State Attorney General Races Are Heating Up — Democracy is at Stake
Not long after Jeff Jackson won his bid to represent North Carolina’s 14th Congressional District in 2022, state lawmakers redrew his district, practically guaranteeing the first-term Democrat would lose reelection.
“Of all the malevolent forces in politics, none pack the punch of gerrymandering.” Jackson wrote in an op-ed last year. Jackson’s predicament became the springboard for a new campaign — becoming North Carolina’s next attorney general. In his announcement he called gerrymandering “corruption.”
The lawmaker wasn’t the only one unhappy. A group of voters unsuccessfully sued this year over the redrawn 6th, 13th and 14th Congressional Districts, arguing the map unduly favors Republicans and contravenes the right to “fair” elections under the North Carolina Constitution. One of the defendants, State House Speaker Tim Moore (R), is running for Jackson’s seat.
North Carolina is among ten states that will hold attorney general elections on Nov. 5. And Jackson’s bid reflects a trend of lawmakers leaving Congress to pursue the job, which has traditionally been a pipeline to the governorship. An attorney general can bring litigation on behalf of states, enforce laws and issue advisory opinions, all of which sets a statewide agenda.
“If you think a congressman is more important than [an] attorney general, you’re wrong,” said James Tierney, a former Maine attorney general who teaches at Harvard Law. A congressional post can be limiting, he said. “The only hope you have of getting something done is if you stay four or five terms.”
As attorney general, “you can do something on your first day,” Tierney said. “You can bring a lawsuit. You can settle a lawsuit. You don’t have to ask anybody’s permission. There’s no committee. You don’t have to go to the legislature, the government, you can stand up and do what you think is right.”
North Carolina
Jackson’s opponent, fellow U.S. Rep Dan Bishop, voted against certifying the 2020 election and was endorsed by former President Donald Trump. Political experts say the race could go either way. Whoever wins would succeed North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein (D), who is running for governor against far-right, scandal-plagued Mark Robinson, the state’s lieutenant governor.
If Jackson wins, he’d be contending with a GOP-dominated Legislature, a majority-conservative high court, and, potentially, an extreme far-right governor if Stein loses to Robinson. That could create tough conditions for Jackson, who told the AP he’s “prepared to stand up to the state legislature.”
“North Carolina is messed up in the sense that you have a judiciary at the top level, the North Carolina Supreme Court, that is hostile to efforts to ensure the voting rights of citizens in the state,” said Irving Joyner, a professor at North Carolina Central University’s School of Law. For Jackson, his potential crusade would be “an uphill battle that is going to require a change in the Legislature.”
Notably, the high court, after its majority flipped to Republican control, in 2023 reversed a pivotal decision that struck down maps for being partisan gerrymanders in violation of the North Carolina Constitution. The new ruling concluded that partisan gerrymandering claims are not justiciable under the state constitution.
Before the reversal, Gov. Roy Cooper (D) and Stein filed an amicus brief, urging the court to leave the rulings in place. “There is nothing more fundamental to our democracy than the right to vote and to have that vote matter,” Stein said. “Partisan gerrymandering was wrong and unlawful when the Supreme Court ruled on this case (in 2022), and it remains wrong and unlawful today.”
On the other hand, Joyner says, Bishop, who represents the state’s 8th District and described Congress as too slow-moving, would likely preserve the status quo as a far-right official in a red state, which could lead to further restrictions on the “ability of people to participate equally in the democratic process.”
Pennsylvania
In Pennsylvania, one of the most closely-watched states this election season, the attorney-general-to-governor pipeline is in full effect. The state’s former attorney general, Josh Shapiro, was the top legal officer in 2020 and fought Trump’s attempts to overturn the election in court. He was elected governor in 2022 and was reportedly being considered as Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate. His successor, Michelle Henry, isn’t running.
Democrat Eugene DePasquale, former state auditor general, will face Republican and York County District Attorney Dave Sunday. The race is one of six state attorney general elections in which an incumbent isn’t running.
As attorney general, Shapiro was a vocal proponent of expanding voting access. In 2020, for example, he joined an amicus brief with 20 other states in opposing a Florida law that requires formerly incarcerated individuals to pay all court-ordered fees before they can vote. Shapiro called it “an unconstitutional ploy to change the ground rules for elections to discriminate against low income and minority members of our society.”
The move reflects how a state attorney general’s purview can go beyond the state. “An attorney general can bring cases on any number of national issues,” Tierney said. “The Affordable Care Act, travel ban, litigating against Google. All of these are state AG issues, as opposed to congressional issues.”
It remains to be seen whether DePasquale, if he wins, will bring Shapiro’s zeal. In an interview with Democracy Docket earlier this year, DePasquale said he’s already worked to make Pennsylvania’s elections more secure.
“As attorney general, my job isn’t to pick the winner,” he said. “My job is to make sure [the election results] — whoever the voters pick — actually get upheld. I’ll make sure that anyone who legally casts a ballot gets that vote counted and that the voters’ will gets ratified.”
Indiana
In Indiana, incumbent Republican Attorney General Todd Rokita is running against Democrat Destiny Wells, a U.S. military officer who wants to curb what she sees as excessive partisanship in the office.
Rokita came under fire in 2022 for seeking discipline against an Indianapolis doctor who performed an abortion for a 10-year-old girl from Ohio who was sexually assaulted. Last year, the Indiana Supreme Court reprimanded Rokita for public comments he made about the case. In August, he dropped a lawsuit against Indiana University Health and IU Healthcare Associates, who he accused of violating federal privacy laws.
The doctor embroiled in the conflict, Caitlin Bernard, has endorsed Wells.
Speaking to Democracy Docket a day after Bernard’s endorsement, Wells said some Hoosiers were critical of Bernard’s support, reminding Wells that an attorney general’s job is not to fight for abortion access. She agrees. “But at the same time,” she said, “it’s also to not abuse the attorney’s general office. And what you see [Rokita] doing is he’s using the attorney general’s office to chill medical support for women’s reproductive health.”
On voting rights, Rokita has been just as hostile. In 2021, he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee against the John Lewis Advancement and Freedom to Vote proposals, which together would substantially expand access to voting and enhance the federal Voting Rights Act (VRA).
Rokita testified the law would allow the Department of Justice “to usurp the authority states rightly possess over their own elections.” More recently, he joined other Republican attorneys general this year in arguing that private parties cannot sue under the VRA.
After the U.S. Supreme Court handed a partial win to Republicans in Arizona, allowing the state to reject state voter registration applications submitted without documentary proof of citizenship, Wells notes that Rokita praised the decision, indicating how he might position the state in the national GOP-fueled campaign against noncitizen voting. He also filed an amicus brief in the case.
“That’s why we’re trying to draw the message into the center to say [to voters], ‘you have pragmatic, reasonable choices,’” Wells said. She added that Harris becoming the Democratic nominee for president created momentum for Democratic candidates. “We need to make the most of it for the 44 days we have left, because after that, everybody is back to their corners.”
Read about the state supreme court races to watch this fall.