October 7, 2026
I Ran an Attorney General's Office. Here's Why Your Vote Matters.
Former Attorney General for the District of Columbia
Attorneys general are the people's lawyers. Every state has one, and on November 3, voters in 30 states and the District of Columbia will choose theirs.
Many of those voters will leave the attorney general line blank or vote a straight ticket without a second look. I am asking you to take that second look.
The attorney general decides whether your state goes after the scammers draining seniors' savings. The attorney general decides whether your state goes to court when the federal money it was promised stops arriving. Those decisions land on real people, in real neighborhoods, every day. And they all begin with the same thing: judgment.
For eight years, I served as the District's elected, independent attorney general—the first D.C. residents chose themselves after they voted in 2010 to make the office elected. I learned quickly that the job's real power lives in decisions most people never see.
What the Job Actually Is
Strip away the title and the attorney general is the state's lawyer. The office:
- Represents state agencies and defends state laws when they are challenged in court;
- Enforces the laws that protect residents from fraud and scams;
- Enforces the state's civil rights laws;
- Educates the public about their rights and how to protect themselves;
- Advocates for new state laws;
- In many states, awards grants to community organizations;
- Sues the federal government, or defends against it, when the state's interests are at stake; and
- Issues legal opinions that guide the governor and state agencies.
Many people assume the job is mostly about prosecuting crime. In most states, it is not. The real reach of the office is civil: the lawsuits, investigations, and legal opinions that shape how the law works for millions of people.
The Job Is Judgment
The law hands an attorney general enormous discretion and very few instructions. Which matters deserve the office's limited resources? Should the state join a fight that other states have started? Is a challenge to federal action worth years in court? Who should be hired, promoted, and trusted to lead? No statute answers those questions. The attorney general does, and those answers define the office far more than any campaign slogan.
When I took office in 2015, I made consumer protection a priority and created a dedicated Office of Consumer Protection to go after scammers and get money back to District residents. That spring I went into senior apartment buildings in Wards 3 and 6 to warn residents about the frauds aimed at them. No law required any of it. It was a judgment about where the office could do the most good. An attorney general can make the same judgment about children. In 2015, we created the Right Direction Awards to honor young people who had overcome significant challenges, and the office has recognized more than 150 of them since. My office also led the District’s Do the Write Thing challenge, which is a national program that gives middle school students the chance to speak out about how violence affects their lives and share ideas about how to reduce it.Voters were entitled to hold me to that judgment, and they should hold every attorney general to theirs.
Beyond protecting the rule of law and setting priorities, the most impactful judgment an attorney general makes is about people. Who an attorney general hires, promotes, supports, and mentors defines the office for years after that attorney general has left. I looked for extraordinary talent, and a person’s school, previous employer or background was never the main measure. I looked for skill, a tireless work ethic, and selflessness. Leadership roles went to people who cherished the assist more than the shot, and those leaders should forever be recognized.
A Check on Power, Used by Both Parties
Attorneys general are one of the strongest checks on federal power in the country, and both parties know it. States brought 133 multistate lawsuits against the prior administration, many of them led by Republican attorneys general. Democratic attorneys general had filed their 100th lawsuit against the current administration by this April. You can cheer some of those cases and deplore others. Either way, that is federalism doing what it was built to do: giving states a voice and giving the attorney general the job of using it. In practice, it means a single statewide election can determine whether a state is on the sidelines of a national legal fight or at the center of it.
Take health coverage. In 2018, a group of states sued to strike down the Affordable Care Act, including its protections for people with pre-existing conditions. Other states, the District among them, stepped in to defend it. That was my decision, and I made it because millions of Americans with pre-existing conditions were counting on those protections. The Supreme Court threw out the challenge in 2021. Attorneys general in other states made the opposite choice, and each of us answered to our own voters for it. That is how it should work.
Take federal funding. In January 2025, a federal directive froze a wide range of grants to states—money Congress had already approved. Within a day, 22 states and the District were in court, and a federal judge soon ordered the funding restored. Other states chose not to sue. In every one of those states, the attorney general made the call, and the people counting on that grant money lived with it.
Your Vote Is the Only Check
In most states, the attorney general is elected separately from the governor. That independence is the point. It allows an attorney general to tell a governor, or a president, that the law says otherwise. I did it with my own city's mayor when I believed the law and the facts required it.
Independence also means that once elected, an attorney general answers to the voters and almost no one else. That makes the election itself the most important accountability mechanism the public has. When I led the National Association of Attorneys General in 2021, I worked alongside Republicans and Democrats who disagreed about plenty. The best of them, in both parties, never forgot who they worked for.
The attorneys general elected on November 3 will serve four-year terms in most states, and the biggest legal fights of those four years have mostly not started yet. Whoever wins will decide how your state meets them. A good attorney general also produces great lawyers and leaders, and they will serve the public long after their terms are over.
My Challenge to You
Find out whether your state has an attorney general race this year. If it does, pull up the current attorney general's press releases and pick one decision the office made in the past year. Then ask a simple question of each candidate's record and platform: would this person have made the same call? Then listen to how each candidate talks about the people they would hire and promote. It is one of the clearest indicators of leadership. You will learn more in ten minutes than from a month of campaign ads.
Then send this to two people who vote alongside you, and ask them to do the same.
The people's lawyer should be chosen by the people, deliberately and with eyes open. When you vote for attorney general, you are not choosing a lawyer. You are choosing the judgment that will shape thousands of decisions made in your name. Don’t leave that line blank.
Karl A. Racine is a partner at Hogan Lovells Cadwalader and co-chair of the firm's State Attorneys General practice. He served as the first elected Attorney General for the District of Columbia from 2015 to 2023. The views expressed here are his own.