Rep. Chip Roy’s (R-Texas) decision to leave a safe congressional seat and join a crowded Republican primary to succeed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) is part of a trend. Attorney general positions — once sleepy and apolitical — are quickly becoming a pipeline to increased influence and higher office for aspiring members of Congress.
Tea Party-era Republicans figured this formula out more quickly, but Democrats have picked up on it, too. For anyone interested in what their state and country’s political future could look like, pay close attention to under-the-radar attorney general races just as much as more expensive and high-profile campaigns.
Attorney general roles have always been launching pads for higher office. Just ask 12 of our nation’s governors, eight sitting U.S. senators, former President Bill Clinton, former Vice President Kamala Harris, and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi about how they all leveraged their time as state attorneys general to gain higher office.
The tried-and-true joke that AG stands for “aspiring governor” has long been relevant. The increasingly noticeable trend now is that the role’s appeal is strong enough to convince someone to leave Congress to run for state attorney general.
In January 2013, a little-known congressman from Louisiana, Jeff Landry, finished his one term in Congress with no major legislative accomplishments. Landry had ridden the tea party wave into the U.S. House of Representatives and was best known for criticizing President Barack Obama for, well, almost everything. I’d argue Landry’s most significant yet underappreciated achievement related to his congressional service was launching the congressman-to-attorney general-to-governor pipeline.
Just three years after his brief congressional tenure, Landry was elected to his first of two terms as Louisiana attorney general. He quickly became one of the most conservative attorneys general in the country, achieved Republican policy goals that no freshman congressman could have accomplished, and successfully maneuvered himself into an easy 2023 gubernatorial victory after eight years of increasing his statewide profile as attorney general.
Where now-Gov. Landry led, others have followed. Three of Landry’s fellow Republican freshmen colleagues from the 112th Congress, Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador, Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita and Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin, have begun down the same path. All three aspire to governorships, having each unsuccessfully run previously for that higher office before running for attorney general.
As Landry has shown, proving oneself first as attorney general can be a powerful stepping stone. Each is considered more conservative and combative than their predecessors in roles that traditionally involve bipartisan cooperation on multistate litigation and mundane state regulatory issues. Rokita’s and Landry’s affiliated political action committees — Fund for American Exceptionalism and Cajun PAC II, respectively — even supported Labrador’s successful 2022 campaign to oust a more moderate incumbent in the primary.
Democrats have also slowly begun to recognize this pipeline, but they are a few years behind their Republican counterparts. The Minnesota, Maryland and North Carolina attorneys general all served in Congress before seeking their current positions. North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson’s race had a possible first as he ran against a fellow congressman to win his current post.
President Biden’s Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra also served more than two decades in Congress, including two terms as chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, before leaving to succeed Kamala Harris as California attorney general — a role he was able to leverage into a Cabinet post.
Attorney general races matter. The victors serve as their states’ chief legal officer, represent the state before the U.S. Supreme Court, and can be a formidable force against bad private actors, as the tobacco and opioid industries can attest. Politically, however, they have mostly run under the radar.
Voters from both parties need to focus more on who is running for their state attorney general. The role itself is powerful, but these future potential governors, senators and presidents are also communicating their priorities and how they would govern long before reaching higher offices.
Roy is not forging a new path — he is simply following a trend. Nor is he exiting the political arena by leaving Washington. He just found another potential path upward to increase his impact and influence.
Ryan Greenstein served in several roles within the National Association of Attorneys General from 2017-2022, most recently as legislative director supporting the association’s advocacy efforts before Congress and the previous two administrations.
