By Glynda C. Carr:
Every Black woman who reaches high office in this country learns the routine. Her credentials get questioned. Her wins get shrunk. Her authority gets treated as up for debate, often by people who haven’t read her record.
No one has lived that routine more publicly than New York Attorney General Letitia “Tish” James. She was the first woman elected attorney general of New York and the first Black woman elected to statewide office in the state. Voters chose her in 2018 and again in 2022. Since then, she has become one of the most consequential attorneys general in America, and one of the most targeted.
Last fall, Attorney General Letitia James demonstrated remarkable resolve in the face of politically motivated legal challenges. After a federal judge dismissed the mortgage fraud case against her, citing the unlawful appointment of the prosecutor, the Justice Department twice sought new indictments. Both times, federal grand juries declined to bring charges. Throughout the ordeal, James remained steadfast in her commitment to the rule of law, refusing to be intimidated or distracted from her responsibility to serve the people of New York.
That should alarm every American, regardless of party. When the most powerful man in the country can direct prosecutors at a state official who took him to court, no public servant is safe doing her job. James held the line. That alone tells you something about her.
A Record That Reaches Far Beyond New York
On Tuesday, New Yorkers decide whether to give her a third term. Coverage of the race has centered on Republican challenger Saritha Komatireddy’s résumé as a federal prosecutor and her campaign’s focus on crime. Prosecutors bring real skills to the job. But anyone who thinks the attorney general is just a chief prosecutor has the office wrong.
The attorney general is the people’s lawyer. The office goes after consumer fraud, enforces civil rights law, takes on corporations that break the rules and holds powerful institutions to account. Public safety is part of that work. So are safe housing, fair wages, reproductive freedom and the rule of law.
AG James’s work has reached families far outside New York. She led the $7.4 billion settlement with Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family, a deal every eligible state and territory joined. Her office has secured more than $3 billion for New York alone from the companies that fueled the opioid epidemic, money now going to treatment, recovery and prevention in communities that lost sons, daughters, parents and neighbors to overdoses. That is public safety. It just doesn’t fit on a campaign mailer.
She came to that work prepared. She started as a public defender, investigated predatory lending in the attorney general’s Brooklyn office, fought negligent landlords on the New York City Council and, as the city’s public advocate, pushed legislation to close the gender wage gap. Someone with that résumé understands justice from every side of the courtroom.
The Double Standard Is National
At Higher Heights, we track what happens to Black women in public life across the country. Legitimate disagreement too often turns into attacks built on race and gender. Our In Defense Of initiative exists to call those attacks out, wherever they happen.
The script rarely changes, from city halls to statehouses to Washington. A Black woman who shows strength is “aggressive.” One who demands accountability is “political.” One with decades of public service is somehow still “unqualified.”
Those labels shape how voters see her, and they tell the next generation of Black women that running for office means signing up for the same treatment.
Why The Country Should Care
According to our biennial report, Black Women in American Politics, along with the Center for American Women and Politics, there are only a handful of Black women serving in statewide office in America.
How voters treat the ones who are there sends a message to every woman considering a run for office, whether she could be next. If a Black woman can do the job this well, survive a federal prosecution aimed at her for doing it, and still be dismissed as a talking point, that message is clear.
New Yorkers deserve safe streets and a justice system that works. They also deserve protection from predatory lenders, slumlords, scammers and discrimination. AG James has delivered on all of it, under more pressure than almost any public official in the country.
The measure of an attorney general is judgment, independence and a long commitment to justice. Debate zingers don’t count.
James has spent decades showing what she does with the power voters give her. She fights for the people she represents, and she wins. The whole country should judge her on that record.
Glynda C. Carr is president, CEO and co-founder of Higher Heights for America, a national organization working to expand Black women’s political power, representation and civic participation.