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Mark Herring

American lawyer and politician

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 11, 2026
Entity authorityQ2045787
Source-derived summary

Mark Rankin Herring (born September 25, 1961) is an American politician and lawyer who served as the 47th attorney general of Virginia from 2014 to 2022. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served in the Senate of Virginia for the 33rd district, made up of parts of Fairfax and Loudoun counties, from 2006 to 2014. In 2021, Herring lost his bid for a third term as Attorney General to Republican state delegate Jason Miyares.

Herring was the first Democratic Attorney General of Virginia since 1994.

Early life and education

Herring was born in Johnson City, Tennessee, and moved to Leesburg, Virginia at the age of 12. Raised by Jane Rankin Herring, a single mother, he graduated from Loudoun Valley High School in 1979 and worked in construction and many other jobs to pay for college. He eventually obtained a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in foreign affairs and economics at the University of Virginia. He also obtained a Master of Arts in foreign affairs from UVA. He later obtained a J.D. from the University of Richmond School of Law.

Early career

He served in elected office on the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors from 2000 to 2003, and was the town attorney for Lovettsville, Virginia, from 1992 to 1999.

Herring was elected to the Senate of Virginia in a special election triggered by Republican Bill Mims' appointment as chief deputy attorney general of Virginia.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Mark Herring” is american lawyer and politician. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Mark, Herring and American, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1961, 2014, 2022, 2006—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1961-09-25. For this dossier, Mark, Herring and American is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american lawyer and politician” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2045787. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1961, 2014, 2022 and 2006.

Critical limits

A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Mark Herring”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Mark Herring primary sources, Mark Herring archive and Mark research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Mark Herring”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Mark Herring” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.