Baucus flame burned for US attorney job

The AP goes to Billings for the scoop on Max Baucus's girlfriend/staffer/US Attorney nominee Melodee Hanes, who had been eying a federal prosecutor's job for a long time.
Hanes' ex-husband described their recent divorce as "amicable" but said it was a good idea that her name was withdrawn from consideration as Montana's US attorney.
Hanes, whom colleagues describe as a skilled courtroom lawyer with a passion for prosecutor child abusers, may have taken a job with Baucus in the hopes that it would eventually lead to the appointment, sources tell the wire. Their extramarital romance was, reportedly, an unexpected detour from that path.
The AP's Matthew Brown:
In Montana, Yellowstone County Attorney Dennis Paxinos described Hanes as an accomplished criminal prosecutor. Being named U.S. attorney "was the career path she was working on" since at least 2002, said Paxinos, a Republican and Hanes' former boss.That year Hanes left her deputy county attorney job to work on Baucus' re-election campaign. The move into politics was based on the assumption that it could lead to the federal prosecutor's job, according to Paxinos."I don't think it was ever her intent to fall in love with a senator," he said.When Hanes put in her name for U.S. attorney — soon after President Obama was elected last November — John Sarcone, county attorney in Polk County, Iowa, said he submitted a letter of recommendation for her. Hanes, who gravitated to child abuse cases over her two decades in private practice and as a prosecutor, had worked in Sarcone's office from 1986 to 1998."She was out to do justice and she did a good job," Sarcone said.Hanes divorced Thomas Bennett, a Billings pathologist, after a 12-year marriage in December 2008, according to court records. She left Baucus' office in June to take a top position within the Justice Department in Washington.Bennett said in an interview that he had "misgivings, mostly as a private citizen" about his ex-wife's nomination for federal prosecutor given her close personal ties to Baucus.