Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark is running for reelection, she announced on Monday.
The Democrat from Williston, Vt., is seeking what would be her third two-year term as the state’s top prosecutor.
In a press release announcing her bid, Clark pointed to the 49 lawsuits her office has joined against President Donald Trump’s administration since Trump took office a second time. That has included litigation over the administration’s tariffs, its sweeping layoffs of federal workers, its efforts to roll back gender-affirming healthcare and other changes. If successful, many of those cases could preserve tens of millions of dollars in federal funding for state programs.
Clark said she’s eager to continue “to protect the sovereign state of Vermont against unconstitutional and illegal acts.”
“There remains work to be done, and I’m running for re-election to continue fighting for Vermonters,” she said.
Clark had been rumored to be a candidate for governor this year, potentially challenging five-term incumbent Republican Gov. Phil Scott. Asked in an interview about why she’s running for attorney general instead, Clark said she thinks it is “incredibly important” to keep the leadership in the prosecutorial office the same for the second half of Trump’s second term. Scott has not yet announced whether he’s running for reelection.
Many legal challenges can take years to resolve, Clark said. And she thinks that, if Republicans maintain control of Congress after this fall’s midterm elections, “We’re going to see the President trying to do more unconstitutional things by himself, instead of following the rule of law laid out in the Constitution.”
Should that happen, she said, “I will be here and I will be ready.”
If she’s elected to a third term, Clark said she also would be interested in pursuing litigation over the impacts of plastics on the environment, the high cost of healthcare for many Vermonters and the role of artificial intelligence companies in protecting people’s privacy and intellectual property, though she declined to discuss any of those potential cases in detail.
Clark was first elected attorney general in 2022 after beating out Rory Thibault — who was then Washington County State’s Attorney — in that year’s Democratic primary. Before getting elected to lead the office, she worked as its chief of staff under former Attorney General TJ Donovan.
Clark did not face a primary challenger in 2024, and no other Democrat or Republican has announced plans to seek the office so far this year.
As of the latest deadline to file campaign finance reports with the Vermont Secretary of State’s Office, which was March 15, Clark had raised about $115,000 for her bid so far.
Compared to other candidates for statewide office who reported fundraising by that deadline, that’s more than all but the two leading Democrats running for lieutenant governor.
This story was republished with permission from VtDigger, which offers its reporting at no cost to local news organizations through its Community News Sharing Project. To learn more, visit vtdigger.org/community-news-sharing-project.