Primary Election Day looms May 20, and Larry Krasner has yet to announce his candidacy for a third term as your district attorney. There has been all sorts of speculation that he won’t run, but betting money here says he will, despite the challenges in his way. And, for a guy who was reelected in a 40 some-odd percent landslide four years ago (34 percent in the Democratic primary), there are some challenges.

Nationwide, the progressive prosecutor movement seems to have moved on from its moment. From Los Angeles to San Francisco to Pittsburgh, those who are loath to mix reform with accountability have been roundly rejected by voters. The progressive prosecutors, led by Krasner, overreached; as I’ve written, there’s merit to the progressive critique. The probation and parole system is a mess; cash bail does criminalize poverty; mass incarceration breeds recidivism.

But reforming a flawed system wasn’t enough; when shoplifting under $500 becomes a summary offense, when diversion programs get gutted, when gun crimes seem to be met with lax charges, when retail theft increases year over year, a signal is sent: Here reigns disorder. And that’s when voters tend to say enough is enough.

“A judge and a DA should do the same thing: You help a good person who’s having a bad day and winds up in court, but those people who are going around having bad days on purpose? They need to be held accountable.” — Pat Dugan

Into this context comes Judge Patrick Dugan, 64, with the politically forceful support of Building Trades manager Ryan Boyer and the local labor movement. Dugan recently stepped down from the Municipal Court bench to challenge Krasner because, as he tells it, he was tired of seeing untrained prosecutors in his courtroom subvert justice and endanger Philadelphians. He is a reluctant candidate — he beseeched other, more politically prominent names to get off the sidelines — but he’s not shy when it comes to public service. I’ve known Pat Dugan for a quarter century, and a more passionate Philly citizen doesn’t come to mind. He’s a blue collar guy who bleeds Eagles green and red, white and blue. On the bench, he has balanced justice with mercy, accountability with reform.

Is Krasner in trouble, if he runs? Only if character still matters in politics, because Dugan’s throwback notions of service and honor and duty just might resonate in these cynical and calculating times.

A reformer who believes in accountability

In 2004, I published a brilliant essay of Dugan’s in the pages of Philadelphia magazine. He’d been a paratrooper in the 80s, and, at 43, he got up from his sofa and reenlisted in the army after 9/11. Soon, in the aftermath of the Iraq war, he was schooling Iraqis in the everyday building blocks of nascent democracy, with all its trappings:

I spent most of my time working with the Provincial Council of Nineveh Province as it elected a new governor. A dangerous job, yet we had to find a non-corrupt leader. To see the power of voting and its true meaning to man is quite humbling. We take it for granted — in Philly a good turnout is 20 percent, but if you look at history, and here I’m living in history, a very small percentage of humans have ever had the opportunity to pick their leaders.

He went on to champion and befriend the ultimate election winner:

For two days, the process went on, candidate after candidate. One stuck out above the rest. There was a buzz after he spoke. He came from a respected family / tribe, was a university professor who had become educated without bowing to the Baath Party … He was well-spoken and seemed to be tough, yet thoughtful. This guy was a godsend, except for his first name. It was Osama.

In that long-ago piece, you could feel Dugan’s respect for Dr. Osama Youseff Kashmoulah, a citizen who, owing to love of country, won a fledgling election by bravely thrusting himself into Teddy R’s arena. When I caught up with Dugan earlier this week, I wondered if his run for DA has him thinking of that Osama these days. He drew a painful breath.

“I would tell Osama Kashmoulah, ‘You are the founding father of the new Iraq. You’re like George Washington,’” Dugan said. “I wear a memorial bracelet since I came home, and there’s two names on it. One is Mark Patrick Phelan, a soldier from Green Lane, Pennsylvania, who was killed while we were in Iraq. And the other is Osama Kashmoulah, who was assassinated while I was over there. He reminded me of Ed Rendell — he had this, ‘Let’s just get it done’ attitude, without caring who gets credit. That, and he loved the Philly snacks we’d get. Tastykakes. When I came home, I said I wanted to do three things — watch the Eagles, have a cheesesteak, Wiz without, and help get out the vote — because of him. Osama Kashmoulah was a remarkable man.”

When I reached Dugan, he was taking a break from dialing for dollars. He’s raised in excess of $300,000 and reports that CEOs of companies and heads of major institutions are reaching out, asking how they can help — because their workers and customers still don’t feel safe. Yes, the murder rate is down, 34 percent last year and 25 percent thus far in 2025 — but disorder still abounds. When, most recently, attorney Leonard Hill shoots someone and essentially gets a pass, when retail theft is on the rise, when the DA’s office is an impediment to collaborative efforts like evidence-based GVI (Gun Violence Initiative) strategies … is there any wonder why statistics alone don’t make Philadelphians feel safer?

Boyer didn’t know Dugan until the former judge reached out through other labor supporters, but he got quickly on board when he heard Dugan argue that part of the DA’s job is to help small businesses by making it safe for commerce to take place. When Dugan announced his candidacy, it was Boyer — whose support was crucial to Mayor Parker’s 2023 election — saying that the mayor needs a partner like Dugan.

“Time and time again, people talk to me about being in Wawa and watching people just take stuff from behind the counter with no accountability,” Dugan told me. “You see someone walk in and take a carton of cigarettes and walk out while you’re standing in line to pay for your hoagie. That makes it harder for Wawas, Rite Aids and CVS to do business. Mom-and-pop shops cannot afford to lose 50 bucks a day, let alone $499 per incident.”

To be clear, Krasner formed a task force last year amid rising retail theft rates and rescinded the policy that led shoplifters to play a particularly perverse game of the The Price Is Right — steal as close to $500 without going over and you too can be charged with a mere summary offense. But the message had been sent — and remains received — by shoplifters, shopkeepers and police alike: It’s open season.

But here’s what makes Dugan different from past challengers to Krasner: He’s no Dirty Harry, challenging bad guys to make his day. Krasner, as I’ve written before, is actually not a reformer — he’s really just a non-prosecutor. His office’s own data attests to the distinction. Under Krasner, the percentage of gun cases withdrawn or dismissed has ballooned to nearly 50 percent the last six years — up 67 percent over his predecessor.

“I do understand that the number of murders are down, but over the last 7 years, the actual number is close to 3,000 folks murdered on the streets of Philadelphia, with close to 10,000 people who’ve been wounded.” — Pat Dugan

Moreover, Krasner has dismantled reformist tools like diversion programs that are proven to help offenders get back on their feet. Diversion allows low-level defendants to avoid criminal charges if they follow a prescribed program set out by a prosecutor or judge, diverting them from the criminal justice system. Conditions can include classes, community service, drug treatment, mental health counseling and restitution. Upon the successful completion of a diversion program, a defendant is rewarded with a clean record.

I’ve written before about how Krasner, despite his public support for diversion, has decimated successful programs like Project Dawn Court, which connects nonviolent repeat prostitution offenders with therapeutic and reentry services, and the Accelerated Misdemeanor Program — AMP — under which nonviolent first time offenders perform community service or enter into treatment in lieu of entering a plea; upon completion, their records are expunged. Under Krasner, though, less than 6 percent of cases were diverted the last four years, compared to 17 percent under the previous DA. Diversion requires a carrot and stick approach to law enforcement, and Krasner doesn’t believe in the stick.

Dugan, on the other hand, is a reformer, but one who believes in accountability, too. “I can actually look at people and tell them that I’m more of a reformer than Larry Krasner, because I’ve done it,” he says, citing his work on Veterans Court, Dawn’s Court and AMP, among others. “I’m also proud of all the programs we’ve had that are holistic, wraparound services. We arrest our fellow citizens who break the law, but now can we help them? And we help them with their substance abuse, with perhaps their temperament. We help them sometimes find jobs, we help them with mental health. We help them get reunited with their family. Some of our programs, the recidivism rate is less than 10 percent because we hold people accountable with tough love, but we help them to succeed.”

“A judge and a DA should do the same thing, and it’s really just common sense: You help a good person who’s having a bad day and winds up in court, but those people who are going around having bad days on purpose? They need to be held accountable,” says Dugan.

Left waiting for Krasner’s reforms

Dugan says tough-love reformist judges like him were excited when Krasner was elected. But they were left waiting for the reform. Instead, they got rigid ideology, egotism and political gamesmanship. At the height of the murder epidemic a few years ago, for example, Dugan was in a series of meetings convened by then-Councilmember Allan Domb. Judges, politicians, public defenders, feds, social workers, Krasner … all in the room, with the stated goal of collaborating on solutions. Only Krasner, two people in attendance tell me, stopped attending after he learned that then-U.S. Attorney Jennifer Arbittier Williams was married to Republican State House member Craig Williams.

Dugan can ably lay out the brief against Krasner. When I say that the DA might be able to blunt his criticisms by pointing to the declining murder rate, his response is one of palpable outrage.

“I do understand that the number of murders are down, but over the last 7 years, the actual number is close to 3,000 folks murdered on the streets of Philadelphia, with close to 10,000 people who’ve been wounded,” he says. “I’m just talking about gunshot victims. I’m not talking about the people that were shot at. I’m not talking about people that were missed. I’m not talking about people that were stabbed or beat up. So the numbers are, frankly, outrageous. They were so high that when we have a dip, we’re going to go out and celebrate. When somebody is using a gun improperly, illegally, they need to be accountable. We cannot be ineffective prosecutors. We cannot be incompetent. We cannot have people who are not ready to prosecute.”

To illustrate his point, Dugan cites the case of Mike Poeng, the West Philly 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 offender 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. To Dugan, our city failed that law-abiding citizen, and too many others.

He also has much to say policy-wise. Dugan would embed prosecutors in neighborhoods, so community groups can have real relationships with those who decide to prosecute — or not — their neighbors. And he’d hire ADAs from local law schools, as opposed to touring the Ivy League, as Krasner did, with a sales pitch to be part of a national movement. Alas, many of those hires have moved on, disillusioned, as we’ve chronicled. We’ll get deeper into Dugan’s plans at our Ultimate Job Interview series, which he’s agreed to participate in. (We’ll invite Krasner once he announces.)

Running towards the fire

Don’t get me wrong. There are unanswered questions about Dugan, questions only a campaign can shed light on. Can he take a political punch? Already, there’s been sotto voce talk of a misogynist and racist note allegedly left in the chambers of African American Municipal Court Judge Karen Simmons, who Dugan ran against for President Judge in 2018. He won that election handily and, as President Judge, opened up the court to investigations of the incident, including by the FBI. No proof of the note or its provenance was found. Still, there are those who without evidence link Dugan to it. He shrugs it off as politics, but would be naive to think that such innuendo — even if baseless, as appears — is devoid of peril.

But what intrigues me the most about Dugan isn’t any particular bogus charge, this reform, or that case, it’s who he is. Maybe I’m searching in vain for Jed Bartlet, but I pine for the days when public officials stood for some greater ideal than a singular ideology or the limiting orbit of one’s own ego. What gets me about Dugan is he’s one of those people who runs toward the fire, not unlike his wife, Nancy, a 19-year Philly cop who, after a terrible on-the-job car accident, fought the police department’s determination that she could no longer physically serve.

Dugan’s paternal grandfather was a Philly firefighter killed in the line of duty in 1944 who had two sons on the frontlines in World War II and two others who joined the Marines during the Korean conflict. His godfather was a paratrooper; another uncle was a cop. “I’m an infantry paratrooper,” Dugan says. “It’s in my blood that I can’t sit back and watch things occur.”

When he was six years old, growing up in Fairmount, he remembers a neighbor boy riding his bike in a panic, being chased by a pack of older kids, one wielding part of a long wooden police barricade. Little Pat was sitting on his stoop with his mom, Jacqueline. Dugan’s sister Dawn is a longtime friend and I knew the Dugan matriarch — a wiseass, take no BS, one-time bartender-turned-counselor for those convicted of DUI offenses. After she died at 70 of lung cancer, I was told she left me her chemo-induced wigs, and upon getting the news, I could imagine her infectious cackle. Dugan’s memory now of his mom not only squares with mine of her — it sheds light on who he is today.

“I’m sitting on the steps, and as they chased that kid, I saw my mother jump off, run down there, put herself between that young kid and the old heads who were trying to beat him,” he remembers. “She stopped them, even though they had a board. And they moved away from her while she protected this kid, brought him over on the steps with his bike until a police car came, and the police put the kid in the car and took him home safely. My mom didn’t have to say anything to me. I saw her do this, put herself in harm’s way to help this kid. It’s in my DNA. It’s just what you do.”

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