DV Journal

The Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office has had an unusual amount of turnover since 2016, when then-Attorney General Kathleen Kane was convicted on criminal felony charges and forced to resign.

Solicitor General Bruce Castor then assumed the office as Acting Attorney General until Gov. Tom Wolf nominated Bruce Beemer to serve out Kane’s remaining term.

Josh Shapiro was elected attorney general in 2016, reelected in 2020, then left the office to become governor after the 2022 election, creating yet another vacancy. He appointed Michelle Henry as his successor. Pennsylvania voters will now choose their own top cop in the November 5 general election.

Two men vying for the post, Democrat Eugene DePasquale and Republican Dave Sunday, recently took part in a televised debate, and both men spoke with the DVJournal.

Sunday, now serving his second term as York County district attorney, said public safety is the primary reason he’s in the race.

“If communities aren’t safe, nothing else matters,” said Sunday.

DePasquale, 53, served two terms as auditor general and represented part of York County in the Pennsylvania House from 2007 to 2013. He also ran unsuccessfully for Congress against Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) in 2020.

“Number one, we must make sure we will protect our democracy. We must protect everyone’s right to vote and make sure the vote is counted accurately,” he said.

Eugene DePasquale

DePasquale told DVJournal that while serving as auditor general, he held “bad actors accountable no matter who they are,” and he is “the right fit to be the Pennsylvania attorney general.”

“I have a record of protecting the community, protecting voting rights, protecting reproductive freedom, and doing it in a balanced way that holds anyone who messes up accountable.”

As auditor general, his investigations uncovered over 3,000 untested rape kits and 58,000 unanswered calls to the child abuse hotline.

“I will always protect a woman’s right to choose,” he said during the debate.

He told DVJournal, “I am very concerned about all these scammers trying to scam our seniors. I’m very worried about prescription drug prices and these pharmacy benefit managers…jacking up prescription drug prices.”

Sunday insists the attorney general needs a prosecutorial and criminal law background. Even before he was elected York County District Attorney in 2017, Sunday, 41, a Navy veteran, worked as a prosecutor.

Sunday says his emphasis is not only on putting criminals in jail but finding ways to rehabilitate those who’ve committed minor offenses. He does that through working with community and church groups, as well as mental health and addiction treatment, seeking “accountability and redemption.”

Under his watch in York County, there’s been a 30 percent crime reduction, an 80 percent drop in gang-related gun violence, a 26 percent decline in drug overdoses, and a 75 percent reduction in the homicide rate.

Sunday said he’ll fight to end human trafficking, and he will have “zero tolerance” for fentanyl suppliers.

“Our children are facing a brutal epidemic of fentanyl where 15 Pennsylvanians are killed every day,” said Sunday.  He noted fentanyl is often laced into marijuana and various pills, so someone might not even realize they’d taken it.

During the debate, DePasquale attacked Sunday for “going soft on sexual predators and having failed convictions on the gang rape case.”

Sunday said DePasquale picked a couple of cases to criticize out of the 40,000 his office handled in the last 15 years.

“I’d like to compare those [cases] with my opponent’s, but he’s literally never even prosecuted one,” said Sunday.

“He would need a tutorial on day one on how to find a courtroom, what it means to have an adversarial system, what it means to work through defense attorneys, what it means to advocate in front of a judge, what it does mean to work in front of a jury. Pennsylvanians deserve better. This isn’t about political advancement. This is about public safety.”

Sunday said DePasquale’s investigations as auditor general were civil, not criminal.

“I’m the only one who’s run a complicated state agency. That’s the leadership we’ll need on day one,” said DePasquale.

Both Sunday and DePasquale say they will protect senior citizens from scammers. Sunday noted that using artificial intelligence (AI), scammers have become more sophisticated. He put together a computer forensics team in York to target them. “The average amount of money stolen from a senior is $38,000.”

DePasquale said many scammers call seniors from out of state.

“So you’ve got to work with attorney generals in other states. You’ve got to bring lawsuits, sometimes multistate work, sometimes even with the Justice Department. That’s why I think my experience of already running a complicated state agency and having the ability to put together teams across the state and across the country, I think it’s an asset.”

DePasquale added that when he was auditor general, he “routed out over $2 billion being wasted in Harrisburg.”

“My experience is more in line with what the job of the attorney general is,” said DePasquale.

While campaigning, DePasquale said many people talk about their concerns over abortion rights, “even a lot of suburban Republicans.” DePasquale promised never to prosecute a woman for having an abortion or a doctor for performing one.

Sunday said abortion is legal in Pennsylvania up until six months, and after that, there are exceptions for rape, incest and the mother’s life. Sunday said he would follow the law.

“My opponent, a professional politician, is throwing out words to scare people, like [debunked] Project 2025…There’s no scenario that exists where I would ever prosecute a woman for having an abortion. Period. He’s trying to scare you because he’s never done the job. He’s never been a prosecutor. He’s never even been in a courtroom to try a case. He’s saying things to scare people. I will not do that,” Sunday said.

Also on the ballot are Robert Cowburn (Libertarian), Richard Weiss (Green), Justin Magill (Constitution) and Eric Settle (Forward).

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The Office of Attorney General of the State of Pennsylvania is expansive and critically important. The next person you elect to that position has to be ready to lead a state agency, and handle investigations on everything from consumer scams to violent crime, from the defense of your reproductive rights to your voting rights.

I’m Eugene DePasquale and I’m ready for that heavy workload because I’ve carried it before as your auditor general. During my two terms in that chief investigatory office, I rooted out $2 billion in wasted, misspent, or stolen state dollars; I eliminated the backlog of rape kits which helped take violent sexual predators off our streets; I worked with counties to make sure that every call to the child abuse hotline was answered and handled; and I recommended state policy changes to marijuana laws so we could catch up with other states and reap the financial benefit of a regulated, taxed cannabis market.

I’ll be honest, sometimes I got criticized for doing too much in that office, but I believe that Pennsylvanians elected me because they wanted their dollars protected and I was committed to using every power of that office to look out for you. If you want someone who is going to sit back and let cases and investigations land in their lap, I’m not your guy – I will not rest in protecting Pennsylvanians.

After my terms were up, I went back to the private sector and was happy to work and get some quiet time. But I saw the direction this state and country were heading and the stakes felt too high to stay on the sidelines. Our criminal justice system isn’t working. Too many scams are impacting our older Pennsylvanians, we’re failing on the opioid crisis, and our rights are under attack. We need a tough, independent fighter who will put Pennsylvanians first and get the job done right. That’s why I’m running to be your next attorney general.

No one else in this race has run a large state agency and if you elect me, I am ready to start day one making sure our communities are safer, your rights are safeguarded, and put politics aside to fight for Pennsylvania’s working families. When I was auditor general, I didn’t care if you were a Republican, Democrat, or independent–if you were stealing from Pennsylvania, I wasn’t going to let anyone get away with it. I stood up to leaders of my own party even when I knew there would be political consequences for me, but they didn’t elect me – you did. That’s how I’m going to approach the Attorney General’s Office.

It’s never mattered to me who the bullies are or where the bad actors are. I’ll find them and I’ll stand up to them for you. You saw me do it once, and I’m humbly asking you to let me fight for your family again.

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Pennsylvania’s primary election is over. What do the results say about the general election in November?

Primary turnout was low, perhaps because both parties have already picked their presidential nominees. And both U.S. Senate candidates, incumbent Democrat Sen. Bob Casey and Republican challenger Dave McCormick, ran unopposed.

Only 22.5 percent of registered Democrats and Republicans voted in Delaware County, 15.69 percent in Montgomery County, 31.6 percent in Bucks County, and 22.96 percent in Chester County. Pennsylvania primaries are closed, meaning only voters registered with a party can participate.

Despite having dropped out of the GOP presidential primary after Super Tuesday, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley still received 150,000 votes — about 16 percent of the total — on Tuesday. But she did far better in the Delaware Valley, winning 18 percent of the vote in Bucks County, 22.87 in Delaware County, 24.22 percent in Chester County and 24.7 percent in Montgomery County.

And while President Joe Biden received a higher percentage of the total (92 percent) than Trump (83 percent), campaign pro Jeff Jubelirer says the numbers “don’t portend well for either candidate.”

Trump has to bring in “those Haley voters, particularly in southeastern Pennsylvania,” said Jubelirer, vice president at Bellevue Communications Group. And while the vote for “uncommitted” and U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips “wasn’t as impressive,” the race in Pennsylvania is likely to be so close in November that Biden needs to get them back, too. It won’t be easy.

“They’re particularly upset about the situation in the Middle East,” Jubelirer said.

Commonwealth Foundation Senior Fellow Guy Ciarrocchi, who has run for office as a Republican, agreed the candidates have to focus on their base, rather than count on pulling in swing voters.

“These two candidates will spend some time trying to persuade the three undecided voters in Pennsylvania,” he quipped. It’s going to be a contest to turn out the party’s base, “particularly with two people that have 100 percent name ID and 99 percent of Americans have made up their minds.”

Polls show Pennsylvania’s presidential race remains too close to call, and Republican strategists didn’t see anything Tuesday to change that calculus.

“There’s a significant shift now to the general election, so we should be careful not to extrapolate too much from primary results,” said Charlie Gerow with Quantum Communications. “I continue to be very bullish on the Trump campaign in Pennsylvania. He will win this pivotal state and the question is how much ‘down ballot’ effect that will have.”

Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said, “Yesterday, President Trump continued his winning streak and delivered a resounding primary win in Pennsylvania. More importantly, President Trump continues to dominate Feeble Joe Biden in every battleground state poll including his home state. The Dishonest Biden campaign has spent millions in Pennsylvania gaslighting voters, but it is not enough to make everyone ignore Bidenflation and rising costs, Biden’s border bloodbath, and his war on American energy.”

And what about the other statewide elections? What do they say about the mood of the electorate?

Allegheny County resident Eugene DePasquale, the former auditor general, beat four candidates with ties to the Delaware Valley to become the Democratic Candidate for attorney general. He will face York County District Attorney Dave Sunday in November.

Jubelirer believes DePasquale benefited from his home county and that he had run statewide before.

“What did surprise me was Erin McClelland beating [Rep.] Ryan Bizzarro for treasurer,” he added. “Not a high-profile race, but Bizzarro had institutional support.”

Ciarrocchi credited geography and gender with McClelland’s surprise win.

“If I could go to central casting and run in a Pennsylvania primary, I would love Allegheny next to my name. So, that’s one and two, in a Democratic primary, if the race is between a man and a woman, put a nickel on the woman,” he said.

Bizzarro ran commercials against incumbent Treasurer Stacy Garrity, using abortion as an issue. Jubelirer believes Democrats will continue to use abortion as a cudgel against Republicans as long as it continues to work. Ciarrocchi agreed.

“I saw this almost two decades ago in Chester County around the issue of the Mariner Pipeline, in that when we started to see races for supervisor and school board where, when Chester County was a Republican county in the early 2000s, school board members would run for reelection, as Republicans. They would say, “I kept taxes down, and test scores are up,” said Ciarrocchi.

But, “environmental activists and some of the Democratic Party committee people that started to come forward as candidates and made the races about the pipelines and pipeline safety and clean water and clean air. And at first it seemed bizarre until it started to work.”

“The Democrats don’t have much else to run on,” Gerow said about abortion. They certainly can’t promote Biden. And their support on abortion is already baked in. Plus, there is going to be pushback against the radical ‘legal abortion for any reason, at any time, paid for by the taxpayers,’ which so many Democrats now support.”

Asked whether McCormick or Casey was happier with the primary results, Jubelirer said Casey while Ciarrocchi said McCormick.

McCormick might be harmed by the lack of enthusiasm of the Haley voters for Trump compared with the young, progressive Democrats for Biden, said Jubelirer.

“They’re not going to vote for Trump and McCormick, but they may not vote at all,” said Jubelirer.

McCormick “worked very hard since 2022 in losing by a hair… yeoman’s work of going to chicken dinners, listening to people and trying to be a leader and a healer. And all of that paid off last night, he ran unchallenged, which is very unique for such a major office,” said Ciarrocchi.

And Republicans are beginning to warm to using mail-in ballots, which will also help them, he said.

One potential bright spot for the Pennsylvania GOP, according to Gerow, is the left-wing politics of Democratic candidates like U.S. Rep. Summer Lee and the party’s nominee for auditor general, state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta.

“Except for Eugene DePasquale, who is much more moderate, the Democrats nominated far-left candidates. Additionally, they are not people with backgrounds or credentials for the office they’re seeking. For example, Kenyatta, who’s now their candidate for auditor general, has never audited anything bigger than his own checkbook. His entire background has been promoting far-leftist ideology, not much more.”

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The Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office is often a stepping stone to the governor’s mansion. Perhaps that’s why so many Democrats want to follow in Gov. Josh Shapiro’s footsteps.

Four of the five Democrats running to fill the vacancy created when then-Attorney General Shapiro was elected governor hail from the Delaware Valley: Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer, former Bucks County Solicitor Joe Khan, former chief public defender for Philadelphia Keir Bradford-Grey, and Rep. Jared Solomon (D-Philadelphia).

Pittsburgh Democrat and former two-term Auditor General Eugene DePasquale is also running.

Keir Bradford-Grey

Shapiro appointed Keir Bradford-Grey as chief public defender for Montgomery County. She was later hired to serve as chief defender of the Defender Association of Philadelphia, the state’s largest. She claims to have reformed the office while overseeing a staff of 500 and managing a $50 million budget, according to her website.

She used “a data-driven approach” to make changes in the office to “lay the foundation for effective criminal justice reform.”

During a March 12 debate on ABC 27, Bradford-Grey was asked why Pennsylvanians should vote for her to be attorney general when she’s been a public defender.

“I’m running to be the people’s lawyer,” she said. “And that’s what the attorney general is in every other state other than Pennsylvania. It is the one that protects people at their most basic need. And it makes sure that not only do we take on the people that are harming people on the street corners, but we go after people in the board room…And I have the opportunity to make sure that women have very protected rights in their reproductive systems…no one can fight for women better than a woman.”

DePasquale is a former state legislator and served two-terms as state auditor general.

Eugene DePasquale

In the same debate, DePasquale was asked about being “a professional office seeker.”

“I’ve run statewide twice, and I’ve won twice,” said DePasquale. “I’ve won once when Trump was on the ballot. Why was I able to win? Because people know my record of fighting for Pennsylvania. My investigation found over 300,000 untested rape kits. Working hard, I brought justice to victims.”

Now in private practice, Khan served as Bucks County solicitor. He’s also been an assistant district attorney in Philadelphia and a federal prosecutor and has represented municipal, county, and state governments. Khan is the brother of state Rep. Tarik Khan (D-Philadelphia).

Khan lost a primary in 2017 to Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, and during the debate, he was asked about his electability.

“This isn’t about just winning the Democratic primary but winning the general election,” said Khan. “And this is a really, really tough election for Democrats to win.” Only two Democrats have ever won the attorney general’s race, he said. “Because they have painted the Democratic nominee as being soft on crime.” But before becoming the Bucks County solicitor, Khan said, he was a “career prosecutor.”

Joe Khan

Solomon worked in private practice, then joined the Army Reserves as a JAG officer and currently serves in the Pennsylvania National Guard. He was elected to the state House in 2016, beating a 42-year incumbent.

Solomon, who is running for both offices simultaneously, was told the “good government activists say ‘run for one.'”

“I protected us from Trump Republicans who are threatening our abortion and voting rights,” said Solomon. “I want to be your next attorney general because I want to protect our fundamental rights.”

Stollsteimer has twice been elected district attorney for Delaware County. He was hired as an assistant district attorney in 2000 before becoming a policy analyst and special assistant U.S. attorney for the Project Safe Neighborhoods gun violence initiative in 2001. In 2004, he was appointed assistant U.S. attorney and assigned to lead a gun violence task force.

Rep. Jared Solomon

Both Stollsteimer and Solomon are up on the air with TV ads.

Solomon touts his “A” grade with Planned Parenthood and “F” ranking from the National Rifle Association. Stollsteimer’s ads feature the tagline “You don’t know Jack” and emphasize his record as a DA who brought down crime in the City of Chester.

During the debate, Stollsteimer was asked what he would say to voters who think reducing the prison population by 30 percent is dangerous.

“Anybody who would say that would be completely wrong,” said Stollsteimer, who said they are balancing criminal justice reform with public safety. Delaware County had the only privately run prison in the state when he was elected, and he led the effort to de-privatize it. They’ve reduced the prison population by 40 percent “by keeping low-level offenders out of the criminal justice system and giving the help they need for redemption,” he said.

Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer

Bruce L. Castor Jr., former Montgomery County district attorney, who served as acting attorney general after Democrat Kathleen Kane was convicted for perjury, agreed the Attorney General’s Office often leads to the governorship in Pennsylvania.

“A reputed centrist candidate from the southeast in either party gives that party a huge leg up in eventually the run for governor.  We have always known this. So, the focus now by statewide political leaders on both sides is on who they are hoping to maneuver to run for governor six years from now,” said Castor. “So, what ‘matters’ is which candidate has the credentials (prosecutor experience both appointed and elected) to be elected attorney general now, has won elections at least at the ‘county’ level from the southeast, where 40 percent of the people live.”

“Naturally, I am a Republican and want Republicans to win,” said Castor. “Looking at all the candidates objectively, however, I see DA Jack Stollsteimer as best at checking off all the boxes.

“If I was analyzing the long-term prospects for the two parties through the “AG” – ‘Almost Governor’ – lens, he’s who I see as best positioned.”

Whichever of these five gets the nod from Democratic primary voters on April 23 will face one of the two Republican candidates in the fall:  Dave Sunday or Rep. Craig Williams.

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