Norfolk’s Commonwealth’s Attorney Ramin Fatehi won a party primary last month after an uncharacteristically competitive nomination process.
WHRO’s Barry Graham spoke to Fatehi about what he thinks about his primary race, his time in office so far and what’s to come.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Barry Graham: Usually these local constitutional offices are kind of low key affairs, not a lot of generated interest, but yours was one of the most closely watched races of election night. Why the sudden interest in this race?
Ramin Fatehi: I think it had to do with power and the shifting power dynamics in Norfolk politics. I've always been a political outsider here. I ran in 2021 over the opposition of the same group of both donors and elected officials who opposed me in 2025 and there really is no other logical explanation.
If you look every metric that matters, Norfolk was going in the right direction during my tenure. While I'm not responsible for the crime rate, the crime rate in Norfolk fell significantly: 42% for homicides, 40% for violent crime, 27% for property crime, even shoplifting – that was turned into a political cudgel – is down almost 20% this year and the jail population in Norfolk is half of what it was 10 years ago. So all of these are metrics of success.
Normally, when you see a strong challenger to a sitting elected official, there is some reason, some problem here. It was really about power and it was about whether the group in Norfolk that likes to operate from the shadows was going to continue to be able to call shots, or whether the people were going to be able to call shots through their votes.
B.G: You overperformed in precincts that many thought you would struggle in, including much of the east side of the city. You actually won Northside by five votes, as an example. Your message clearly resonated where some people thought it would not.
R.F: Well, there isn't a person in America who hasn't come into contact with the justice system, whether it's a speeding ticket, whether it's a loved one with substance use disorder, whether it was a loved one who's been a victim. And my message was a message that everybody deserves equal justice, rich people and poor people, Black people and white people, people with connections and people without. And what we've seen in the United States is the two-tiered system of justice thrown into stark relief, especially during the Trump administration, where people who were politically aligned with or personally connected to the Trump administration were getting breaks, and everybody else was getting the hammer.
This is a message that transcends race because it addresses everybody's lived experiences, which is if you know the right person, you've often gotten a break, and I've refused to go by that old system.
B.G: Tell me something that you feel like you learned during your first term in office, or as your first term is coming to a close, maybe something you've learned either personally or professionally.
R.F: I've been surprised at how much attention people pay to local prosecutors and to the work that we do. I've always been available and accessible, both to the public and to the press … For example, our press releases from my office. People can subscribe to a listserv, and we put out close to 250 press releases last year. The extent to which people stop me in Harris Teeter, or when I'm over shopping at one of the wholesale clubs in Military Circle, and say, ‘Hey, I read your press release. I'm really interested in that murder conviction or that drug court graduation.’
It was actually really heartening because because there's a group of political cynics who say nobody pays attention to anything, and what I've found is that people really do care, and people really have been interested in the information that I've put out so that was one of those moments where all of the political cynicism had to take a back seat.
B.G: Let's talk about your vision for your next four years in office. What would you like to see out of the Norfolk Commonwealth's Attorney office?
R.F: I'd like to see the city address the chronic underfunding of my office. We are smaller now in terms of our total head count than we were in 2006 and 2007 before the advent of digital evidence and my last lawyer and my last dollar come from city council.
And now that we have had a very tough and very expensive race where the people have spoken about the brand of justice that they they want, I would hope that I can have a conversation with my fellow elected officials where we can work together to address some of the larger systemic problems that we see in justice in Norfolk that I just do not reach because I am not there.
I'm also very excited about being able to bring additional initiatives to bear. I have been waiting for the last four years to work on second chances and expungements and sealing of records. The General Assembly passed a major reform of our expungement and sealing laws in 2020 that still hasn't taken effect. It was supposed to go into effect this year. Now it'll be next year, but I want to hold expungement fairs and expungement clinics around the city as that law comes into effect next year, so that people who have paid their debt can have the benefit of the second chances their legislators have offered them.
I would also like to remain a bulwark against the overreach of the Trump administration, whether that is for abortion rights, whether that has to do with victims who may be undocumented, whether it happens to be with the out groups that Trump is trying to hammer – I intend to continue to be a bulwark for our rights and our safety in Norfolk over federal overreach.
B.G: Do you think that that is in particular, one of the messages that really reached the voters?
R.F: Absolutely. We live in a city where we voted 70% for Kamala Harris, 70% for Biden, nearly 70% for Hillary. And what that means is that the Republican Party plays in the Democratic primary, and where the Republican Party is constantly trying to interfere with the work that we as Democrats do now.
I'm the Commonwealth's Attorney for all of Norfolk. I don't ask people what their political leanings are if they're victims or if they're the accused, but I fully expect at the policy level to see the federal government come in and try to move things. We were seeing it in cities around the country. I answer to nobody but the voters, and I consider being a progressive prosecutor in the tough times to be the times when it's really important. It's not in the easy times, it's in the tough times. And that's what I stand ready to do.
B.G: Where does the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s office fall into the broader picture of civic responsibility and government function? For example, there's obviously a natural connection between your office in the courts; your office and public safety. But let's take it to a broader look here, where does your office fall in connection with public education, with social services, with housing? How does it fit into that cog of that big wheel of civic responsibility and government function?
R.F: If we were doctors, we prosecutors would be the emergency room doctors. We are the ones who are there as somebody is having a heart attack or somebody has a gunshot wound and we are dealing with the immediate symptoms and trying to save the person. All of those other components, whether it's education, whether it's health, whether it is the social safety net, those are your primary care doctors telling you to get more exercise, to watch your diet, to be careful of your blood pressure and your blood sugar.
We, as elected prosecutors, are under the Virginia constitutional system. We're complete lone wolves. We have no supervisors. We don't answer to the Attorney General. We don't answer to the governor. We answer only to our voters. My role, and one of the reasons that I think that people either love me or hate me, is because I am very clear about pointing to the fact that the emergency room doctor aspect of it, that the cases that come into my courthouse are the symptoms of underlying problems, whether it is the disappearance of good blue collar jobs, whether it is educational inequality or health inequality, whether it's on housing status, mental illness, the proliferation of gun ownership — all of those things are things that are upstream. And that puts the focus on people like city councilors and the mayor, it puts focus on state legislators and on federal legislators. And what I tell people is my ability to advocate is a public safety ability. What I can say, for example, when you cut Head Start, you're not just hurting poor children, you are creating the climate for increased criminal activity in five to 10 years. So if you have a problem with giving those people's children food, maybe you will be willing to give those people's children food so that you have less crime down the line. I can be an advocate, and should be an advocate, for the long-term policies that actually reduce crime instead of relying on slogans and sound bites that sound great like, ‘OK, I'll lock everybody up and we'll be safer.’ Doesn't work that way.
The place that I fit in the bigger picture is to educate our voters and to point out what really promotes public safety and what damages public safety. And in a world where Donald Trump is cutting everything from early childhood education to violence interrupters, this is vitally important. People need to know.
B.G: How much of your time is spent making the case that you just talked about to legislators, to city council members that, ‘Look, this is my office. It's not merely prosecution that I'm responsible for, but I also need to make the case to you that you have to address these issues’?
R.F: I spend a great deal of time doing it. We have a progressive prosecutors organization in Virginia: Virginia Progressive Prosecutors for Justice, and I am the most active testifier at the General Assembly, whether it's on criminal law and procedure or things like reducing mandatory court costs, which are non-waivable and not means tested. I speak about it with fellow elected officials regularly, both at the state and local level. I try to be both respectful and modest about about proposing solutions. What I say is, you know, if the case comes to me and the evidence is good, and especially if it's a violent crime, we prosecute. That's what we do. But if we actually want to shut off the pipeline before those cases get to me, then we need some solution.
What I find is when non-prosecutors try to tell me how to do my job, they are often missing basic information about how my job works. And while they may be well-intentioned, they tend to be wrong. And so when I say we need more blue-collar jobs, or we need better and more equitable education, I am respectful of the specialists in education or the specialists in workforce development, to tell them how to legislate or what policies to adopt, but to recognize what the science shows are the broad goals, and then to be available as an ally in those broad goals.
B.G: What would you like to say to not only to the voters, but to all the citizens of Norfolk?
R.F: Public safety and civil rights are my calling. The numbers that we have seen drop in Norfolk, both in terms of crime and the jail numbers, show that the old false choice between having your rights respected and being safe is false, and we can see that in Norfolk.
It has always been my goal that whether you're rich or poor, Black or white, Republican or Democrat, connected or not, we're all equals. We are all equal citizens, and I will continue to devote my days and my nights and my weekends to making sure that we are both safe and that we are all treated as brothers and sisters.
