By Kiera Riley | State Affairs
If you read the state statute and the secretary of state’s candidate guide, it seems that the attorney general must be a practicing attorney for at least five years before taking office.
On first brush, that raises an eligibility issue for attorney general hopeful Warren Petersen, who was licensed to practice law in the state in 2023.
But a nearly half-century-old Arizona Supreme Court ruling declared the candidacy requirement null, likely eviscerating any conceivable candidacy challenge brought on that basis.
In 1962, the Legislature passed a law requiring the attorney general to have been a practicing attorney for at least five years before taking office.
