During campaign season, it’s common to hear the attorney general described as the state’s “chief law-enforcement officer,” or even its “top cop.” Even sitting vice president and presidential hopeful Kamala Harris has used the moniker to refer to her past as California’s AG.
But while the attorney general presides over efforts to break up theft rings and investigate political corruption, the office also engages in a number of legal issues that typically don’t feature a perp walk: they may crack down on predatory school loan lenders, uphold election integrity, and even challenge the president of the United States in court.
Republican Dave Sunday and Democrat Eugene DePasquale, the two major-party candidates for the post on this fall’s ballot, have traded jabs over who is best equipped to fight crime. But legal experts say that job description — and how the position is filled — varies from state to state. And sometimes the office can have the biggest impact outside the criminal justice system.
About 60% of the office’s staff works in its criminal division, but University of Pittsburgh law professor David Harris says the office has other “very important jobs.”
Office attorneys work on “antitrust cases, civil rights cases, consumer complaint cases … tobacco enforcement,” Harris said. “They handle all of the appeals in courts involving challenges to Pennsylvania laws.”
But some police unions say a candidate with prosecutorial experience can help them outside the courtroom too.
“The attorney general can certainly have influence on policy makers,” said Jason Brinker, who chairs the state Fraternal Order of Police endorsement committee.
The FOP backed Sunday, while DePasquale has garnered support from a correctional officers union and a Teamsters law enforcement group.
Brinker, whose group represents some 40,000 police officers, says the attorney general can use the office to sway policy on issues like qualified immunity, which protects police from lawsuits. (Both candidates say they favor extending the protection.)
“Very important to police is [the candidates’] position on qualified immunity,” said Brinker. On that and other matters, he added, it’s “not so much that they establish the policy,” but that they can use their position to influence those who do, in the legislature or elsewhere.
Sunday argues he should get the AG job due to his crime-fighting career as a prosecutor and York County district attorney. DePasquale, a former state auditor general and House member, has never prosecuted a criminal case. But neither had Josh Shapiro when he was twice elected attorney general, and that didn’t stop Brinker’s union from endorsing his AG bid twice.
Pennsylvania’s governor appointed the attorney general until 1980. Since then, voters in Pennsylvania, as in 42 other states, have chosen who will lead the office. In Maine, lawmakers pick the state’s top lawyer. In Tennessee, the state Supreme Court appoints the attorney general for an eight-year term, while the governor appoints the AG in New Hampshire and New Jersey. In the Garden State, where the attorney general is deeply involved in the criminal justice system, Harris says the officeholder “supervise[s] all of the county district attorney's offices, and the state police.”
But Matthew Platkin, New Jersey’s attorney general, was the governor’s chief counsel and previously a white-collar criminal defender and business litigator. Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost was previously the state auditor and a county prosecutor, while New York’s AG Letitia James was a public defender and assistant state attorney general.
West Virginia’s Patrick Morrisey was chief counsel for a U.S. House committee, a pharmaceutical lobbyist in D.C., and, once upon a time, a tennis umpire.
In Pennsylvania, the office has served as a political stepping stone for some who have held it: Republican Tom Corbett ascended to the governor’s mansion running on a resume that included high-profile prosecutions of corruption in the state legislature. Shapiro’s six-year stint as AG was widely seen as a platform to seek higher office.
In their second debate last week, both Sunday and DePasquale said they didn’t have aspirations for higher office.
Drop ‘top cop’
Some say voters shouldn’t think of an AG as a “top cop” at all.
The nickname “is directly related to mass incarceration, the war on drugs and racialized policing,” said Robert Saleem Holbrook, a Philadelphia-based decarceration advocate. In the past, he said, “AGs were considered the Commonwealth or the State’s defender — in some cases, they were considered the people's attorney.”
Groups like Holbrook’s have backed DePasquale for office, arguing that he’s more likely to take on environmental, reproductive and labor causes, not boast about locking people up. And green energy and womens’ advocacy orgs have lined up to endorse DePasquale.
In both debates, Sunday took a measured approach to reproductive rights, saying he’d enforce the state’s abortion law if it ever changed, but believes Pennsylvanians would never vote to restrict the procedure. DePasquale said he’d never prosecute a woman for choosing an abortion.
Holbrook pointed out that billionaire Jeffrey Yass, Pennsylvania’s wealthiest person, has poured money into Sunday’s campaign, though Sunday has said he hasn’t met Yass: “[Yass] takes an interest in school vouchers,” Holbrook said, noting that in Texas, attorney general Ken Paxton has sued school districts for pushing back on that state’s voucher program.
In Pennsylvania, meanwhile, Shapiro pushed back on former President Donald Trump’s attempts to discredit the state’s election integrity, something top of mind as Trump is again a presidential nominee. His office challenged federal decisions that affect contraceptive health care, as Shapiro did in 2017 after the Trump administration rolled back an Affordable Care Act provision.
The next attorney general could also face new challenges to Pennsylvania election laws, such as the expansion of voter ID requirements. (As on the issue of abortion, Sunday said he’d defend whatever state laws are on the books, and it’s up to the state legislature to decide. DePasquale said he opposes more voting requirements due to possible disenfranchisement.)
John T. Adams, Berks County DA and spokesman for state District Attorneys Association, said local prosecutors look to the AG’s office to handle legal matters beyond their grasp.
“Most of the district attorney's offices in the state do not have the expertise to investigate or prosecute environmental crimes,” Adams said. The attorney general also has jurisdiction over “organized retail theft” cases and other matters that often involve incidents in multiple counties or even outside the state. And local prosecutors may ask an AG to intervene in cases of conflict of interest — for example, when “one of our staff members’ family could be a victim” — or when it involves local officials.
“In all honesty, [the relationship] is kind of complicated,” he said, adding the complexity stems from conflict of interest policies and jurisdictional authority.
The attorney general can also distribute funds to help finance task forces on drug and theft rings, he said. Even so, Adams added, “We could go for weeks without speaking to anybody from their office. Their deputy attorney generals may be here prosecuting a case, and I would never know it.”
