herring, mark Rep

===

beat by RAGA

horner BS

===

cei bs

A Circuit Court in Richmond, VA on Tuesday ordered the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) of Virginia to conduct a proper search for emails and other records requested by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) and attorney Christopher Horner three and a half years ago under the state’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

The court ruled that CEI and Horner presented evidence that the OAG failed to properly search for official documents responsive to FOIA requests made in September and October of 2018, when former VA Attorney General Mark Herring was in office. CEI and Horner requested the documents while investigating a legally and ethically suspect agreement between Herring’s OAG and a nonprofit housed at the New York University (NYU) Law School to place donor-funded attorneys on Herring’s staff to prosecute cases related to climate change.

Much of the evidence prompting the court’s ruling was obtained when, following threads exposed during discovery in this litigation, Horner made other requests, yielding other emails from the same Office showing that it indeed improperly withheld documents, as a result of its conducting a curiously limited search of email accounts.

Horner revealed the nation-wide scheme to place donor-funded NYU law school attorneys in OAGs including Virginia, Massachusetts, Oregon, California and other states in an August 2018 report for CEI titled *Law Enforcement for Rent: How Special Interests Fund Climate Policy through State Attorneys General*. In 2019 and 2021, the Virginia legislature restricted funds appropriated to OAG, precluding the attempt by NYU Law School and Herring’s OAG to hire donor-funded attorneys to pursue a partisan agenda.

“Virginians should be grateful to the court for holding the Office of the Attorney General accountable for its obligations under the Freedom of Information Act and we look forward to receiving and reviewing the documents. We hope Attorney General Jason Miyares will ensure Virginians know the extent to which his predecessor empowered partisan interests to use OAG to further a political agenda,” said Horner. “Virginians and all Americans should expect their prosecutors to uphold and comply with the law and former AG Herring and other attorneys general were wrong to bring partisan politics into prosecutors’ offices.”

===

11/21

In an extremely tight attorney general race, Republican Jason Miyares defeated Democrat incumbent Attorney General Mark Herring. Miyares’s experience as a prosecutor and commitment to defending the rule of law helped him win this election. Attorney General-elect Miyares will be Virginia’s first Latino elected to statewide office. Herring also makes history tonight, as the first Virginia Attorney General to lose re-election since Francis Blair lost in 1885.

Miyares’s victory was aided in part by a $2.6 million investment from the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA), which was used by the Miyares campaign to supplement television ad buys.

RAGA Chairman South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson released the following statement congratulating Jason Miyares on his victory.

“I appreciate Jason stepping up to the plate and running a campaign focused on public safety and respect for our guiding principles, the Constitution and rule of law. Jason will be a welcome addition within our organization and I am looking forward to working with him to ensure that America continues to be safe and prosperous.”

RAGA Executive Director Peter Bisbee echoed Chairman Wilson’s remarks.

“Jason Miyares tirelessly made his case to Virginia voters as he campaigned across the Commonwealth in recent months. Miyares’s hard work, aided by financial support from RAGA, paid off and Virginia will have an attorney general who won’t back down from tough fights to protect the Constitution and rule of law. I look forward to having Miyares join our ranks and be a part of the coalition that is pushing back against the administrative state. After eight years of failed Democrat leadership in the AG’s office, Virginians had enough. I view Virginia as a bellwether and am confident voters across the country will vote out a number of incumbent Democrat attorneys general in 2022. I look forward to continuing to expand the majority next year.”

===

https://www.facingsouth.org/2020/10/institute-index-confronting-gops-poll-watcher-threats

Hours after the start of the Sept. 29 presidential debate betweenPresident Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden — in which Trump refused to condemn white supremacists, made false claims about voter fraud, and urged his supporters to "go into the polls and watch very carefully"— that Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring issued a Tweet saying "voter harassment and intimidation will not be tolerated" in his state: 14 also CA

Number of days before the debate that Herring issued an advisory opinion outlining protections in both state and federal law against voter intimidation in response to reports of activity near polling places that led some voters to fear for their safety: 5

Date on which a group of Trump supporters waving campaign flags disrupted early voting in Fairfax County, Virginia, by rallying near the entrance to a polling placefollowing a "Trump Train" parade led by Republican National Committee (RNC) Co-Chair Thomas O. "Tommy" Hicks Jr. of Dallas: 9/19/2020

Year in which the RNC, after a lawsuit over its hiring of off-duty police to monitor polling places in Black and Latino communities in New Jersey as part of a so-called "ballot security" operation, signed a consent decree pledging to end intimidation of Democratic voters though admitting no wrongdoing: 1982

According to RNC officials, number of voters another one of their 1980s-era so-called "ballot security" efforts was expected to kick off Louisiana's rolls in an effort the officials said was designed to "keep the Black vote down": 60,000 to 80,000

Year in which the consent decree expired despite Democrats' attempts to get it extended, making the 2020 presidential election the first without its protections in 40 years: 2017

Date on whichPresident Trump, in a private meeting with civil rights leaders at Trump Tower, acknowledged that lower turnout among Black voters helped him defeat Hillary Clinton: 1/16/2017

Year in which Justin Clark, an attorney and Trump reelection campaign official, was recorded telling Republican lawyers that the expiration of the consent decree was a "huge, huge, huge, huge deal": 2019

Number of people the Republican Party is now aiming to recruit to serve as what it calls "poll watchers" to look for election problems, raising concerns about possible voter intimidation: 50,000

Date on which Roger Stone — the longtime Trump confidant convicted of felonies for witness tampering and lying to investigators in the Russia election interference case and whose sentence was commuted by the president — appeared on the radio show of Dallas-based far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and said the only legitimate outcome to the 2020 election would be a Trump victory: 9/10/2020

Date on which, Stone, who has Proud Boy ties, organized what became known as the "Brooks Brothers riot" — a violent protest involving George W. Bush campaign operatives who targeted a meeting of election canvassers in Florida's Miami-Dade County during the 2000 presidential recount and succeeded in shutting it down, ultimately leading Al Gore, who won the popular vote, to concede: 11/22/2000

Of the 50 states, number with statutes regulating poll watchers, also known as "partisan citizen observers": 45

Of the 13 Southern states*, number with poll watcher statutes: 13

Number of provisions of federal law that also bar voter intimidation, some of which impose lengthy prison sentences: 6

Factor by which the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a voting rights advocacy group, has boosted its squad of attorneys who'll be on call to help voters who experience intimidation or other problems at the polls this year: 4

Number of attorneys now helping that effort nationwide: more than 21,000

Phone number that voters who experience problems can call to get help from those attorneys: 866-OUR-VOTE

* Facing South counts among the Southern states Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia.

===

http://freebeacon.com/issues/gun-control-activists-pour-another-million-dollars-virginia-state-elections/

One of the nation's leading gun-control advocacy groups announced plans on Friday to spend upwards of $1 million in the upcoming Virginia gubernatorial and attorney general races even though a similar spending effort failed to flip control of the state senate in 2015.

The Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund, a New York-based gun-control group founded in large part by Michael Bloomberg, is donating $450,000 to Democrat Ralph Northam in his race against Republican Ed Gillespie. They're spending another $250,000 on mailers supporting Northam. The gun-control group is putting another $300,000 into Democrat Attorney General Mark Herring's reelection bid.

Northam and Herring contrast with their Republican opponents on gun policy. Northam supports an assault weapons ban, magazine size limits, universal background checks, and a return to the one-gun-a-month rule—all distinctions from Gillespie. Herring also supports universal background checks and the one-gun-a-month rule, and his campaign website touts his record as one of standing up to the "gun lobby and a legislature that is beholden to it." Herring's opponent, Republican John Adams, has promised to "vigorously defend the Second Amendment."

...

===