Conflict-of-interest accusations are swirling around U.S. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus’s (D) nomination of his girlfriend to be Montana’s U.S. Attorney. That’s not an unusual reaction, but there’s another side to this story, an unforeseen consequence of the equal rights act and women’s liberation.

Thirty-five years ago, former Illinois Gov. James R. Thompson (R) was U.S. Attorney in Chicago, and his wife-to-be, Jayne Carr, was one of his top aides. They were married shortly before he was elected to the first of his four terms as Illinois governor in 1976. She then left the federal prosecutor’s office and went into private practice with a Chicago law firm.

She soon left that job as well, citing potential conflicts of interest. Any firm employing her was ineligible for legal work awarded by the state. And while she was bringing substantial business to the firm she joined, she said at the time she never knew if clients sought her services based on her legal skills or as a way to make backdoor (though perfectly legal) donations to her husband to indirectly influence his official actions. So she quit.

In 1983, then-U.S. Sen. Charles Percy (R-IL) offered to nominate her for a federal judgeship. “The ensuing furor was not only publicly embarrassing, it killed one of Jayne Thompson’s professional dreams,” that of becoming a judge, the Chicago Tribune reported at the time.

With conflicts of interest tainting private practice and public office, she stopped working at all for many years.

Hillary Clinton had the exact same conflicts as Jayne Thompson, but she handled them quite differently. For many years, while she was First Lady of Arkansas, she was employed by the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock and became that firm’s first female partner. The firm was known as a state lobbying powerhouse at the time, and Hillary Clinton routinely represented clients before state officials under the supervision of her husband, the governor. She also served on the boards of Wal-Mart and other Arkansas corporations.

Famously, James McDougall of Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan hired Mrs. Clinton in 1983 at the urging of her husband, Gov. Clinton, and she represented the S&L in proceedings before state regulators, as well as other issues. Later, Madison Guaranty became embroiled in much regulatory and legal controversy involving the Clintons and state and federal bank regulators, while Bill Clinton was governor and later President.

From many accounts, Hillary was an accomplished lawyer, but we’ll never know for sure how many clients hired her because of her legal skills and how many hoped to influence her husband—or had a mixture of both motives. And we’ll never know whether and how much special interest money was funneled into the Clinton’s joint coffers.

That’s the problem. It’s a problem for professional people in romantic relationships with politicians, and it’s a problem for the public because of conflicts of interest, perceived and actual.

All told, however, I’d rather that Max’s girlfriend get the public job, because the conflict is out there for all to see. Better the devil you can see than the devil you can’t.

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Maureen Martin (mmartin@heartland.org), an attorney, is senior fellow for legal affairs at The Heartland Institute.

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