From Kansas.com:

Former U.S. Sen. Nancy Kassebaum Baker will be one of four co-chairs on state Sen. Derek Schmidt’s run for attorney general.

She joins former Kansas Bureau of Investigation director Larry Welch as one of the statewide chairs. The other two have not yet been announced.

“I have known Derek Schmidt since he was a valued member of my Senate staff in the early 1990s,” Kassebaum Baker said. “He put himself through law school while serving on my staff, and I saw up close his work ethic and determination.

Schmidt, from Independence and currently the Senate Republican Leader, is running against Attorney General Steve Six, a Democrat.

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From the Berkshire Eagle:

Republican James McKenna says he wants to replace Democrat Martha Coakley as attorney general to “restore public trust” in the office and not because she may be perceived as vulnerable having lost to Republican Scott Brown in the special election for U.S. Senate in January.

“We are not focusing on her past campaign,” McKenna said. “This is a completely different race.”

McKenna said Coakley should be voted out of office, in part, because she’s failed to deal with corruption within state government.

“We need to restore public trust in our elected officials,” he said. “As of Jan. 1 [if elected], we will have a public corruption task force that will go after Democrats, Republicans and Independents.”

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From the Florida Independent:

Relatively unknown as a candidate in the race to become Florida’s next Attorney General, Fort Lauderdale attorney Jim Lewis has announced he’s calling for Florida to take a step beyond simply decriminalizing marijuana for medical use, saying in press release Tuesday that he will seek the legalization of marijuana (in what is widely considered to be the state that ranks number one for highly potent, indoor-grown pot) should he be elected.

After announcing his candidacy last May, Lewis eventually dropped his longtime Republican party affiliation to run as an independent, following a career that included stints in the ’80s as assistant state’s attorney, special prosecutor for Gov. Bob Graham and assistant statewide prosecutor for the attorney general. He is also no stranger to running for office, having run unsuccessfully for mayor and city commissioner of Fort Lauderdale, Broward County circuit judge, public defender and state representative.

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From the News Virginian:

Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli is in the forefront of political leaders in Virginia who identify themselves with the tea-party movement.

Ahead of the Virginia Tea Party Patriots Convention that begins today in Richmond, the Richmond Times-Dispatch spoke with the attorney general, a Republican, about the rise of the tea-party movement, its impact on the upcoming elections, and its future in the commonwealth and beyond.

In the most recent edition of his political newsletter, The Cuccinelli Compass, the attorney general encouraged his supporters to attend the convention, where he will take part in a forum on national policy tomorrow.

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From newstimes.com:

Republican attorney general candidate Martha Dean Thursday called the taking by eminent domain of a Brookfield quarry to make room for the Route 7 bypass an abuse of the power.

The state paid the owner of the quarry about $4 million in 2004, but was ordered by a judge last year to pay an additional $20 million after finding the state’s valuation of the property lacking.

Dean, who was speaking during a forum Thursday at La Cupola Ristorante in Bantam sponsored by the Litchfield Rotary Club, said the abuse of eminent domain is one of the unfriendly business practices in the state she hopes to end if elected next month.

“We have to get rid of burdensome regulations on businesses,” she said during the event.

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From WUWM:

Van Hollen says he’s charged with defending the state and federal constitutions.

Both he and Hassett agree the top priority of the state Attorney General is public safety. But the two differ on their areas of focus. Hassett says at the top of his agenda would be consumer protection.

“We’re in tough economic times. We’re all suffering from predatory practices by Lehman Brothers or AIG and this agency used to be one of the tops in the entire nation in terms of consumer protection. And we used to be aggressively involved in anti-trust and price-fixing and bid-rigging. And a lot of things you don’t see anymore that protect the public,” Hassett says.

In order to protect the public, Van Hollen says he’d keep the focus where he’s had it the last four years.

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From Midlandsconnect.com:

South Carolina Republicans have put $50,000 into attorney general hopeful Alan Wilson’s campaign.

The donation was reported in a state GOP campaign account filing on Monday. Joel Sawyer is the state Republican Party’s executive director and said Thursday the donation matches a $50,000 donation that Democrats made to their attorney general hopeful Matthew Richardson.

State political parties can give a maximum of $50,000 to statewide candidates while individuals are limited to $3,500 for each election.

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From SIlive.com:

Republican District Attorney Dan Donovan is struggling against his opponent in the race for state attorney general, a new poll finds.

Democratic Assemblyman Eric Schneiderman of Manhattan leads by a 43-32 percent margin over Donovan, the Quinnipiac University survey found.

But, pollster Maurice Carroll said, neither man has great name recognition, leading 24 percent of likely voters to be undecided and 39 percent of those asked said they might change their vote before Election Day.

Both Senate seats are both up for election and incumbents are in control.

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From the Los Angeles Times:

The choices presented to The Times’ editorial board at election time often are dispiriting: Candidate X mumbles bromides about being tough on crime and illegal immigration; Candidate Y naively imagines that the mere power of ideas will overcome the influence of special interests. Everyone claims to be an environmentalist, including those who would roll back environmental progress; everyone is skeptical of big government, even as they propose to make it bigger or tougher. Ultimately we must choose whom to endorse, but we often do so with reluctance.

This year’s race for the office of state attorney general poses the opposite difficulty. California’s two best-known public lawyers — the heads of the Los Angeles and San Francisco district attorney’s offices — are competing for the job. They are both worthy candidates, and closely matched. Either Steve Cooley, a Republican, or Kamala Harris, a Democrat, would do a fine job. After serious deliberation, The Times endorses Cooley.

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