Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum won’t seek reelection

The Oregon attorney general who sued multiple federal agencies in 2020 for the forcible arrests of Portland residents protesting police brutality during the height of the BLM movement has decided to step down at the end of her term.

Ellen Rosenblum, a Democrat and the state’s first woman attorney general, said on Tuesday evening that she will not seek a fourth term for the position she’s held since June 2012.

“I want to let you know I will not be seeking a fourth term as Oregon’s Attorney General in 2024,” she said in a statement posted to X, formerly Twitter. “I love being your AG, and I’ve given this important position my all since June 29, 2012, when I was first sworn in.”

The job doesn’t come with term limits but Rosenblum, 72, said she felt it was time she impose her own after winning elections for the position in 2012, 2016 and 2020, the Oregon Capital Chronicle reported.

“Every state agency, no matter how well run, can benefit from new leadership, new energy, and new initiatives,” she said, according to the local paper. “By making this announcement more than a full year before the next general election — and eight months before the primary — I expect there will be good candidates to succeed me as the People’s Attorney for Oregon.”

Rosenblum, a former federal prosecutor and appellate judge, gained national attention during the Trump administration when she joined other states’ attorney generals to oppose a number of mandates the then-president pushed through — including his refugee ban.

She made headlines across US news outlets again in 2020 when she filed a lawsuit requesting a restraining order against the more than 100 federal agents deployed by then-President Trump to Portland after protests erupted over the police killing of George Floyd.

Rosenblum argued that agents from the US Department of Homeland Security, US Marshals Service, US Customs and Border Protection and the Federal Protection Service used excessive and unwarranted force to detain and arrest residents without probable cause.

“The federal administration has chosen Portland to use their scare tactics to stop our residents from protesting police brutality and from supporting the Black Lives Matter movement,” Rosenblum said in announcing the suit. “Every American should be repulsed when they see this happening. If this can happen here in Portland, it can happen anywhere.”

Her term as Oregon’s top prosecutor ends in January 2025.

“I deeply appreciate the faith Oregonians have placed in me these past eleven years,” Rosenblum said. “At the same time, a job like this belongs to the people of Oregon — not to any one individual.”