BOSTON — One year into the Trump presidency, the nation’s 22 Democratic state attorneys general — including ambitious up-and-comers like New York’s Eric Schneiderman, California’s Xavier Becerra and Massachusetts’ Maura Healey — have emerged as the shock troops of the Democratic resistance.

Democratic state attorneys general are bringing a growing string of lawsuits, complaints and other actions against the Trump administration on immigration, education policy, net neutrality, marijuana enforcement, offshore oil and gas drilling and more — and there’s no end in sight.


It’s a new look for Democratic state prosecutors, but it’s hardly a novel idea: The Democrats’ strategy is borne in part of a calculated decision to coordinate closely and emulate the way their Republican counterparts relentlessly battled the Obama administration over climate regulations, Obamacare and more.

“Democratic state attorneys general — like Eric Schneiderman and Maura Healey — are tripping over themselves to be first in line to oppose the Trump administration,” Scott Will, executive director of the Republican Attorneys General Association, says grudgingly. “They are proud, card-carrying members of the resistance.”

The results have been mixed and in many cases unclear; the fate of the Trump administration’s travel ban, for instance, still awaits a Supreme Court ruling following Democratic-led challenges.

But for many attorneys general, it’s a political no-brainer: Leading or joining a legal fight against a Trump edict is winning politics in Democratic-leaning states, and the role of attorney general is often a stepping stone to governor or other offices. Check the roster of co-signatories on any major lawsuit against the administration and you’ll see Schneiderman, Becerra, Healey amid names that are often mentioned as future gubernatorial candidates.

“There is still a fair amount of that going on,” Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum, a Democrat, told POLITICO. “You’ll see it in who’s popping up first. And who’s first out of the gate. … They’re the ones who are probably most ambitious about their future. Keep an eye on that.”

The active Democrats say there’s more to their motivation than political ambition.

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“It’s not only important for our states, but it also reflects our personal values,” California’s Becerra said in an interview. He and his state have led efforts to defend the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which ties into his own personal story as the son of immigrants. "When we defend DACA or Dreamers in court, we’re not doing it to get back at the Trump administration. … We’re doing it to defend California.”

Schneiderman alone has been part of more than 100 legal or administrative actions against the Trump administration – most recently last week he pushed back against the Trump administration’s rollback of restrictions to offshore oil and gas drilling, along with other coastal Democratic attorneys general stretching from North Carolina to Maine, including Massachusetts’ Healey. Healey regularly touts the lawsuits that she leads, like a December complaint against Education Secretary Betsy DeVos over student loan debt relief.

Will and other Republicans say that Republican attorneys general were more disciplined during the Obama years.

"Republican attorneys general, during the Obama years, were the last line of defense. We held the line against government overreach, pushing back against government regulations and infringement on individual and states’ rights. What we are seeing today is different,” Will said.

National Democrats, of course, saw GOP state attorneys general as an impediment to action on liberal priorities during the Obama years. And state-level Democrats attribute their change in posture – and need for speed – to the Trump administration itself.

“The older model of how state governments react to what comes from the federal government is just completely demolished,” Doug Chin, Hawaii’s attorney general, said. “Now we have hours to react, to make a statement, to file a temporary restraining order, because if we don’t react, if we don’t react quickly, then something new comes down, comes out that we have to move against as well.”

A successful run as attorney general may serve as a launchpad for higher political aspirations, including in 2018 and 2020.

Among Democrats, Maine’s Janet Mills is running to replace Republican Gov. Paul LePage in 2018. In Illinois, some speculate that Lisa Madigan has her eye on the Chicago mayor’s office or the U.S. Senate after unexpectedly announcing this fall that she would not seek re-election. Among Republican attorneys general, at least five — Colorado’s Cynthia Coffman, Michigan’s Bill Schuette, Nevada’s Adam Laxalt, Ohio’s Mike DeWine, and South Dakota’s Marty Jackley — are running for governor. Another two, Missouri’s Josh Hawley and West Virginia’s Patrick Morrissey, are running for Senate seats.

On the campaign and recruiting front, Democratic AGs are aiming to catch up with their Republican counterparts - they have plans to spend $10 million to $15 million to elect more of their own next year. As POLITICO reported in September, it’s part of a longer-term effort to build a bigger and more diverse bench for the party to draw on in gubernatorial and Senate races over the next decade.

Much of that work is being done by the Democratic Attorneys General Association, which in mid-2016 brought on Sean Rankin as its new executive director, moved its headquarters from sleepy Colorado to the nation’s capital, and sought to amp up its fundraising. The group has facilitated weekly Tuesday calls and wider information sharing between the different attorneys general offices.

“With the sheer volume of different controversies that are out there, it helps to know that other states are working on fighting this or putting together legal reasons for why this doesn’t work,” Chin said. “And this allows Hawaii to research more closely reasons why three different versions of the travel ban were all illegal or unconstitutional.”

‘A new era began that day’

The new approach kicked off just days after Trump’s inauguration last year. Nearly all of the country’s Democratic attorneys general were huddling in sunny Fort Lauderdale when President Trump handed down an executive order restricting travel from seven majority-Muslim countries. They’d seen it coming. Within a month of Trump’s election in 2016, Healey and other Democratic attorneys general instructed their staff to pore over any and all primary source documents that would indicate what to expect in the coming Trump administration. Their research included the president-elect’s tweets and speeches delivered on the campaign trail.

“We had anticipated this might come, and swung into action,” Healey told POLITICO.

It also helped that most of the AGs were in the same place for the DAGA Winter Conference. Those not in the room or in transit back to their states, checked in with DAGA executive director Sean Rankin by text message.

That fight played out quickly in the courtroom over the coming week, with a flurry of challenges coming around the country – first by Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson and shortly afterward by Hawaii’s Chin. It’s a multi-front fight that is dragging into 2018 as the Trump administration and lower courts and the Supreme Court itself debate implementation and the legality of the order.

“It seems like this new era began that day,” said Oregon’s Rosenblum. “We weren’t used to joining in so quickly. We hesitated at first because we were like, ‘Well wait a minute we haven’t looked into the standing issues.’ But now, we’re much more fluid, we’re much more adaptable, we’re quicker, we’re able to anticipate what’s coming along.”

A page out of the Republican playbook

Fast-forward a year, and Democratic AGs are still filing complaints and lawsuits at a break-neck pace, whether it’s a challenge for the administration’s ruling on net neutrality, contraceptives, environmental protections, civil rights or DACA.

Arkansas Attorney General and Republican Attorneys General Association Chairwoman Leslie Rutledge contends that her Democratic counterparts are “trigger happy” and making a “reflexive reaction based on policy rather than on the law.”

“They were challenging the president’s policy rather than having sound legal reasoning,” Rutledge told POLITICO. “And that is, when the courts agreed with the administration, that demonstrated that the administration was correct,” Rutledge added, noting that the Supreme Court in early December lifted the temporary stop on the third iteration of the travel ban.

Republicans also say, with some disdain, that Democrats are borrowing from their playbook.

“The Democratic attorneys general are acting as if they have invented a concept which was actually that the Republican AGs raised the profile significantly of the office and the importance of the office during President Obama’s administration,” Rutledge said.

Democrats don’t deny it. DAGA ccommunications director Lizzie Ulmer notes that it was modeled off Texas Attorney General and now-Gov. Greg Abbott and Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) playing roadblock to the White House. “That’s where that thinking came from,” she says.

“It really has been this unprecedented level of collaboration and work together,” Massachusetts’ Healey adds. “And I think state AGs are really the front line of defense right now.”

