State AG Elections More Competitive As AGs Play Bigger Role

Clayton Friedman and Ashley L. Taylor, Jr., partners in Troutman Pepper Locke’s Regulatory Investigations, Strategy + Enforcement Practice Group, were quoted in the October 27, 2026, Law360 article, “State AG Elections More Competitive as AGs Play Bigger Role.”

• Texas, which has one of the most active attorney general’s offices in the nation, hasn’t had a Democrat attorney general since 1999. But it’s hosting an “unusually close and competitive” election between Republican state Sen. Mayes Middleton and Democrat state Sen. Nathan Johnson, according to Clayton S. Friedman, who co-leads Troutman Pepper Locke LLP’s state attorneys general practice.
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• The race in Florida, another traditionally red state with an active attorney general, is surprisingly tight this year, as well, according to Friedman. That’s despite the fact that Florida hasn’t elected a Democrat as attorney general since 1998.
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• Attorney general races are also unusually close in Iowa and Kansas, according to Ashley L. Taylor Jr., the other co-leader of Troutman’s state attorneys general practice.
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• The position “used to be the capstone of someone’s career. You’d be a prominent lawyer in your state, you’d be in your mid-50s, and you’d run for attorney general, serve two terms and retire,” said Taylor of Troutman.
  
  That’s no longer the case, according to him and others.
  
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• States’ recent $17.1 billion settlement with Meta created a framework for a regulatory approach to social media, but what a state’s attorney general thinks of that framework may depend on which party holds that office, according to Taylor.
  
  “A new AG comes in, they can set their own priorities. They don’t have to accept the Meta framework,” Taylor said. “There’s no requirement that the new AG embrace the framework created in that settlement.”
  
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• “That’s something that we will be watching as new AGs form their opinion about those, about that market generally, how it should be regulated, what’s the relationship between the federal government and state government,” Taylor said.