said he wasn't paying close enough attention to what was going on. The argument against Dann is that he was actually fomenting it, he was involved in it."

Weaver said there is also a sense that Dann believes his personal suffering and public admission of the affair is punishment enough - while Taft, though he did not resign, was left with four misdemeanor ethics convictions on his permanent record.

Avoiding the political and personal fallout of a full-scale inquiry is sometimes a motivator for a politician to resign rather than be impeached, Weaver said - as it was for President Richard Nixon in 1974.

"Whatever you say about Richard Nixon ... he could have gone to impeachment and tried to pull every string to save his own skin, but he knew that would be horrible for the country," Weaver said.

Greg Haas, a Democratic consultant and former political strategist for Bill Clinton, said the former president chose to face impeachment because he believed the prosecution was politically motivated. Clinton escaped having to resign in part because he persuaded the public that his acts had not impeded his job performance.

Haas said Taft's association with rare coin dealer Tom Noe, a prolific Republican fundraiser whose gifts of golf outings the governor failed to report, should indeed have been seen as job-related. He believes Democrats who are pressing Dann to step down are being more courageous than Republicans who "circled the wagons" around Taft in 2005.

"Bob Taft was playing golf with Tom Noe while Tom Noe was selling and buying coins with state dollars," Haas said. Noe admitted arranging a contribution scheme to fulfill his promise to generate $50,000 for President Bush's re-election campaign. He was sentenced in 2006 to two years and three months in prison.

In both parties, there also have been cases where politicians have refused to leave office when facing far more serious allegations than those raised against Dann.

U.S. Rep. Bob Ney, an Ohio Republican, didn't submit his resignation from Congress until 21 days after he had pleaded guilty to charges stemming from a federal corruption probe that ultimately landed him in federal prison.

And Democratic U.S. Rep. Jim Traficant, a nine-term congressman from Youngstown, never resigned before heading off to prison. He was convicted in 2002 of charges he received gifts and free labor from businessmen for his political help, and took cash kickbacks and free labor from staff.

"Richard Nixon and Jim Traficant are both infamous political figures," Weaver said. "At least give Nixon credit for not making the country go through an impeachment trial. Jim Traficant would not do that and had to be taken away in handcuffs."