Shannon Taylor looks to jump from local to state stage as AG (2024)

Henrico Commonwealth’s Attorney Shannon Taylor launched her long-anticipated bid for statewide office on Wednesday, with the formal announcement that she is seeking the Democratic nomination to become Virginia’s next attorney general.

Taylor, 56, said she brings 28 years of experience as a prosecutor and defense attorney who has never backed down from a challenging fight, either in the courtroom or the political arena.

“I am eager to bring my years of actual experience in the law, my decade of running one of the largest Commonwealth’s Attorney’s offices, my successes in fighting hate and bigotry, and my years of keeping communities safe top the Attorney General’s office to ensure progressive, responsive leadership for ALL Virginians,” she said in her announcement.

Taylor is counting on that experience in a potential Democratic primary battle with former Del. Jay Jones, D-Norfolk, who has made no secret of his plan to run for the office, and, if nominated, a possible showdown with Attorney General Jason Miyares if he decides not to run for governor next year.

“I still believe that even going up against an incumbent, I bring that significant amount of experience to provide voters with a better option,” she said in a 40-minute telephone interview on Wednesday.

Four years ago, Taylor considered running for attorney general, but stepped aside after Attorney General Mark Herring decided to run for a third term instead of seeking the party nomination for governor.

Herring, who defeated Jones in a Democratic primary for the nomination, lost the race to Miyares in a Republican sweep of statewide offices.

Jones does not plan to announce whether he is running for the nomination until after the presidential election in November, said Lesley Shinbaum Stewart, a senior adviser who also serves as his unofficial chief of staff.

“Jay is very focused on November,” Stewart said on Wednesday, noting the recent felony convictions of former President Donald Trump, who faces President Joe Biden in a rematch at the top of an election ballot that also will include races for the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.

“Democracy is good,” she said of a potential primary battle for the attorney general nomination. “Voters deserve to have a choice.”

Taylor said she is running in part because of Miyares’ record on issues that matter to her — abortion rights and reproductive freedom, gun safety, protection of minorities, whether based on race, sexual preference or gender identity.

“We have a Republican attorney general who I don’t believe is looking out for the best interests of all Virginians,” she said.

Taylor was a seasoned lawyer but a political neophyte when she first ran for Henrico Commonwealth’s Attorney in 2011, announcing her bid just 10 weeks before the election and the same day as an earthquake in Louisa County that was felt from Richmond to Washington, D.C.

She won in a three-way race against former Richmond Chief Deputy Commonwealth’s Attorney Matt Geary, a law school classmate at the University of Richmond who was running as a Republican, and former Del. Bill Janis, R-Goochland, who was running as an independent with strong backing from then U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-7th.

Taylor won with a plurality of 46% of the vote on the same night that Tyrone Nelson defeated a Republican incumbent on the Henrico County Board of Supervisors in an election that broke the GOP’s longtime control of county politics. Republicans dismissed her victory as “a fluke,” she said, but she subsequently won three more terms as commonwealth’s attorney.

“I firmly believe that night, with Tyrone Nelson and I winning, was the beginning of the Blue Wave” of Democratic victories in Virginia, she said.

A Charlottesville native, Taylor began her career as a prosecutor under then-Commonwealth’s Attorney David Hicks in 1996. She twice served as a special assistant in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia and then for four years as special counsel for the Richmond Multi-Jurisdictional Grand Jury, which is when she said she began working with Henrico homicide and narcotics detectives.

She worked for three years as a defense attorney in a Richmond law firm before running for office.

“I love the courtroom, there’s no doubt about it,” she said.

Taylor also has been active beyond Henrico, serving on a work group that vets legislation for the Senate Courts of Justice Committee — based on law, not policy, she said — and serving as immediate past president of the Virginia Association of Commonwealth’s Attorneys. She also served on a work group to develop guidelines for police body-worn cameras under then Secretary of Public Safety Brian Moran.

She won conviction of a Hanover County man, whom prosecutors described as a former Ku Klux Klan leader, for driving his vehicle into a march by Black Lives Matter protestors on Richmond’s North Side in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis.

This year, Taylor is serving as special prosecutor in the Albemarle County trial of an Ohio man who is charged with violating a state cross-burning law for his role in a torch-lit march by white supremacists at the University of Virginia the night before the Unite the Right rally in downtown Charlottesville in August, 2017, that resulted in the death of a counter-protester run down by a rally participant.

The initial trial ended in a mistrial, as the prosecution sought to provide that the defendant, Jacob Joseph Dix, had gone beyond the First Amendment right of free speech in a concerted attempt to intimidate students and others opposed to the torch procession that ended in confrontation front of the Rotunda.

A state judge is expected to rule in August on a defense motion to dismiss the charges, but Taylor said the case is likely to go to appeal if he grants the motion.

“There are people who only take the easy wins,” she said. “That is not me.”