5 Republican AGs who may drown a Democratic White House

While Democratic presidential contenders scrap over the finer details of Medicare for All and how to tackle climate change, Republican attorneys general across the country are ready to undercut a progressive agenda if Donald Trump is ousted.

Republican state attorneys general have steadily gained influence since they organized to sue tobacco companies in the 1990s, and Washington has been increasingly inundated with lawsuits from them since a 2007 Supreme Court ruling exposed the federal government to more state litigation. Now, these top legal officers on the right — many who honed their tactics during the Obama administration — are standing by to throw sand in the gears if a Democratic administration comes to power.

It’s a model Xavier Becerra in California, Tish James in New York, Bob Ferguson in Washington, and other Democratic AGs have pursued during the Trump era: Well before Nancy Pelosi took up the speaker's gavel again in 2019, blue-state attorneys general from were suing to hobble the administration's policies on everything from immigration and food stamp eligibility to environmental rollbacks. And Republican AGs are ready to dust off their Obama-era playbook.

“Republican AGs would step up and fight,” West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey told POLITICO.

Nearly two dozen Republican AGs also rallied to Donald Trump's defense this week, hoping to hoist the spotlight for a moment while urging the Senate to reject the articles of impeachment against the president as "fundamentally flawed."

Democratic AGs have filed 91 multi-state lawsuits against the Trump Administration so far, compared with 56 multi-state lawsuits Republican AGs filed over Obama’s two terms, according to Paul Nolette, a political science professor at Marquette University, who has been tracking cases from states.

Much of this new activism was unlocked in two stages: the 2007 Supreme Court decision, which imbued states with more latitude to challenge White House executive orders and other administration policies; then, in 2016, the associations for Republican and Democratic attorneys general called off a gentleman’s agreement that kept the groups from directly attacking incumbent members in elections.

Over the past decade, those associations have had to rethink how — and how much — they fundraise, and recruit and retain talent. And this year Democrats are making sure attorney general races aren't getting lost among other down-ticket contests.

Just five years ago, DAGA was based in Denver and had no full-time staff. But in 2016, it moved its operations to Washington, D.C., and now has 27 full-time employees.

Fundraising over that time tripled, from $8 million in 2015-16 to $24 million in 2017-18. RAGA wouldn't release detailed fundraising numbers but said its spending in key races has also ticked, having doled out $6 million for Kentucky AG race in 2019, compared with $4 million in 2015.

“We’re at a point now where AGs have become an entrenched part of policy landscape,” Nolette said. “They aren’t going to fade from office.”

If Democrats retake the White House in November, here are five Republican attorneys general they’ll have to outmaneuver.

The Texas attorney general proudly took the mantle of chief antagonist during the Obama administration when his predecessor, Greg Abbott, successfully ran for governor in 2014 and he's certain to reassert himself under a President Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Mike Bloomberg or any other Democrat in the White House.

Republican Attorneys General Association executive director Adam Piper called Paxton an “amazing consensus builder” who he has helped corral other state attorneys general on multistate lawsuits. He also has the resources to be a pain in the neck: With a staff that includes 750 attorneys, Paxton also has the legal firepower to sue over pretty much any executive action and regulation pushed by a Democratic administration.

The Texas attorney general has also been on the frontlines of defending key Republican policies such as abortion restrictions passed by state lawmakers. Paxton has been able to carry the baton for conservatives and narrowly win re-election in 2018, despite being indicted in 2015 for allegedly misleading investors in a technology company without disclosing his compensation. The SEC dropped a separate federal charge related to the case, but the state criminal case is still on, though subjected to multiple procedural delays.

Paxton boasts of filing 22 lawsuits against the Obama administration in its final two years. He led a group of states suing the White House over an Obama executive action that would have given undocumented parents of citizens or lawful residents the right to live and work, eventually convincing the courts to invalidate the plan. Paxton is also leading the latest legal challenge to overturn Obamacare.

“It wasn’t a rising to power, it was a rising to the occasion,” Piper said. “They are the state’s firefighters — they have to react to what is necessary.”

Landry has put the Bayou state on the frontlines of defending Republican party policies — on everything from protecting Louisiana’s alligator industry or defending abortion restrictions — and his open feuding with the state’s Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards has already given him practice at steering the spotlight.

He moved into the RAGA chairmanship last year, already leveraging the post to unite 21 Republican AGs to attack impeachment proceeding leveled at Trump but it also positions him well to issue rallying cries against a potential Democratic president in 2021.

Landry, who previously served in Congress as part of the 2010 tea party wave that swept Republicans into power in the House, also created a solicitor general position in his office to more aggressively bring federal lawsuits and file amicus briefs in other cases.

Under Landry, Louisiana has become a party to the highest-profile multi-state lawsuit now against Obamacare and helped defend Trump’s executive order regulating sanctuary cities.

He’s also defending Louisiana's abortion restrictions in the first major case on the issue since Brett Kavanaugh joined the Supreme Court and asking the justices to reverse its 2016 decision overturning a similar Texas law.

“The cases we tend to latch on to are ones involving federal overreach and unconstitutional acts of Congress,” Landry told POLITICO.

Landry's even taking on a California law banning the sale of alligator products, which he said would destroy his state’s local industry.

Morrisey was a key figure in making sure Obama’s Clean Power Plan, which would have placed limits on greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants, never went into effect and is poised to be a leading voice for Republicans looking to deflect Democratic plans to address climate change.

“West Virginians are deeply concerned about any potential advancement of a Green New Deal,” Morrisey told POLITICO. “We think there would be pretty significant legal issues for any Democrat to advance it.”

Like all of the Republican activists and officials interviewed for this report, he argues Trump will be reelected in November. But Morrisey knows the damage AGs can inflict on a new leader in the White House: He led a multi-state lawsuit that stymied President Barack Obama's efforts to regulate carbon emissions from power plants, paving the way for Trump to repeal it.

“We would a see significant number of these challenges under the unfortunate circumstance that President Trump is not elected,” he said.

His office has challenged a host of other EPA rules he has said could threaten coal industry jobs in the state and has also been active in submitting comments about the impact of proposed EPA rules on West Virginia.

Morrisey is up for re-election in November, and will likely put himself in front of a wide range of environmental regulations crafted by a Democratic administration.

Moody has not shown the same trademark flare for political combativeness her predecessor and Trump ally-turned-aide Pam Bondi has, but she has kept many of Bondi’s priorities intact, like overturning Obamacare, and has begun to develop her own relationship with the president.

She is also the only attorney general Trump has named to a presidential commission on law enforcement and justice, a panel created last year to study challenges law enforcement officers face and how to boost public confidence in their work.

The former federal prosecutor and judge survived a 2018 GOP primary where her opponents questioned her loyalty to the party and to Trump, in part by having Bondi in her corner.

Moody, who has so far has gotten headlines for battling pharmaceutical companies in the Legislature and protecting gun rights, told POLITICO she would not oppose a Democratic president simply based on party affiliation alone. “The role of the attorney general is a unique one,” she said. “Sometimes you have to make decisions based on the law and based on what’s required of you by the constitution…without regard to your own personal policy preferences.”

Still, she has joined Trump at his rallies in the Sunshine State, where he officially resettled — a far less hostile place than his native New York — last year. And there’s a chance she could become the state attorney general whose ear Trump seeks to bend the most if voters boot him from the White House in November.

Moody has waded into legal fights over several constitutional amendments, most notably asking the state Supreme Court to block a ballot measure proposing to ban certain types of semi-automatic rifles. She has also launched a probe of vaping companies and sought to heighten public awareness of human trafficking ahead of high-profile sporting events like the Super Bowl.

Less than a month on the job and Cameron has already made history: He’s Kentucky’s first Republican attorney general since Harry Truman was president and the first African American independently elected to statewide office in Kentucky.

The party has high hopes for the 34-year-old, who once served as legal counsel for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. And Trump called the former college football player a “new STAR.”

Cameron brandishes his ties to Trump and his conservative bona fides, touting his support for gun rights, abortion restrictions and Trump’s border wall.

So far, he's remained mum on whether he would be ready to take on a future Democratic White House. During an address in January,Cameron managed to quote Lincoln, the Bible, W.E.B. Du Bois and Coretta Scott King, but didn’t give any hints on how deeply his office will wade into partisan territory.

Cameron could be part of a new generation of rising Republican attorneys general, said Robert Henneke, general counsel and director of the Center for the American Future at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. “But there’s still a lot to be determined.”

Gary Fineout contributed to this report.