Herring has defended himself against Adams’ charges that he has ignored the law and pushed his own agenda.

“First of all, he’s got his facts wrong,” Herring told the FLS editorial board in response to Adams saying he is too political. Virginia, he noted, has a poor track record on civil rights going back to Brown v. the Board of Education.

“I chose to fight for civil rights rather than block them,” he said of his challenges to the Trump administration policies. Adams “disagrees with marriage equality and he wants to roll it back.”

Farnsworth said Herring’s actions are not different from what other Democrat and Republican predecessors have done over the past two decades. Because of the changing political landscape, he said it has been “a national trend” for attorneys general to become embroiled in social issues.

One of the key issues in the race for both candidates is the opioid crisis that in recent years has led to thousands of overdose deaths in Virginia and across the country.

The epidemic of overdoses started to spike around the time Herring took office in 2013, and he called this his top priority. He said the problem was still under the radar when he became attorney general, but when he learned of it his office “really dove in” to find a solution.