The campaign for District Attorney is off to a rollicking start, with incumbent Larry Krasner and challenger Pat Dugan, longtime municipal court judge, going at it in multiple forums already. It’s gotten snippy, but there have also been moments of high-mindedness. As someone who paid close attention to the races for DA in 2017 and 2021, this one feels more like what a campaign should be: An argument. An exercise in the art of public persuasion. In other words: A job interview — with you in the role of employer.

Krasner has declined our invitation to participate in next week’s Ultimate Job Interview (UJI), hosted by 6abc and The Citizen, the first candidate for public office to do so since we launched the series in 2023. To refresh your memory: UJI convenes candidates to be interviewed by a panel of those who actually hire for a living and / or have some expertise in the office being sought; while we’re at it, we invite audience members to pepper its wannabe public servants with questions that inspect their fitness for office.

Next week, former City Solicitor and Ballard Spahr law firm Chairman Marcel Pratt and former Montgomery County Assistant District Attorney Alexandria MacMaster will join a 6abc moderator in doing the questioning. Dugan has committed to be there, and we’re holding out an invitation for next week — or anytime of his choosing — to the DA in case he changes his mind and sees fit to face you, his employer, in this innovative format.

The two men have disagreed on a lot thus far, and there’s a lot to litigate between now and primary election day on May 20. There’s Krasner’s record, which we’ll get to. There’s the DA’s allegation that the presence of Dugan’s police officer wife in the courtroom during the judge’s 2013 not-guilty ruling in the case of a cop videotaped punching a woman during a Puerto Rican Day Parade altercation was a conflict of interest (begging the question of whether the conflict existed at home, or just in the courtroom; if also at home, is it Krasner’s position that no judge can have a relationship with law enforcement personnel? Would that have meant his wife, a judge at the time of his election, should have stepped down?). There’s the question of who the actual reformer is, given that diversions have actually gone down under Krasner, as I’ve outlined. There’s the efficacy of Dugan’s proposed reforms, like assigning ADAs to neighborhoods and hiring local law school grads.

But for now, let’s see if we can zero in on the philosophical underpinning of Krasner’s whole campaign — that he, and only he, stands between you and the oncoming autocracy of President Donald Trump. Last month, Krasner unveiled a new meaning for his office’s DA acronym — “Democracy Advocate” — and spent nearly the last 10 minutes of his campaign announcement speech attacking Trump, a “twice-endorsed Klan president” for his “little plan to turn a democracy into a monarchy” along with his “Apartheid-raised friends.”

“This election,” Krasner posited, is “a whole lot bigger than what happens in Philadelphia.”

“I categorically denounce Donald Trump and his policies. But wait a minute. We’re not running against Donald Trump. We’re running against each other.” — Pat Dugan, DA candidate

Krasner’s anti-Trump language might feel good, but is it smart? Some are fretting that Krasner’s rhetoric is essentially an unwelcome dare. A group of nonprofit and civic leaders have been Zooming every week, strategizing about how to handle the Trumpian arm looking to claw back federal subsidies already earmarked for blue cities. “A lot of us are, like, Will you shut up?” one told me. “I mean, why would you poke the bear?”

Even assuming the best of intentions on Krasner’s part, the question remains. Can a local DA’s race essentially be nationalized? Does a local DA have any impact on national affairs, or is this just campaign spin? Is Krasner playing to the cheap seats by diverting questions about his record into a campaign against Trump?

Reform or … just not prosecuting?

In their recent forums, Dugan wasn’t having any of it. Unlike past Krasner opponents, Dugan strikes an imposing presence, and The Inquirer’s Anna Orso ably captured what happened when Krasner tried to tie Democrat Dugan to Trump:

In the most heated moment of the night, Krasner told Dugan he should condemn Trump, “so all the people in the Northeast can see it.” (Northeast Philadelphia, where Dugan hails from, has the largest concentration of Trump voters in the overwhelmingly Democratic city.)

The crowd gasped. Dugan stood up from his chair.

“Are you kidding? Do you think I’m a Trumper?” he said. “I categorically denounce Donald Trump and his policies. The guy’s a nut. I mean, come on. But wait a minute. We’re not running against Donald Trump. We’re running against each other.”

A moderator reminded the audience that this is a primary and that both candidates are Democrats.

Clearly, Dugan — an Iraq war vet — won’t easily be bullied. Politically, perhaps it makes sense for Krasner to try and make the election about Trump rather than his own record. Can that work?

Well, back in the city’s 2003 mayor’s race, Democrats successfully modeled the playbook Krasner may be borrowing from. When an FBI listening device was found in Mayor John Street’s office during his reelection campaign it came at a time when his opponent, moderate Republican Sam Katz, was ahead in the polls. Game over, right? Well, the Dems, led by Bob Brady and others, turned the election into a referendum on President George W. Bush and his Attorney General John Ashcroft, who was more than chipping away at civil liberties in the aftermath of 9/11. A Republican mayor could turn Philly, and thus the Commonwealth, red, the argument went. Street surged to victory and Brady later cheekily admitted, “We were just spinning the shit.”

Is Krasner spinning the shit today? There is no question that his convictions on Trump are fervently held. In fact, I agree with most of them. And perhaps his moral outrage could provide a template for how national dems ought to be responding. But what does that have to do with keeping you safe?

“While you’re right that state attorneys general typically have more direct authority to challenge federal policies in court, local prosecutors can push back through their prosecutorial priorities and how they engage in public discourse about the rule of law — and LK certainly does that!” Temple Law professor Marian Braccia wrote to me in an email; she’d been assistant chief of charging under Krasner and his predecessor, and is generally supportive of the DA. “However, in addition to their prosecutorial decision-making, I think several notable examples exist of local prosecutors who joined lawsuits or filed amicus briefs in cases challenging federal policies they viewed as threats to civil rights or public safety.”

You’d think that Krasner would be among them, no? Well, not always. Last month, a coalition of 44 DAs and mayors filed an amicus brief seeking a temporary restraining order against Trump’s reductions in National Institutes of Health funding for medical research. San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu was one of the more outspoken signatories. Notably absent from the brief? Krasner.

According to Penn Law Professor Paul H. Robinson and Penn Law student Jeffrey Seaman, that’s not surprising. Together, they wrote Decriminalizing Condemnable Conduct: A Miscalculation of Societal Costs and Benefits, one of the best deep dives into the now-flailing progressive prosecutor movement. In painstaking detail, they lay out many of Krasner’s missteps:

With his overall goal being keeping offenders out of prison, Krasner chose to essentially decriminalize most felony gun possessions … The extent of this policy was striking: ‘The Krasner office has withdrawn or dismissed 65 percent of gun charges this year [2021], up from 17 percent in 2015.’ After Krasner enacted these policies, guns flooded Philadelphia, and the number of arrests for gun crimes in Philadelphia tripled, but, predictably, the arrests failed to deter as the prosecution rate dropped by 85 percent.

(And don’t get them started on Virginia’s progressive prosecutor Buta Biberaj, who released a man charged with domestic abuse on a small, unsecured bond — just before he went home and murdered his victim.)

“The reason Krasner is running on opposing Trump is because he can’t run on his record,” Robinson and Seaman emailed me this week. “As a DA, Krasner is essentially irrelevant in opposing Trump — the most he can do is small harassing lawsuits. The question isn’t whether Philadelphia’s next DA will oppose Trump, but whether he will oppose crime — something Krasner has given voters reason to doubt. Philadelphians concerned about Trump slashing vital government services should also be worried about how Krasner gutted the DA’s office of its veteran staff and abdicated his responsibility to prosecute crime.”

To be fair, Krasner is right when he highlights the inroads made in reducing crime, especially last year’s historic drop in murder (which is continuing this year). But — as would be held up to inspection if Krasner had the guts to subject himself to the unique Ultimate Job Interview process — the fairest way to gauge his job performance is not to compare this year versus the last two or three or five, but rather to take in the full scope of his eight year tenure compared to his predecessor. By that count, the data doesn’t look good for Krasner.

Here are the facts, according to the DAs own data dashboard. The total number of violent incidents reported have remained virtually steady since 2012, averaging around 40,000 per year. The number of arrests and charges, however, have drastically decreased, by 39 and 35 percent, respectively:

• Drug offenses? Down 74 percent in arrests and 74 percent in charges.
• Property charges? Down 37 percent in arrests and 58 percent in charges.
• Cases referred to diversion programs, the raison d’être of the criminal justice reformer? An average of 14 percent in DA Seth Williams’ last four years, and only 4.5 percent in Krasner’s second term.
• Number of cases withdrawn or dismissed? Under Williams, an average of 30 percent between 2014 and 2017; Krasner, a whopping 59 percent the last four years.

As Robinson and Seaman conclude in their research, Krasner isn’t a reformer so much as a non-prosecutor.

Krasner’s record is what matters

There are all sorts of discussions around causation we can get into here — and Krasner specializes in them, often pointing to poverty and the opioid epidemic as mitigating factors, neglecting to acknowledge that such conditions existed under his predecessor, too. And there’s a debate to be had, say, on the wisdom of bringing drug charges. Certainly, the war on drugs has been a dismal failure. (Though Rafael Mangual, in his book Criminal (In)Justice: What the Push for Decarceration and Depolicing Gets Wrong and Who It Hurts Most makes the case that most drug convictions are actually plea deals that often end up tossing out seriously violent offenses.)

But before going down any of those rabbit holes, let’s just concede that, while there are some green shoots of encouragement like the precipitous drop in murders and shootings, overall the data on the DA’s own website doesn’t yet add up to a story of public safety on the rebound.

Not when signs of societal trauma still abound around us, from toothpaste under lock and key at your local Walgreens to all those needlessly shattered families, like the loved ones of the guy in Brewerytown who took his dog for a walk and was shot to death in broad daylight by an asshole who’d twice walked out of court, despite a history of robbery, carjacking and even assault while in custody. Or the parents of 7-year-old Zamar Jones, who was shot in the head as he played with a toy on his family’s porch, killed by a longtime violent perp who Krasner had just gifted with a plea deal of 3 to 9 months on a felony gun charge. Or the West Philly neighbors of Mike Poeng, the store owner shot while washing his car by an offender with an AK-47. Under Krasner, the assailant received a slap-on-the-wrist three-and-one-half year plea deal; it took the Feds to swoop in and ultimately sentence the shooter to 14 years in federal prison. Meantime, Poeng is forever in a wheelchair, his store is shuttered, and he couldn’t move out of Philly fast enough. Most recently, there’s the case of defense attorney Leonard Hill, who shot someone, allegedly tried to cover it up, and received a mind-boggling pass from Krasner.

Anecdotal evidence? Of course. But how many anecdotes does it take for you to start to feel unsafe? On NFL Sundays, the quarterback gets the praise upon winning and the blame when things go awry. Well, the two quarterbacks of our City’s public safety strategy for most of the past eight years have been Krasner and former Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw. Outlaw, who was in over her head, has moved on, and Commissioner Kevin Bethel — a terrific mayoral hire — is demonstrating the difference a leader can make. But can the same be said of Krasner?

That’s what ought to be litigated, not Trump, not a 12-year-old case of Dugan’s (if you have to dig that far back, you’re looking desperate), and not social problems a DA is in no position to substantively address. (At times in his announcement speech, Krasner sounded like he was running for City Council.)

“Philadelphians concerned about Trump slashing vital government services should also be worried about how Krasner gutted the DA’s office of its veteran staff and abdicated his responsibility to prosecute crime.” — Paul H. Robinson and Jeffrey Seaman, University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School

This DA campaign will be a success if it holds up to inspection just what it means to be a progressive prosecutor these days. We’ve been at the forefront of a vast national experiment; how’d we do? Does the data bear out what Jill Leovy’s 2015 book Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America and, of all people, Kamala Harris’ 2010 Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor’s Plan to Make Us Safer both argue: that you can temper public safety with mercy — or not?

I hate to say told ya so, but I wrote this in 2018, shortly after Krasner was first elected,

I’ve written before that many of Krasner’s reforms — as with those of many of the other Soros DAs — are long overdue. Cash bail does criminalize poverty; mass incarceration, thanks to an ill-conceived war on drugs, has decimated communities of color; the death penalty is disproportionately applied based on race and class. All true. But one has to wonder if Krasner — even more than the other Soros-funded reformers — has over-corrected, and laid the groundwork for an existential assault on law enforcement from within that, by extension, could amount to a jihad on public safety itself.

That piece, in Krasner’s first year, diagnosed what was already apparent: Krasner’s inexperience as a manager, his unwillingness to work with others, and his tone deafness (like when he showed up for his first meeting with the then-Council president with a documentary camera crew in tow) — all of it jeopardized even then the most righteous aspects of his cause. You know what happened next. His “best and brightest” ADA recruits came and promptly fled in droves, fed up with the mismanagement and ideology. They wanted to be reformers, yes, but most didn’t sign up to be refuseniks when it came to, say, actually prosecuting gun crimes, as one of them wrote for The Citizen.

I’ve met Larry Krasner only once, when I moderated a debate he took part in. I found him to be super smart and charming. But the first alarm bell went off on election night in 2017, when his supporters chanted “Fuck the police!” and, rather than follow John McCain’s statesman-like example by condemning such broad brush bigotry, Krasner opted to defend their First Amendment rights.

It’s eight years later and Krasner was reelected in a landslide by roughly 15 percent of the population in 2021. This time around, shouldn’t his record be the issue? Under Krasner, violent crime and disorder spiked to historic proportions. Yes, as in other cities, it’s thankfully coming back down, due to some whole of government interventions like Group Violence Interruption that all-carrot and no stick Krasner historically opposed. Yes, Krasner has lately seemed to moderate, especially after Cherelle Parker won the mayoralty on a tough on crime platform. He’s working more closely with the police and, as reelection nears, he’s announced a new retail theft policy after rescinding the much-maligned one that relegated shoplifting offenses under $500 to parking ticket-like summary offense status. (Fox 29 reports that 57 percent of all retail theft charges last year were downgraded by Krasner.)

But more troubling is that, over his eight years, Krasner has excelled at shifting blame. The pandemic was at fault. The police weren’t doing their job. Ditto then-Attorney General Josh Shapiro. Now, your choice is somehow him … or Donald Trump?

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