Dave Aronberg won’t seek a fourth term as Palm Beach County’s top prosecutor

Three-time elected Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg will not be seeking a fourth term, he announced.

Aronberg, also a former state Senator, is one of the state’s most prominent Democrats and hugely popular in the 15th Judicial Circuit that covers Palm Beach County. Elected unopposed in 2016 and 2020, Aronberg lately has been making national TV appearances on CNN and MSNBC.

So far, defense lawyer Gregg Lerman is the only announced candidate for Palm Beach County State Attorney in the 2024 election cycle.

“I love this job and am grateful for the opportunity to serve my community as State Attorney since my first election in 2012,” he said, according to a prepared statement. “Nothing is forever, and this position is not meant to be a lifetime career.”

He said he’s not ready to announce his next move beyond January 2025, when the next State Attorney is sworn in. Nor is he ready to name who he will endorse to succeed him in the role.

Aronberg, who leads a team of 120 prosecutors, has been at the forefront of efforts to clean up the drug-treatment scams that plagued the area in the wake of the opioid crisis. The Sober Homes Task Force he set up netted 115 arrests for patient brokering and insurance fraud. He also convinced the Legislature to adopt laws to stop the drug addiction treatment fraud.

Aronberg graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Law School with honors. He started his career working closely with Commissioner Bill Nelson, who later became a U.S. Senator, to investigate insurance companies who refused to honor World War II-era insurance policies sold to Holocaust victims. Aronberg investigated the laundering of terrorist assets during his tenure as Special Assistant to the Secretary of the U.S. Treasury Department under two presidential administrations, according to his official biography.

He became the youngest member elected to the State Senate in 2002, where he served until 2010.

In 2010, Aronberg returned to the Florida Attorney General’s Office as a Special Prosecutor for prescription drug trafficking. In his role as the Attorney General’s “Drug Czar,” Aronberg led an anti-pill mill initiative that put a stop to the policies that made the state a destination for so-called “doctor shopping.”