Because the country grapples with states’ newfound power to manage abortion within the aftermath of this summer’s U.S. Supreme Court decision, state attorney general candidates are staking claims on what they’ll do to fight or defend access to abortion — and that is attracting money and votes.

“By just about every indicator there’s in a campaign, the Dobbs decision has energized and supercharged our race,” said Kris Mayes, a Democrat running for attorney general in Arizona. “Individuals are outraged about this, and you may feel it within the air.”

But they are not the one ones who could also be testing the laws. The winners of local prosecutorial races may also shape the legal landscape, and, in lots of states, an attorney general’s ability to bring criminal abortion cases to court ends at an area prosecutor’s doorstep. Called district attorneys, prosecutors, and various other names across the country, these lawyers — not the attorneys general — would make the ultimate decisions on whether criminal charges will be brought against people in search of abortion or the medical professionals that provide them.

The exceptions include states resembling Delaware and Rhode Island, which have distinct attorney general and native prosecutorial structures, said David LaBahn, president and CEO of the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys.

In Georgia, several Democratic district attorneys have said they will not prosecute people for violating a state law that bans most abortions starting at about six weeks. Although abortion is already figuring into the attorney general race, that office has limited power to step in and stop such local decisions.

Michigan’s attorney general, Democrat Dana Nessel, who’s running for reelection, has said she wouldn’t implement a contested 1931 state abortion ban that doesn’t provide for any exceptions in situations like incest or for the health of the mother. And on Friday, a state judge blocked an effort by local Republican prosecuting attorneys to charge people under that statute.

Democrat Kimberly Graham, an Iowa county attorney candidate, has declared that she wouldn’t prosecute doctors or people for abortion care. She noted that the Supreme Court’s June decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization has highlighted how little people realize the “scary amount of discretion and power” prosecutors have.

“The one real accountability to that known as the ballot box,” she said. “Hopefully, amongst other things, people will start paying more attention to the county attorney and DA races and realizing how incredibly vital these positions have all the time been.”

It is not clear what number of county attorneys and district attorneys will determine to implement or fight their state abortion policies. But that results in an uncertain legal landscape, said former Maine Attorney General James Tierney, a Democrat who’s now a Harvard Law School lecturer. “We’re talking real chaos here,” he said.

Some officials have worked to offer more jurisdictional powers to attorneys general and governors to bring criminal cases against individuals who provide abortions and organizations that help people access abortions.

A Texas law set to take effect in late August will give Attorney General Ken Paxton the facility to override local district attorneys and go after providers and abortion funds that give money to those in search of abortion care. Previously, Paxton, who’s running for reelection and is under indictment on securities fraud charges, has offered his office’s resources to local district attorneys who want to prosecute abortion providers.

On Aug. 4, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, suspended State Attorney Andrew Warren for what he said was a refusal to implement state laws on a spread of issues that included abortion.

Paul Nolette, chair of the political science department at Marquette University, said he expects other states to offer attorneys general more power — and take away local control from prosecutors.

At the same time as the facility struggles ramp up, candidates for attorney general say that voters don’t really understand the boundaries on the office’s authority and that voter engagement of their races stays high. Thirty states have attorneys general slots up for election this 12 months, with close races in Arizona, Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin.

Jen Jordan, a Democratic state senator who’s running to unseat incumbent Georgia Republican Attorney General Chris Carr, said voters “see what the holder of the office says or does after which begin to imagine that’s the actual role of the attorney general.” But she acknowledged the boundaries of the office: “I can’t make a promise that a girl wouldn’t be prosecuted by an area district attorney, because they’ve separate constitutional powers.”

The abortion fight comes as attorneys general have turn into more activist and gained power within the political system, Nolette said. In recent times, as money poured into races after the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Residents United v. Federal Election Commission — which allowed corporations and donor groups to spend a vast amount of cash on elections — attorneys general have emphasized their partisan fights over more traditional facets of the job, resembling consumer protections, Nolette said.

“It’s a part of the AGs becoming the legal culture warriors on either side,” he said.

The Dobbs decision increased interest in donating to Democratic attorney general candidates, said Emily Trifone, a spokesperson for the Democratic Attorneys General Association. Trifone said that the day the choice was released, the group raised 15 times what they did the day before. It also outraised the often dominant Republican Attorneys General Association in that quarterly filing period.

Michigan’s Nessel said she felt as if nobody was taking note of her reelection race until Dobbs. Her Republican challenger, Matt DePerno, has said he would uphold the state’s contested 1931 law, which allows felony manslaughter charges against providers. In response, her team put out an ad highlighting his remarks opposing abortion ban exceptions in cases of rape or incest or to save lots of the lifetime of the patient. For the reason that Dobbs decision, Nessel went from being neck and neck in polls to having a slight lead.

Within the wake of the Dobbs ruling, the term-limited Arizona attorney general, Republican Mark Brnovich, has tried to revive a century-old state abortion ban that was placed on hold in 1973 after Roe v. Wade was decided. The Democratic candidate, Mayes, argued the law violates the privacy guarantees within the Arizona state structure and said she would “fight like hell” to maintain it from taking effect. Her Republican opponent, former Maricopa County prosecutor Abraham Hamadeh, has said he would implement it, which Mayes said the attorney general can do in Arizona.

Up to now this 12 months, most broadcast TV ads in attorney general races have not mentioned abortion, in response to an evaluation run through Aug. 14 by media monitoring firm Kantar/CMAG requested by KHN. Yet it’s still early in election season. The Democratic Attorneys General Association recently launched a five-figure digital ad buy about abortion for the races in Texas, Michigan, and Nevada.

But 10 times as much money has been spent on attorney general campaign ads with pro-abortion rights sentiments compared with ads which have anti-abortion sentiments, the Kantar/CMAG evaluation found.

The divergence on abortion mentions within the ads tracks with what Brian Robinson, a longtime Republican operative in Georgia, has seen. Democratic candidates need to keep talking about Dobbs because they feel as if it advantages their campaigns, Robinson said, while Republicans think they’ve already addressed the problem. “We’re not playing that game,” Robinson said. “We’re going to speak about crime and the economy.”

RAGA Executive Director Peter Bisbee said in an announcement that elected state legislators determine abortion policy and that Democratic attorneys general should implement the laws of their states.

Nessel identified that local prosecutors have all the time had the discretion to charge or not charge what they select. That even includes adultery laws on the books, she said.

Still, it could take a while to see how those local district attorneys proceed as they face a backlog of cases made worse by the covid-19 pandemic, said Pete Skandalakis, a former Republican district attorney and head of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia.

“We’re stretched beyond our resources at this point,” he said. “We’re not even attempting to sustain — we’re trying to not sink.”