Bob Ferguson Sued Trump Nearly 100 Times — Now He’s Running for Governor

Washington might not be the state where one would think the race for governor would be a close race between the Democratic and Republican nominees. After all, a Democrat has occupied the governor’s mansion for more than four decades. Nonetheless, when current Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) announced he wouldn’t run for a fourth term, it left an open seat to lead the Evergreen State for the first time in over 10 years. 

Enter Bob Ferguson, Washington’s Democratic attorney general, who’s held the position for as long as Inslee has been governor. His election might seem like a lock, right? The Democratic attorney general running for governor in a solidly blue state. Maybe so, but the race is anything less than contentious — and Ferguson isn’t taking any chances. 

Ferguson rose to national attention at the onset of former President Donald Trump taking the White House. His office was the first attorney general office to file a lawsuit against the Trump travel ban and he went on to sue the Trump administration almost 100 times, winning almost all the lawsuits. It’s with this experience, along with a chess master’s objectivity and patience, that he thinks he’s the best choice to lead Washington. And even though Ferguson has a solid lead over the Republican candidate, former Congressman Rep. Dave Reichert, he’s still anticipating his opponent’s every move.

Responses have been edited for style and clarity.

You’ve been Washington’s attorney general for more than a decade. This is your first time running for governor. Why now? 

The reason for right now is because we’re facing some really serious challenges as a state. Public safety. An opioid epidemic. Rising costs for groceries and housing. And I think what we need as a governor is someone who’s a change agent — who’s demonstrating an ability to make a change in places they’ve been in the past. To address those challenges, while at the same time — and equally and importantly — protect our core freedoms. Freedom like reproductive freedom, freedom like the freedom to marry the person you love. And so that’s what makes Washington a great place — I think we’re a state that upholds those kinds of values but, at the same time, leaning into progress, leaning into change, leaning into improving state government, and that’s what motivates me to run for governor.

You formed the Civil Rights Division within the Washington Attorney General’s Office, which is one of the nation’s strongest civil rights divisions in the country fighting against discrimination. How will you continue that fight as Governor of Washington? What are some of the biggest threats to the civil rights and protections of Washington residents?

I appreciate you mentioning the Civil Rights Division in my office, which is  an incredible team. And just to be clear, when I became attorney general 12 years ago, we were the largest law firm in the state of Washington. We have hundreds of attorneys and hundreds of professional staff. But if you called my office on my first day on the job with a civil rights complaint, we referred you somewhere else. Our office, for decades, had done no civil rights enforcement on behalf of the people, which made no sense to me. Which kind of goes to the basis of your question: state government should be an advocate for all Washingtonians. 

So we created that Civil Rights Division which is, to your point, now a true leader, not just here in Washington state, but nationally. It was my Civil Rights team that was the first team to challenge Trump in court on the first Muslim travel ban. He signed that executive order on a Friday evening. My team worked all weekend. On Monday, we filed a lawsuit. And on Friday we had a national injunction stopping that first Muslim travel ban. That was my Civil Rights team. 

So it’s important to have a team of advocates who will stand up for everybody’s rights. I’m proud of what the team’s done for farm workers and for communities all across their state. Now as governor, it’s a different role. So one thing I want to make sure I’m doing is making sure the AG’s office is able to continue growing that civil rights division. I’ve been able to do it by prioritizing my budget, but with even more resources from the state. In other words, I do it without general fund resources. I do it within my budget. But that team can and should grow. Believe me, if it was a bigger team, there’d be more cases they could bring on behalf of the people to uphold their rights. 

Also, number two, as a governor, there simply are state budgets, right? There’s the work we do with all the state agencies to make sure we’re doing everything we can as a state to make sure we’re upholding the rights of all Washingtonians. And that’s just something that’s important to me, personally. Being an advocate for civil rights is something that I just care deeply about. That’s why we prioritize that in my office as attorney general. And I’ll certainly be taking that same mentality being governor of Washington state. 

Your office’s litigation efforts against the Trump travel ban was not the only litigation that you filed against the Trump administration. Your office sued the administration 99 times and really led the Democratic attorneys general effort to push back against a lot of harmful Trump policies. What did you learn from that litigation effort?

Man, that’s a good question. That was an unusual time, right? I mean, if you told me when Trump took office that we would file 99 lawsuits against the Trump administration, I just would say, that’s crazy. I mean, there won’t be that many things to challenge and we don’t have the bandwidth to do that. We don’t have the resources. It wouldn’t have seemed possible. But obviously Trump’s administration turned out to be a train wreck for our country and his efforts to trample on the rights of Americans and Washingtonians — on our environment, reproductive freedom, the list goes on. 

It became very clear, very quickly that we had to really adjust to what kind of presidency he was going to have. And so I can’t be more proud of our efforts. You’re right. We really helped lead the entire group of Democratic attorneys general. We were the first state to take on Trump, the first state to beat him. And we had a victory on his last day in office, on an environmental case. So from really almost literally day one to literally the last day in office we were working hard. But working closely with other states, of course — California, New York, Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania and many other states. But I was proud that we were a leader on that. 

In terms of what I learned — and maybe this is sort of a cautionary tale for why we need to make sure Trump gets nowhere near the White House again — is that my team did fantastic work. We won virtually every case we brought. We lost only a couple of cases. That’s partly due to how excellent my team is. But also the Trump administration was sloppy in how they rolled out a lot of these executive orders. And that made it easier for my team to bring legal challenges. They wouldn’t always cross their T’s and dot their I’s. They did things in a haphazard way. I’m convinced they didn’t have lawyers look at some of these executive orders. I’m concerned if Trump becomes president again, that he’s going to clean that up. 

And even from what they’ve communicated about what they want to do in a new administration, they’re showing a level of organization that wasn’t there when he first came into office. So we need to elect Kamala Harris for all sorts of critical reasons for our democracy. But that is one more I would add to the list: I’m just deeply concerned that if Trump gets in there, he’ll go back to undermining our rights, destroying our environment, but doing it in a way that makes it even more difficult for future AGs to challenge successfully. 

That level of organization that you mentioned, I assume you’re referencing Project 2025? How much of Project 2025 have you read and what parts of it are most concerning to you? 

Honestly, what jumps out to me is the specificity and the breadth on an entire range of issues. That they’ve already put pen to paper on, and laid out, their game plan. One thing I want to be super clear about is, within my office, we started preparing for a potential Trump administration last year. We weren’t waiting around for Project 2025. Once it became clear Trump was a likely Republican nominee, we just began, as an office, to prepare. 

That served us well when he first came into office. The reason why we were the first AG’s office to take him on is we spent time getting ready for a potential Muslim travel ban. So we’ve been doing that and we’re not alone. We’ve been working with other democratic AGs across the country on exactly this. Making sure we have resources. Who has expertise on certain kinds of cases, certain kinds of issues? Is it reproductive freedom? Who’s got the expertise on that? Each office is geared a little bit differently. So for me, I won’t be the attorney general next year, but if I’m the governor next year, I do believe that I’m as prepared — if not more prepared — than anyone running for statewide office right now to be ready to help take on a Trump administration. 

Just given my four years of experience with the last administration of Trump, I think bringing that expertise will help me use the tools of the governor’s office — but also work with hopefully a Democratic Attorney General, Nick Brown, who I’m confident will get elected here in Washington State to be a partner in teaming up — to make sure we’re pushing back on Project 2025 and everything else on the Trump agenda. Obviously, Harris — who by the way, when I was a new AG, she was in her last two years as AG of California. I just have so much respect for her. Such a fantastic Attorney General, obviously an incredible VP and an incredible nominee. So I’m confident she’ll win, but it’s always good to prepare for a worst case scenario.

You know, I think you’re absolutely right about a lot of the dangers of Project 2025 and a second Trump administration for the country, but Washington is a pretty blue state. Though even the most Democratic states aren’t without issues caused by Republican policies and threats to democracy, given the increasingly extremist GOP agenda. What would you do, as governor, to protect and promote democracy throughout the state?

On Washington being a blue state, let me just touch on that for a moment. I know it is easy for folks to think of Washington as some deep blue state. And I can see why they think that. Democrats have controlled the governor’s mansion for 40 years, So it’d be sort of natural to assume that, as the Democratic nominee, maybe my path is clear. But it’s worth pointing out in the last two campaigns for governor in Washington state, when there was no one running, like this one, it’s an open seat. The total margin of victory for our last two Democrat governors, Inslee and Chris Gregoire, they won by a combined three percentage points. Combined three percentage points. So historically these elections for governor, again, when there’s no incumbent, are not just close — they’re really, really close. And we expect this one to be close. 

In terms of your specific question around threats to democracy: look, Washington has some challenges that we see nationally. I’ll give you a specific example. In 2020, in the last gubernatorial election, Inslee — a Democrat, running for a third term — ran against a Republican, a guy named Loren Culp. Inslee won by a wide margin. Culp claimed that the results were fraudulent. So this is the Republican nominee on the ballot. I mean, this is their standard bearer. And he kept saying that the results were fixed, ballots were counted that shouldn’t have been, you get the idea. He filed a lawsuit in court challenging the election results. 

So it’s my job as attorney general to defend the state. When we got that complaint, we went through it and our conclusion was that, “This is frivolous.” So we sent a letter to Culp and his attorney, saying, unless you withdraw your lawsuit within, I think we gave him 48 hours, we’re going to seek sanctions against you and your attorney for filing a frivolous lawsuit. You got 48 hours. Guess what? They caved. They dropped their lawsuit with prejudice, meaning they can’t ever bring it back again. So my feeling is anytime someone is trying to threaten democracy, questioning those election results in a way that is irresponsible, that needs to be taken on. 

Right now in Washington state, we had in our primary election a lands commissioner race decided by — I think it was 49 votes, which made the difference between a Democrat and a Republican advancing in our top two. Predictably, the Republican party filed a lawsuit challenging that. So, we just need to make sure that there is a way to challenge elections that’s thoughtful and fair and that’s a part of the process. Make sure votes are counted accurately. Then there’s what Culp did, which is wildly out of step. Just making up claims. You’ve got to take the ones that are out of line, take those head on. There can’t be any negotiation. There’s no room for discussion. There’s got to be clear leadership on that, whether it’s the attorney general, or as a governor. And so I think as a governor, you have a unique role as the bully pulpit of the office, to speak on behalf of all Washingtonians. And that’s something I have some experience in and would certainly do as governor.

In addition to a career in law and politics, I know that you’re a champion chess player. How do you apply those chess skills to your political life? 

When I was a kid, I started playing chess at a young age and I got pretty serious about it. And after high school, I did not go to college right away. I told my parents I was going to try to become a professional chess player. So I traveled around the United States. I went to Europe and played overseas a couple of times. I became a pretty good player. I was an internationally rated chess master. I was pretty serious about it. And if I had another life to live, I’d be a professional chess player. I just love the game. 

But, you know, you can’t spend thousands and thousands of hours thinking about a subject, studying a subject, playing in tournaments, dreaming about it without it really influencing the way you think about a lot of things — including, to your question, politics. So chess, I think in some ways, it may seem odd to say, but I think it’s really good training for politics. 

As one example, if you and I are playing a game of chess, my job in our chess match is to anticipate every move you’re going to make. If you make a move that I did not anticipate, that’s, a major problem. And that should not happen more than once or twice in a game. In order to be a chess master, that means you have to be objective about what’s going on in the chessboard, right? I need to literally put myself in your shoes, in your head, to anticipate your move. There’s no room for me getting caught up in my attack over here and not paying attention to what you’re doing. My job is to anticipate each and everything you’re going to do. Well, guess what? That’s pretty good training for a lot of things, whether it’s being an attorney general and anticipating the other side of a legal case or in politics, anticipating what your opponent’s going to say, what kind of campaign ads they’re going to run, how they’re going to respond to this issue or that issue. 

I feel like one reason I’ve never lost a campaign is because I think I’m pretty objective about my campaigns and try to instill that in my team. That we don’t get too caught up when things are going well. We try to be objective about it. The other thing I will say is that chess teaches many things that, while the person with the white pieces has a slight advantage by moving first, if nobody makes a mistake, the game’s in a draw. So what that means at a high level is if I want to beat you in our game, there’s often a moment in a game where I need to take a risk. I need to commit myself in a way that means I might be increasing my chances of losing the game, but I’m increasing my chances of winning as well, right? And you’ve got to be willing to take those calculated risks to actually beat a tough opponent. 

I think chess really taught me the value and importance of calculated risks if you want to win. I had my weaknesses as a chess player, but that wasn’t one of them. I thought, “Taking those calculated risks was something that I kind of enjoyed and felt I was able to do in my political life.” I tried to do the same thing, whether it’s as an attorney general taking on big corporations, or being the first AG to challenge Trump. There’s a risk involved with that.