The race for attorney general is on: Charity Clark, a lawyer who has spent the last four years as chief of staff to Attorney General T.J. Donovan, says she is running to become Vermont’s next top prosecutor.
Her announcement comes little over a week after her boss said he would not run for reelection. She joins Washington County State’s Attorney Rory Thibault in seeking the Democratic nomination.
At a press conference in Winooski on Monday, Clark said her experience in the office makes her the best person for the job.
“I will be ready on day one to fight to protect Vermonters,” said Clark, who resigned from the AG’s office last week.
A southern Vermont native who now lives in Williston, Clark graduated from the University of Vermont and worked as a policy analyst under former governor Howard Dean. She attended Boston College Law School and began her legal career in private practice. Former attorney general Bill Sorrell hired her as an assistant AG in 2014, and she was named Donavan’s chief of staff four years later.
In that role, Clark helped manage a staff of roughly 150 people while also overseeing the office’s consumer assistance program, expungement clinics and legislative agenda.
Clark said she would use the AG position to advocate for further expansion of Vermont’s expungement laws as well as a new comprehensive data privacy law.
Noting that she would be the first woman to serve as attorney general, she said she would bring a “renewed focus” to the issues of reproductive liberty and domestic violence.
“No attorney general in Vermont’s history has known what it’s like to walk to your car in a dark parking lot, holding your keys in that special way that all women know,” she said.
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