Rick Lass has run for public office once before, against a Democratic state representative, mainly as a way to bolster the Green Party and raise key issues.

His run for Public Regulation Commission might otherwise be another futile mission if he wasn't facing a scandal-wracked Democrat who has been losing support from his party.

Lass draws hope from a select set of numbers. At forums and in talking with reporters, he notes, three-fourths of Democrats voted for someone other than Jerome Block Jr. in a six-way June primary. He points to one newspaper's unscientific online poll that shows him leading Block. He also has the backing of a crossover political action committee, Democrats for Lass.

"I ran before just to raise issues or get support for the Green Party," he said. "But it's a lot of work, and I decided six years ago that I wasn't going to run unless I really had a chance to win."

If he wins half the Democratic vote, the Greens and some independents and Republicans, he says, he could pull it off. This outlook comes as voters have been inundating the Santa Fe County Clerk's Office with questions about how to cast a straight-Democratic ballot yet vote for Lass in the PRC race. Top Democrats such as Gov. Bill Richardson so far haven't endorsed Block, while others, such as Ben Ray Luján, who is giving up the PRC seat to run for Congress, have already decided not to back Block, whose father and grandfather served as elected state regulators.

"And it's a great election to be a Democrat right now," Lass said. "They got some good really progressives, from Obama, Udall and on down, and then they sort of got this black eye in their party with Jerome Block Jr., who apparently feels he's entitled because his parent and grandparent held the seat before him."

Lass also has taken shots at Block for refusing to debate him and says he's too cozy with business interests, noting the Democrat is a former title company employee. "He doesn't take any strong positions," Lass said. "Ask him about title insurance, and he says, well, maybe it needs to be reformed. And there's all these qualifiers like sort of and possibly with every answer that he gives."

But Lass has been hesitant to go after Block Jr. for the Democrat's past legal troubles some 10 years ago, which includes a drunken-driving arrest. The Democrat has said he didn't recall also being charged with disorderly conduct, something he omitted from responses to newspaper inquiries.

Lass had his own brush with the law, also 10 years ago. In January 1999, Santa Fe police arrested him on a domestic violence charge after an early morning incident involving his then-girlfriend. The police report doesn't allege he touched his girlfriend, but in an interview Lass said he grabbed her by the upper arm and shoved her.

Police reported getting a 911 call from the woman, who was cut off when someone grabbed the phone and hung it up, the report says. The woman was in bed when police arrived, and she was visibly shaken, crying and nervous when she told police she and Lass were breaking up and she was afraid of him, according to police. Police also said Lass had a strong odor of alcohol and showed difficulty understanding the arrest process.

"I made a mistake, I was arrested, but I followed up, and I went through the programs that were recommended by the court and completed them," said Lass, whose programs included anger-management classes. "As far as I'm concerned, it's over, and I made a mistake and I fessed up to what I did wrong."

Discussing Block's legal trouble, he said, "What's pertinent about that to me is that he's in denial about it. Everybody makes mistakes and does stuff when they're in their teens and twenties; to me, that's not a big deal. But when he's confronted with this, he acts like they never happened."

(Block recently ran a newspaper ad saying, "I made mistakes in the past and sincerely apologize for them.")

Lass, 42, said he had a "pretty middle class" upbringing in Grosse Pointe, Mich., a Detroit suburb, where his parents divorced when he was young. His father, who died a year and half ago of a heart attack, was a salesman for auto parts manufacturers and his mother, who is retired, was a hospital volunteer coordinator for such programs as Meals on Wheels. "They instilled a really good work ethic," he said. "They both worked long days to make sure we could all go to good colleges."

Lass said he enjoyed learning about Galileo, Newton and other famous thinkers and chose to attend St. John's College, where he enrolled in 1984. "I wanted to go a little deeper on how these ideas came to be," he said. After graduating, he worked at a pizza shop and also helped build an adobe home near St. John's.

He got into politics after running into a former classmate, Nate Downey, a Green Party member who was working on Fran Gallegos' campaign for municipal judge in 1996. also helped Miguel Chavez's City Council campaign in 1998.

In 2004, Lass ran against state Rep. Lucky Varela, D-Santa Fe, and picked up 33 percent of the vote. He planned to run for the state Senate two years later, but he felt Democrat John Grubesic was progressive enough and backed out.

Last spring, he worked for passage of Santa Fe city charter amendments that include public campaign financing and instant-runoff voting.

Block Jr. has criticized Lass for being "drafted" to run for PRC. Lass said he had no intention to run until Green Party members approached him after Block's victory in the June primary. "I said I'd think about it," Lass said. "I made a lot of calls. I met with some of the losing Dems and basically asked them for their support, and enough people either said yes or probably that I decided to run."

This isn't the first time a Green Party member has run against a Block. Cliff Bain twice lost to Jerome Block Sr., in 1998 and 2000, each time after gaining about a third of the vote. He senses Lass' prospects are better.

"I knew it was a long shot," the Arroyo Hondo resident said of his own campaigns. "I think Rick has a better shot this time. Jerome Block Sr. came out of the Corporation Commission (which later became part of the PRC) and was pretty well established, and that's certainly not the case with his son."

Bain's advice to Lass was to get out of Santa Fe, and Lass listened, having visited every county in District 3, which includes all or parts of 13 counties mostly in north-central and northeastern New Mexico.

But Bain didn't know what to think when Lass recently endorsed Democratic congressional candidate Ben Ray Luján over independent Carol Miller, whom Lass helped get on the ballot.

The move was too politically convenient, Bain said. "Frankly, I thought that was one thing that Rick has done that made me question his judgment," he said. "I thought it was gratuitous, myself. Maybe he felt he had to do that, or maybe it was his opinion."

Lass has said he thought Miller wasn't working hard enough to win and has been divisive. Miller disputed that, saying she has spent her career building coalitions.

When he discusses the issues, Lass is quick to take aim at the state's biggest utility company, Public Service Company of New Mexico, which recently won PRC approval for a 10 percent rate hike and is seeking another boost.

"And yet they're asking us to tighten our budgets every month and give them another 10, 20 dollars on every utility bill, and yet they have a huge advertising budget even though they're a licensed monopoly," Lass said.

He acknowledged rising fuel costs helped prompt PNM to seek a rate hike. "But it's a question of foresight," he said, using as an example the auto industry's response to the 1973 oil embargo. "They just dug in their heels and said, 'This is America; this is how we do it. We'll weather the storm.' Here we are, a generation later; we should all be driving cars that get 50 or 60 miles to the gallon."

Contact Doug Mattson at 986-3087 or dmattson@sfnewmexican.com.