In early November, D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine stood before a bank of microphones and announced a new lawsuit against the Washington Commanders, team owner Dan Snyder, and the NFL. In it, he claimed the team had lied to D.C. residents about workplace conditions and a promised investigation into allegations of sexual harassment, effectively misleading consumers in the city.

The lawsuit was another in a long line of legal actions against high-profile companies and individuals during his two terms in office; Racine has sued Amazon, Google, Facebook, Monsanto, ExxonMobil, Marriott, food delivery company GrubHub, the white nationalist group the Proud Boys, a ghost-gun manufacturer, local D.C. agencies, and housing providers and property owners, to name a few. In the process, Racine’s office says that since 2015 it has brought in some $125 million in penalties and payments from many of those companies.

As he closes out his eight years as the city’s first elected attorney general, Racine says the string of lawsuits and victories represent some of the greatest advances his office has made since he took over. “The heart and soul of an office in terms of its work for its residents is to protect consumers,” he said in a late-December interview with DCist/WAMU, only days before he again becomes a private citizen.

That took work, he says. When Racine, now 60, was sworn-in in 2015, he came into an office that’s in very different shape than it is now. From the time D.C. gained home rule in the mid-1970s, the city’s attorney general was appointed by the mayor. That changed in 2010, when D.C. residents approved a ballot measure that made the position elected and independent. After a brief attempt by the D.C. Council to delay the first election due to disputes over the extent of the new office’s authority, Racine, already an accomplished private-sector lawyer, was ultimately elected in 2014.

Racine says he quickly took to building a proper consumer protection office, which included a six-fold increase in the number of attorneys working on those cases, as well as pushing those attorneys to be creative with the city’s consumer protection laws.

“We go after big companies when they hurt D.C. residents, we go after small companies when they hurt D.C. residents. We go after slimy individuals when they do slimy things. And we do it all to allow to make clear to these businesses that when it comes to D.C. law, there’s a new sheriff in town. And guess what? You’ve got to actually start following the law,” he said.

Racine told DCist/WAMU that he quickly became concerned about housing and development in the city, especially as D.C. was seeing rapid population growth and gentrification — some of which was leading to the displacement of Black residents. His office quickly filed suit against a Virginia-based housing flipper, and later took on Sanford Capital, a private property owner, for hundreds of housing code violations at buildings in low-income neighborhoods.

“We sent a message that the game of displacing people of color is no longer going to go unnoticed, that the law is going to be utilized to stop it,” he said.

Sanford Capital was eventually driven out of D.C., and one of its properties in Southeast is being turned into an all-affordable units residential building. More recently, Racine’s office scored a landmark victory against Daro, a large property management firm, over allegations that it refused to rent to tenants with housing vouchers.

But it was in late-2021 that his office took an even more significant step, announcing that it would no longer advocate on behalf of city agencies on zoning cases.

“At some point, we realized that we can’t sue our way out of this problem, that we needed to go deeper and understand where else the source of inequity and displacement stemmed from,” he said. “And what we saw was there was procedural unfairness at the basic level of zoning, and we didn’t want to have any part in that. Yes, it causes friction in government, and we’re happy to provide that friction.”

Racine says many of those efforts were enabled by his office’s newfound independence from the mayor. “Had I not been independent, there would not be disagreement on policies. The mayor’s lawyer would do exactly what the mayor asked him or her to do,” he said.

That independence, though, did create some tension with Bowser. When he spearheaded a violence interruption initiative out of the attorney general’s office, some worried it would complicate coordination between city agencies looking to fight gun violence. (There are separate violence interruption efforts run out of the D.C. Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement.) Racine rejects that argument, saying that it is Bowser who has not wanted to collaborate with him. And earlier this year, Bowser accused Racine of not doing enough to prosecute juvenile offenders engaged in violent crime; Racine admonished here for “finger pointing.”

There were also growing rumors over the years that Racine was creating his own block of support on the council — four current lawmakers at one point worked for him — and was considering challenging Bowser. In his interview with DCist/WAMU, Racine says that he did “seriously consider” taking on Bowser during his two terms.

“I got a bird’s eye view of how D.C. government works,” he said. “I saw a lot of bottom-feeder agencies, and I saw a complete lack of leadership around supporting vulnerable people.”

Ultimately, though, Racine says he opted against running during his first term because he did not want the office of attorney general to be seen as a launching pad for campaigns for higher office. And during his second term, he says his concerns shifted to being present for his two young sons, now aged seven and 20 months. (During this year’s Democratic primary, Racine endorsed At-Large Councilmember Robert White in his ultimately unsuccessful run against Bowser.) Still, he minces no words about what he thinks would have happened had he challenged Bowser.

“I have every confidence that we would have won in every ward because people actually know the job that we do and they know who we’re fighting for because we don’t leave any ambiguity there,” he said. “And they also know that we run an honorable office that has the most effective professionals in government.”

More recently, Racine endorsed Councilmember Elissa Silverman (I-At Large) in her bid for re-election; she lost to Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie (D-Ward 5), who attempted to run for attorney general before being knocked off the ballot. Racine says he is still “quite upset” about the outcome of that race, largely because of an initial ruling from the Office of Campaign Finance finding that Silverman had improperly used public campaign funds earlier this year. That ruling was overturned after the election.

“What happened… was reckless at best, a tragedy,” said Racine of the ruling against Silverman, which came down just as early voting had started. “It’s outrageous. She lost because of that.”

Moving forward, Racine says he has plans for future work, but isn’t yet able to disclose them. He does plan on remaining engaged in D.C. politics, though, and says he hopes to see more change in elected offices. “I urge D.C. residents to take command of their city. If you’re concerned about displacement, hold people accountable,” he said.

Racine says he’s comfortable with his legacy and the state of the office he leaves behind, and the job that his successor Brian Schwalb will do. “If the office of attorney general were a car, on Jan. 2 at noon Brian is going to be handed the keys to an extremely well-built vehicle,” he said.