Henrico County Commonwealth’s Attorney Shannon Taylor announced Wednesday she will seek the Democratic nomination for Virginia attorney general, emphasizing her track record as a prosecutor in what is likely to be a competitive primary contest for the job now held by Republican Jason S. Miyares.
Virginia
Shannon Taylor, top Henrico prosecutor, launches Dem. bid for Virginia AG
“When it comes to protecting women’s rights and our children or standing up against hate, those aren’t just my positions,” she said. “I’ve actually taken on either cases or actions to demonstrate my commitment to those Democratic values.”
Taylor is the first candidate from either party to formally announce a bid for attorney general, one of three statewide offices in Virginia that will be on the ballot next year.
Former state delegate Jay Jones, a Norfolk trial attorney who lost the Democrats’ 2021 primary for attorney general, is widely expected to run for the position again in 2025 — with the backing of former governors Ralph Northam and Terry McAuliffe.
On the Republican side, Miyares has not yet announced whether he will run for reelection as attorney general or if he plans to seek the Republican nomination for governor, as some expect. (Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) is term-limited from running again for the job.)
Taylor, 56, is a lifelong Virginia resident who served as a prosecutor in Richmond, oversaw a regional grand jury and worked as criminal defense lawyer before running for her current post, becoming the first Democrat in years to win countywide in Henrico — a once-conservative area closely associated with former House Republican leader Eric Cantor.
She said that as commonwealth’s attorney, she hired more women and people of color to serve as prosecutors and ran her office through the lens of “compassionate accountability,” putting a greater focus on mental health and substance use issues.
“I do call myself a ‘progressive prosecutor,’” she said. “‘Progressive’ is to do things differently. That is exactly what I brought to that office and what I would continue to do if given the opportunity to move forward in a new role.”
But she said she did not hesitate to fight acts of hate, prosecuting a self-identified Ku Klux Klan leader who drove a truck through a crowd of Black Lives Matter protesters and then pushing state lawmakers to strengthen related hate crime legislation.
She has also been involved in a string of high-profile cases, recently serving as special prosecutor in Virginia’s case against one man who was accused of using a flaming torch during the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville to intimidate counterprotesters. The jury failed to reach a verdict in the case — the first test of a new state law meant to ban Ku Klux Klan cross-burnings — though it is expected to return to court this summer for additional proceedings.
Taylor has also previously said she is conducting a probe related to the 2023 death of Irvo Otieno, a Black man in mental distress who was asphyxiated in a Richmond-area hospital while being restrained by three workers and seven sheriff’s deputies.
The case is being prosecuted in nearby Dinwiddie County, where that incident occurred, but Otieno was brought to that facility from a Henrico hospital and then the county jail. The sheriff’s deputies who restrained him for 11 minutes, according to surveillance video, are all from Henrico.
Taylor also pointed to her experience in several statewide efforts, including as past president of the Virginia Association of Commonwealth’s Attorneys and on a working group that reviews legislation for the Virginia State Senate’s Courts of Justice Committee.
SOUTH BOSTON, Va. (WSET) — A manufacturing company in South Boston is now in contact with the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality after an oil spill this week.
A Hitachi Energy spokesperson says that because of heavy rainfall and a pump failure, a small amount of transformer mineral oil spilled.
The manufacturing company makes power transformers. The spokesperson told ABC 13 that an employee noticed oil in a secondary containment area.
SEE ALSO: Virginia measles cases climb as outbreak hits Buckingham County, officials say
The company says the material was tested and found to be non-toxic. They say the oil stayed on company property with no harm to the community or environment.
ABC 13 reached out to the Department of Environmental Quality, and we are waiting to hear back.
The measure requires products containing kratom not be sold to people under 21, and mandates they must be stored behind counters or locked up by store clerks. Labels must indicate risks associated with the herb, according to the new law, which also bans products that contain a particular chemical found in kratom called 7-hydroxymitragynine, or 7-OH.
New Virginia laws banning the sale and transfer of assault weapons go into effect in about five weeks. But at least five conservative prosecutors say they won’t enforce them.
Spotsylvania County Commonwealth’s Attorney Ryan Mehaffey said he believes the laws violate the Constitution.
“The Second Amendment is alive and well in Spotsylvania County,” he told News4.
The commonwealth will ban the sale and manufacture of certain semi-automatic weapons, shifting gun laws to more closely align with states such as California and Illinois. But as Virginia teeters from purple to blue and back again, some elected officials are making clear that the new laws won’t be enforced in their counties.
Attorney General Jay Jones said in a statement: “Commonwealth’s Attorneys are elected to enforce our laws, which is what we expect them to do when these laws take effect on July 1.”
The law will make it a misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in jail and a $2,500 fine for people to buy, sell, transfer, import, or manufacture an assault firearm.
Mehaffey said the law is in direct conflict with the Second Amendment.
“It’s fundamentally opposed to a free society, a society where liberty reigns. And this is the moment in time where the Second Amendment was drafted and enacted, where the government couldn’t take the right of the people to defend themselves away,” he said.
Eleven other states and D.C. already have versions of their own assault weapons ban. The details and laws vary and they’ve been challenged in the courts. In fact, several lawsuits have already been filed against Virginia’s new ban.
“Every assault weapons ban that has gone before a federal court in this country has been upheld, including, most importantly, Maryland’s,” said Mary Kenah of Everytown for Gun Safety.
She said Maryland’s ban is considered more restrictive than Virginia’s and was upheld by the same court that presides over Virginia. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up this case, so Maryland’s assault weapon ban remains in place.
“The people of Virginia showed that their priority is gun-violence prevention. They elected a former Moms Demand Action volunteer as their governor,” Kenah said.
In places such a Spotsylvania County, they’ve elected Mehaffey as their prosecutor. It’s a county that surprised a lot of people in November when it voted blue, in favor of Gov. Abigail Spanberger.
Despite that shift, Mehaffey said he’s confident that his position against the new assault weapons ban is what his constituents want.
Other prosecutors who have said they won’t enforce Virginia’s assault weapons ban are from Powhatan, Pulaski, Scott and Smyth counties.
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