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James, Wofford vie for NYS Attorney General

New York Now/NYC Public Advocate's Office
Republican Keith Wofford, left, and Democrat Tish James are running for NYS Attorney General

The next Attorney General of the state of New York is very likely to make history. Tish James, the Democratic candidate and current New York City Public Advocate, and the Republican, bankruptcy lawyer Keith Wofford, are African American. But the two hold different views on many topics.

James, who won her seat as public advocate with the help of the left-leaning Working Families Party, has made her campaign about opposition to President Trump and his policies. She said she would continue numerous lawsuits, including one against the Trump Foundation, now being conducted by the current Attorney General Barbara Underwood.

Underwood is serving as the replacement to former Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who resigned in May after being accused of assaulting women that he dated. Schneiderman has said the incidents were consensual.

In an interview with public radio and television earlier this year, James said she’s very familiar with using the courts for social change and to right wrongs, including for tenant’s rights and rights for women and disabled children.

“Each and every day, I wake up, I go to my office, I sue somebody, and then I go home,” James said.

James won a Democratic primary, where she had the backing of Governor Andrew Cuomo. Despite that, she said she will be independent of Cuomo, and criticized the governor for prematurely shutting down a Moreland Act Commission on state corruption. She’s called on the head of the state ethics commission, which is controlled by Cuomo, to resign and believes the commission should be restructured. And she said if elected Attorney General, she would seek new powers to pursue corruption cases in the governor’s office and in the legislature.

“I’ve been independent all my life, just by the nature of who I am, “James said.

Cuomo is known to have a strong personality, but James said she has an “even stronger personality.”

Republican Keith Wofford grew up in Buffalo, where his mother was a secretary and his father worked at the Chevy plant. He graduated from Harvard and is on leave from the international law firm Ropes and Gray, where he specializes in bankruptcy settlements.  

Wofford said he’s the true independent in the race, because he has never held elected office and has no political ties to anyone. He said he’s better equipped to clean up corruption that’s led to several former associates of Governor Cuomo going to prison for bribery and bid rigging.

“The difference that I can make, is I’m someone who’s independent and from the outside,” said Wofford. “We have a corruption problem and the cost of the corruption is killing us.”

Wofford said he would be less “partisan” and “political” in the job than his opponent. He said he would pursue some, but not all, of the lawsuits against President Trump and his administration. He said he would take legal action against Trump’s Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross for including questions about  citizenship in the new census questionnaire .

“The point of the census is to count people,” Wofford said. “Anything you do to undermine the accuracy of the census is something that we should stay away from.” 

And he said he’d look into reports published in the New York Times that Trump and his family in the past cheated on their taxes.

Wofford said he is a supporter of the President, even though he might not always agree with everything Trump does.

And, he said he would be more business friendly. He said previous Attorneys General, like Eliot Spitzer, focused too much on regulating Wall Street instead of making it easier for companies to create jobs.

There are two other candidates in the race. Michael Sussman, a civil rights lawyer from Orange County, is running as a Green Party candidate, and Christopher Garvey, of Long Island, is running on Libertarian line.

Karen DeWitt is Capitol Bureau Chief for New York State Public Radio, a network of 10 public radio stations in New York State. She has covered state government and politics for the network since 1990.