Russell Tacheira says he wants to be the next District 18 district attorney for Pittsburg and Haskell counties.

Tacheira, 37, said he will be a Democratic candidate for the office, which is up for election later this year.

He is currently an assistant prosecutor for District 18 District Attorney Jim Bob Miller, a position he’s held since 2006.

Tacheira primarily represents the district attorney’s office at the Haskell County courthouse in Stigler, although he’s occasionally had cases in Pittsburg County. He held a similar position in 2002, during when Miller first held the district attorney’s post.

Tacheira said he also previously served for two years representing the state at the Child Support Office in Bryan County

This will be Tacheira’s first campaign for public office. He said he’s already filed his preliminary campaign papers marking him as an official candidate.

“I’m excited,” Tacheira said.

Tacheira, who said he now lives in the Chambers area south of McAlester, is the second Democrat to announce his candidacy for the post. District 18 state Rep. Terry Harrison, D-McAlester, previously announced his intention not to seek re-election to his state representative’s office and to seek the district attorney’s post instead.

“Terry and I played on the same football team in Savanna,” said Tacheira, who is ready to face his former gridiron team mate in a political race.

Tacheira said he attended Emerson Elementary School as a child, then later attended the Frink-Chambers school in the third through the eighth grades.

He attended junior high school at Savanna Public Schools before going on to graduate high school in Brentwood, Calif. in 1991.

Tacheira earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from East Central University in Ada in 1998 and earned a law degree from the University of Oklahoma in 2000.

“People may remember my parents from the time they ran the Econo-Wash laundry in McAlester, or my father from the years he drove our school bus at the Frink-Chambers school,” Tacheira said, referring to his mother, Barbara Tacheira, and his father, the late Paul Tacheira.

Tacheira said he’s lived in McAlester for the past 10 years, and recently moved back to the Chambers area.

“If elected, a focus of my administration will be protecting our children,” Tacheira said in a statement announcing his candidacy.

“I prosecuted a case in 2007 in which several witnesses testified that the defendant could not have abused the child victim, because other people were in his home at the time. We found other witnesses who had been victimized by the defendant, and showed that the defendant had abused children in a similar fashion for decades. The jury found him guilty and gave him 30 years.”

Tacheira said he believes more can be done to identify serial offenders and referred to his work with a multi task force in Haskell County as an example of how those from different agencies can work together.

“We could do a lot more to look into the backgrounds of these pedophiles,” he said.

Sometimes cases are pled out and prosecutors later learn there were other victims, said Tacheira.

“We’re working and working to try and enhance these cases,” he said.

Tacheira said that might take a lot of footwork, but he considers it well worth it.

“There needs to be a standard procedure that we can follow to try and find these other victims,” he said.

Tacheira also spoke of how he would serve as the District 18 district attorney.

“Our society functions only because most people are honest, hard-working folks who respect the rule of law,” he said in the statement announcing he will be a candidate.

“Good people sometimes get into trouble and they should be given a chance to redeem themselves. A small percentage of people live only to prey on others, and we need to be protected from those people.

“I believe a prosecutor should use his experience to determine which offenders can be set straight, which offenders need to be punished as severely as possible, and how best to use the available law and evidence to reach those ends.”

The Democratic primary election for the district attorney’s office is set for this summer. A general election, if candidates from more than one party file for the post, will be held in November 2010.

Whoever wins the election for district attorney’s office is set to be sworn into office in January 2011.

Contact James Beaty at jbeaty@mcalesternews.com.