PHILADELPHIA — Progressive stalwart Larry Krasner has won Philadelphia’s Democratic primary election Tuesday to continue serving as district attorney after withstanding an impeachment attempt and years of criticism by President Donald Trump and other Republicans.
Krasner’s victory all but guarantees him a third four-year term in office as the city’s top prosecutor, with no Republicans filing to run in November’s general election.
The longtime civil rights lawyer defeated Pat Dugan, a U.S. Army veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and was the head administrative judge of the Philadelphia Municipal Court before he resigned to run.
Krasner, speaking at an election night gathering in a downtown Philadelphia office building with a view of City Hall, said work on his reelection campaign started when he first took office in January 2018.
He said the city had become more safe, more fair and more free in the years since, citing the dozens of exonerations he has pursued and the falling crime rate and prison population.
“There are these people who think you can buy votes that other people have earned,” Krasner told the crowd. “There are these people that think the way to win campaigns is to lie, all the time; is to ignore the truth and ignore reality; is to whip up fear; is to turn people on each other, instead of getting them to turn to each other.”
His victory, he said, was powered by small-dollar donations and his willingness to defend democracy. In a nod to Krasner’s anti-Trump positioning, the crowd of perhaps a few hundred supporters included those wearing messages such as “Black Voters Matter” and “Make Fascism Wrong Again.”
While some of Krasner’s fellow progressive prosecutors around the country have been forced out of office, Krasner has maintained that the progressive movement remains ascendant and influential.
Krasner originally ran in 2017 on a progressive platform that included opposition to the death penalty, cash bail, prosecuting minor nonviolent offenses and a culture of mass incarceration, as well as holding police accountable.
Krasner survived a failed impeachment attempt by Republican state lawmakers and years of Trump and other Republicans using him as a campaign trail punching bag amid rising crime in Philadelphia and other U.S. cities during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The past couple years has seen crime rates falling in Philadelphia — and elsewhere — while the city’s jail population is down by almost half in the past decade.
Like some big-city Democrats, Krasner has turned toward pro-public safety messaging, saying he is serious about pursuing violent crime and touting new technologies and strategies that his office is using to solve or prevent crime.
He also tried to show that he is combating quality-of-life crimes, recently announcing a new unit to prosecute illegal dumping, such as household trash, tires, construction materials and more.
He repeatedly invoked Trump during the campaign and suggested that he is the best candidate to stand up to the president.
Krasner made his campaign slogan “F—- around and find out,” and invoked it in a TV ad where he cast himself as the foil to “Trump and his billionaire buddies, the shooting groups and gun lobby, the old system that denied people justice for too long. They can come for Philly, but I’m not backing down.”
Labor unions were split between Krasner and Dugan during the primary. But Krasner held his base of support among progressives, reformers and influential members of the city’s Black political establishment.
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Levy contributed from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Follow Marc Levy on X at https://x.com/timelywriter.
