Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring made it official Wednesday: He is running for a third term.

“We’ve worked together to promote justice, equality, and opportunity for all Virginias, to expand and secure the civil rights of our fellow Virginians,” Herring said in a statement announcing his run. “The progress we’ve made has been historic, but the work isn’t done. And I’m not the kind of person to talk away unless the job is finished.”

Herring faces a challenge for the Democratic nomination from Norfolk Del. Jay Jones. Henrico Commonwealth’s Attorney Shannon Taylor announced earlier this month she would not run for the position.

Two Republicans are in the race: Virginia Beach Del. Jason Miyares and Chuck Smith, a Virginia Beach lawyer who sought the GOP nomination for Attorney General in 2017 but did not qualify for the ballot.

In a campaign video, Herring said he would fight against policies that “fuel racism, hate and violence.”

“That means dismantling systemic racism, expanding opportunity, and holding law enforcement accountable to the communities they serve,” he said.

Herring had once considered running for governor in the 2021 competition. But, in September, he told other Democrats he would instead seek a third term as AG instead.

Herring’s announcement comes nearly two years after scandal ensnared all three of Virginia’s statewide elected leaders in early 2019. Herring called for Gov. Ralph Northam to resign after a racist photo in the governor’s medical school yearbook surfaced showing one man in blackface, another in a KKK robe. But Herring then apologized for having worn blackface himself as a college student in 1980. Herring has said he told Northam to resign because the governor initially made contradictory statements about whether he was in the photo.

Herring was first elected narrowly in 2013 by a margin of only 165 votes but won comfortably four years later. Shortly after he first took office, Herring decided he would not defend the state’s ban on same-sex marriage and instead sided with the plaintiffs in a case challenging the ban.

Since 2017, he has fought a series of lawsuits against the Trump administration on issues like health care and immigration. He also led an effort to eliminate Virginia’s backlog of untested rape kits and called for marijuana legalization, well before Gov. Ralph Northam threw his support behind the policy this year.

During the pandemic, he has defended Northam’s coronavirus restrictions against court challenges, recently blocking a gun show from drawing thousands to the Dulles Expo Center. And he argued for the state’s right to take down a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in Richmond.

The AG won a series of endorsements, including from Northern Virginia congressman Don Beyer and state Sen. Jennifer Boysko (D-Fairfax).