Luther Scott Harshbarger (born December 1, 1941, in New Haven, Connecticut) is a lawyer and a Democratic politician from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
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Harshbarger attended Harvard College where he was a halfback on the varsity football team and Harvard Law School. After law school, Harshbarger worked as a public defender and civil rights attorney.[1] He was first elected as District Attorney (DA) of Middlesex County, Massachusetts in 1982, defeating incumbent DA John Droney in the Democratic primary. He was re-elected in 1986.
Harshbarger served as District Attorney for 8 years. Amongst the cases his office handled he obtained the conviction of Gerald Amirault and other employees of the Fells Acres Day Care Center in Malden, Massachusetts. The Amirault conviction has been widely criticized as a gross miscarriage of justice in publications as politically diverse as The Wall Street Journal and The Nation.
In 1990 he was elected Attorney General of Massachusetts, defeating incumbent James Shannon in the Democratic primary. He was re-elected in 1994 with 72 percent of the vote.
He was the Democratic nominee for Governor of Massachusetts in the 1998 gubernatorial election. He lost in a close race to incumbent Republican Governor Paul Celucci.[2] Afterwards, Harshbarger served as president of the public interest organization Common Cause for three years, where he spearheaded the successful push for campaign finance reform in 2002 (McCain-Feingold).
Since 2003, Harshbarger has practiced law in the private sector, focusing on corporate governance and related issues. He is currently Senior Counsel to the Firm at Proskauer Rose LLP[3] in Boston, MA.
On September 22, 2009, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) announced that Harshbarger and Proskauer "would lead an independent inquiry into the organizational systems and processes surrounding the social services of the organization" pursuant to the recent allegations of corruption within that organization in the ACORN 2009 undercover videos controversy.[4] Harshbarger issued his written report, essentially exonerating ACORN from any alleged illegal activity, in December 2009.[5][6]
| Legal offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by John J. Droney |
District Attorney of Middlesex County, Massachusetts 1983–1991 |
Succeeded by Tom Reilly |
| Preceded by James Shannon |
Attorney General of Massachusetts 1991–1999 |
Succeeded by Tom Reilly |
| Party political offices | ||
| Preceded by Mark Roosevelt |
Massachusetts Democratic Party gubernatorial candidate 1998 (lost) |
Succeeded by Shannon O'Brien |