KINGMAN - It's time to take the politics out of the Arizona Attorney General's Office and focus on improving the physical and financial safety of all Arizona citizens, according to Felecia Rotellini.

"The attorney general is the lawyer for the people of Arizona," she said. "It's not a platform for politics. The attorney general should put the people of Arizona first."

Rotellini, a Democrat, acknowledged that there are some issues, such as illegal immigration and healthcare reform, which have a political element to them.

In the case of immigration reform, the attorney general should focus less on the politics and more on what to do to protect the people of Arizona, she said. The focus should be on fighting the drug cartels, preventing human smuggling, closing the border and going after businesses that cater to the cartels and smugglers.

"The attorney general has to enforce the laws that are on the books," she said.

As for the federal healthcare reform bill, Rotellini said she is not sure how the new law will affect the state, but she would have reacted the same way current Attorney General Terry Goddard did. She would have had the office's constitutional experts look at the federal legislation after it passed Congress and determine if there was an issue. She would then have determined if it was in the best interest for the people of Arizona to challenge the law.

With the current state budget situation, its important to not to use the office's resources frivolously, she said.

"The attorney general should improve both the physical and financial safety of the people of Arizona," Rotellini said. "We need to fight financial, real estate, and mortgage fraud; and elder abuse."

She focused on all of those issues while working for the Arizona Attorney General's Office for 13 years.

In 1999, she was the lead investigator in the Ponzi scheme case against Arthur Anderson and the Baptist Foundation of Arizona.

In 2006, she was picked by former Gov. Janet Napolitano to head the new State Banking Department, now the Department of Financial Institutions.

Seeing trouble in the mortgage industry, she created a mortgage fraud task force and worked with the mortgage industry and the Legislature to create a law that would require all mortgage brokers in the state to be licensed.

"They (the leaders of the mortgage industry) actually came to me asking for help. They had so many problems with unscrupulous loan officers," she said.

She was also asked to join a FBI mortgage and financial fraud task force in 2009.

As of July 1, mortgage brokers and lenders will have to completed an education requirement, pass a test and a criminal background check and have minimum amount of experience in the industry before they can receive a license, she said.

"It's the lenders duty to assess a borrower's ability to pay and make sure that they are not put in a situation where they can get into trouble," Rotellini said. "I'm interested in practical solutions that protect families and help them stay in their homes."

Rotellini left the Department of Financial Institutions in August 2009 to join a private Phoenix law firm.

If elected attorney general, she said she would continue to work on the mortgage, real estate and financial fraud areas. She would also tackle identity theft and other consumer fraud issues.

The best way of doing so is to leverage the office's limited resources and improve the office's culture to hire the best line attorneys available, Rotellini said.

She would also recreate the elder affairs unit the office once had to take on elder abuse and fraud issues.

Rotellini would continue the office's work on protecting victim's rights. Arizona was one of the first states to recognize that victims have rights too, she said.

"We can be and have been a leader in this," she said.

She would also continue the practice of having satellite offices throughout the state.