Are Liberal Cities Turning Against Their Progressive Prosecutors?
District attorneys in San Francisco and Philadelphia promised to overturn decades of tough-on-crime policies. Now, as violent crime rises, they may be kicked out of office.
ILLUSTRATION BY MATT ROTA
In 2016, the killing of Laquan McDonald brought reform prosecutor Kim Foxx into office in Chicago. Larry Krasner, a criminal defense attorney who had sued the Philadelphia Police Department 75 times over the course of his career, scored an improbable victory in his run for district attorney the following year. In 2019, Wesley Bell became St. Louis County’s first Black prosecutor, five years after the police killing of Michael Brown and the protests that erupted in nearby Ferguson. And in January 2020, the city of San Francisco swore in a charismatic young district attorney, Chesa Boudin, whose fame rested partly on being the son of 1960s radicals incarcerated for armed robbery and felony murder.
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Former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell (right) endorses Carlos Vega for Philadelphia district attorney over incumbent Larry Krasner. (Emma Lee/WHYY)
Ed Rendell, who served as Philadelphia District Attorney, the city’s mayor, and Pennsylvania’s governor, is taking what he calls a “reluctant” step into the upcoming DA’s race to endorse former homicide prosecutor Carlos Vega in the Democratic primary over incumbent Larry Krasner.
Krasner, a longtime criminal defense and civil rights attorney who won a crowded Democratic primary in 2017, swept into office on promises to fundamentally reform the way the DA’s office worked. He made good on a number of his campaign pledges: he has never sought the death penalty, he has aggressively prosecuted police officers for misconduct, he has stopped prosecuting most minor drug cases, and ramped up efforts to review wrongful convictions and exonerate people who were wrongly imprisoned.
Here are Pa.’s 2021 statewide judicial races and what you need to know about them
Updated May 04, 2021;
By Stephen Caruso | Pennsylvania Capital-Star
Registered Democrats and Republicans across the commonwealth will have to pick their candidates to run for four open seats on all three of the state’s appellate courts.
If elected, these judges will serve a 10-year term before they’ll stand for a yes or no retention vote.
We’ll dive into the specifics of the courts and the candidates below.
But one quick thing under state law, judicial candidates can’t say much about policy or politics when they’re running, leaving voters with little information outside of endorsements from interest groups or elected officials.
Heading into the May 18 primary that will likely decide Philadelphia's municipal elections, George Soros-backed District Attorney Larry Krasner is facing voters who are deeply concerned about soaring crime and homicide rates, a new poll finds.
Mr. Krasner, who this year failed to win the endorsement of the Philadelphia Democratic Party, is one of a handful of top prosecutors pursuing a left-wing criminal justice agenda. They took office with campaigns bankrolled by political action committees backed by billionaire liberal activist George Soros.
These prosecutors, all of whom POP PAC seeks to unseat, argue that the criminal justice system is suffused with racism and, to make amends, pledge to limit charging and sentencing of offenders.
Mr. Krasner, 60, has warned voters not to return to the “injustices of the past.”
His campaign did not respond to a request for comment about crime victims speaking out in the TV ads.