Letitia James gets a boost

More than 30 percent of New York City voters who supported Donald Trump in 2020 approve of the job New York Attorney General Letitia James has done since she was elected in 2018, according to exclusive polling conducted for Newsweek.

That’s according to a poll conducted from May 12-14 by Redfield & Wilton Strategies, in which 19 percent of Trump voters “strongly approve” of James’ job performance while another 12 percent “approve.” It amounts to 55 Trump voters surveyed who approve, with another 38 (22 percent) saying they neither approve or disapprove. However, 34 percent of them “strong disapprove” of the job she’s done. A total of 974 eligible New York City voters were surveyed.

James’ stature has risen dramatically during her time in office, with polling analysts and policy experts telling Newsweek she has led various investigations and cases with above-average results.

Perhaps no case she was intertwined has drawn more attention or notoriety than her civil fraud lawsuit against Trump, his adult sons and The Trump Organization.

In March, Judge Arthur Engoron ruled that Trump must pay $454 million, which includes $355 million in penalties plus nearly $100 million in interest, stemming from James’ lawsuit that accused defendants of inflating the former president’s net worth and the value of his properties to obtain better loan and insurance terms. Trump, meanwhile, appealed the ruling and maintained his innocence.

“Voters want to see fair play,” Dan Lamb, senior lecturer at the Brooks School of Public Policy at Cornell University, told Newsweek. “The AG’s office is a watchdog office, and if you’re going to take on a case like this that’s so high profile, you better have your analysis and preparation thorough before you start. And she did that.”

Lamb said he’s followed James’ career since she was elected, saying that she has “met the moment” of her position and that her strong academic and legal background aided in quickly getting her feet off the ground in what has notoriously been an office with big names and strong personalities.

“She’s had a pretty good success rate,” he said. “Voters like winners. If you look at her box score on big cases, she’s had a string since the beginning of her time in the AG’s office.”

Aside from the Trump civil fraud case, she has reeled in big victories and settlements—including an abortion health care victory on Tuesday, a $2 billion settlement with cryptocurrency companies to benefit nearly 30,000 New Yorkers, and settlements totaling over $2.6 billion with companies involved in manufacturing, distributing and selling opioids.

While Lamb said those settlements are nothing to scoff at and that such payouts make her captivating to New Yorkers who may not share the same political proclivities, she also made a name for herself by going toe-to-toe with former Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo.

“That endeared her to a lot of moderate voters, but even those on the right because they wanted to see the Democratic governor taken to task for the sexual harassment scandal and nursing home scandal,” he said. “That was politically dicey for her to do but she backed it up.”

Conor Dowling, a political science professor at the University of Buffalo, says the polling seems to indicate that Trump’s messaging against her and others for prosecuting him “certainly hasn’t diminished her image.”

Dowling adds, however, that James still remains somewhat of an unknown commodity compared to other politicians, and especially President Joe Biden.

“James isn’t enough of a known quantity for Trump voters or any voters really to know where they stand on her,” he told Newsweek.

While future aspirations like a gubernatorial run or a venture for another high-profile political seat remains unknown, some say battling against Trump and standing her ground can only improve her name recognition.

“A lot of times when someone challenges an incumbent, part of the challenge is for would-be voters to be privy to their situations,” Dowling said. “Certainly, the situation she’s been thrust into is unique in giving people much more of a chance to learn who she is. That hurdle is something that she for the most part has overcome.”

John Kane, a clinical associate professor at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs who has conducted political polling research for about the past decade, told Newsweek that the question is whether she can sustain her momentum with other major victories down the road.

“My immediate reaction after over a decade of survey research: Do respondents actually know who she is and anything about the civil fraud case? Are they aware that she was the one leading it? Are they aware of the case in general? It’s been out of the news in recent weeks,” he said.

Kane added that the Trump voters who expressed approval toward her job performance, even at the behest of their likely preferred candidate in 2024, could also indicate that Trump voters didn’t view the civil case as consequential as, say, his current criminal hush money case.

“The Republican Party has long been seen as the party of rule and law,” Kane said. “The difficulty is that [Trump] kind of paints the system of rule and law selectively as being weaponized against him. So, if you believe that, it’s now no longer rule of law; it’s something else—a political machine that’s out to get to him.”

While Trump’s general election prospects in New York are essentially nonexistent, there’s questions of whether he can galvanize support in down-ballot races.

For James, her job continues to churn out victories.

“It’s hard to imagine how a New York AG could get that kind of news from not going after someone who is the figurehead of the Republican Party in the U.S.,” Kane said. “It gave her more credibility and notice to the national public than otherwise would have been the case.”

Lamb said the “engaging politician” with a “magnetic personality” also gets the benefit of the doubt based on where she is located.

“She seems to be somebody who is a good cop on the beat and wins the cases she takes on,” he said. “I think she’s reaping the benefit of that in a state that has a certain [finite] component of Republican-enrolled voters.”