Former Assistant District Attorney in Yamhill and Marion County Will Lathrop is running for Oregon Attorney General in 2024. Lathrop is a 6th generation Oregonian, raised on a cattle ranch in Wallowa County. He graduated from Willamette University Law School and joined the Oregon Bar in 2004. He began his legal career as a prosecutor working for Yamhill D.A. Brad Berry. He then worked prosecuting pedophiles in Marion County. In 2013 he moved to Washington D.C. to train prosecutors in best practices.

In 2014 he joined International Justice Mission to build justice systems in third world countries. His first assignment was Uganda -- a country run by warlords. Lathrop led a team of 25 to finalize the land title system so that warlords could no longer steal the property of the defenseless. His team went to Ghana in 2018 to combat human trafficking. The Volta River was dammed in 1965 to form a huge artificial lake (about the size of Yellowstone National Park) used for fish farming. Child slave labor involves as many as 40,000. Kids as young as 4 are sold into slavery there for fish farming. Lathrop got 60 convictions of warlords leading to the freedom of near 6000 kids.

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

Work in Africa is always a crisis situation. When you take it on you either sink or swim as a leader. Many wash out their first year. Lathrop gained confidence in his ability to face difficult challenges.

When Lathrop came back to Oregon he didn’t recognize the state he had grown up in. He saw another crisis. Quite simply Lathrop wants to fix Oregon. Oregon’s Attorney General is the state’s Top Cop. Currently 1200 work in Oregon’s Department of Justice but only 15 are criminal law attorneys. Lathrop sees Oregon at a threshold. The A.G’s office can change many bad policies or let them continue. Oregon had out migration in 2022 as citizens fled a state where crime goes unpunished, where election fraud is tolerated and where bureaucrats determine laws.


--Staff Reports

Post Date: 1950-05-06 05:43:12

Last Update: 2023-06-01 17:29:13