Philadelphia prosecutor seeks a third term, saying progressivism is ascendant despite Trump setbacks

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — The Philadelphia prosecutor who became a campaign trail punching bag for Republicans amid rising crime in U.S. cities during the coronavirus pandemic is running for reelection on the back end of a withering effort to oust progressive district attorneys nationwide.

Larry Krasner, still standing after a failed impeachment attempt and years of criticism from President Donald Trump and other Republicans, is striking a confident tone as he seeks a third term as district attorney in the nation's sixth most populous city. Crime rates in Philadelphia — and elsewhere — are dropping as Krasner vows resistance to Trump's aggressive second-term agenda and progressives, reformers and members of the heavily Democratic city's Black political establishment pledge their support.

While some of Krasner's fellow progressives were forced out of office, he sees undemocratic forces behind a push — such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' suspension of two elected prosecutors — that he says often singled out young Black female prosecutors.

"There has been this authoritarian and, to some extent, racist and misogynist effort to get rid of us all,” Krasner told The Associated Press.

Krasner, a Democrat, emphasizes the importance of being tough on violent crime. But he also maintains that the progressive movement remains ascendant and influential, despite setbacks for some prosecutors.

In Philadelphia, “we have gone in the direction of freedom and fairness very successfully, and we have gone in the direction of public safety very successfully," Krasner said. "And it's not isolated to Philadelphia. The reality is 2024, nationally, was, by percent, the biggest improvement in United States recorded history in homicides and gun violence.”

Rising crime rates during the COVID-19 pandemic loomed large

The longtime civil rights lawyer — he defended all kinds of arrested protesters and sued the police department dozens of times — 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.

But rising crime rates during the COVID-19 pandemic coincided with the election of a wave of new progressive prosecutors around the country.

Political opponents blamed their policies, and debate over policing intensified in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, prompting worldwide protests and calls to defund police — a push that the GOP used against Democrats in 2020 elections.

Researchers, however, found a broad and steep increase in many crime rates nationally across the nation's biggest cities, starting in 2020 through 2022, regardless of who was the prosecutor. University of Toronto researchers found no link to progressive crime-fighting policies.

The decline has been just as steep, starting in 2023 and continuing through 2024, researchers from the Council on Criminal Justice and elsewhere have found.

In a paper published by the Brookings Institution in December, researchers from Common Good Labs explained the increase in violence during the onset of the pandemic by pointing to large numbers of young men being out of school when schools went online and out of work when businesses shut down. Males under age 30 commit more than half of all murders in the U.S., they said, citing FBI statistics.

The spike in murders didn't occur in other wealthy countries, but those countries don't have nearly the number of guns that America does, they wrote.

GOP wielded rising crime to run against Democrats

Republicans on the campaign trail, including Trump, framed progressive prosecutors as emblematic of a Democratic Party that, they said, was pro-criminal. Some, like Krasner, had been aided in their campaigns by progressive billionaire George Soros, another frequent Republican target.

In California, voters recalled San Francisco's Chesa Boudin in 2022 and Oakland's Pamela Price in 2024 and defeated Los Angeles' George Gascon in 2024's election.

Chicago’s Kim Foxx decided against running for a third term in 2024, Baltimore’s Marilyn Mosby was defeated in 2022's primary and Portland, Oregon's, Mike Schmidt was defeated in 2024's election.

In Florida, DeSantis, a Republican, suspended two elected state attorneys, Andrew Warren and Monique Worrell, before Worrell won reelection in 2024 to her Orlando-area office. Warren lost his reelection bid to his Tampa-area office.

In Georgia, Fulton County's District Attorney Fani Willis — who prosecuted Trump's 2020 election interference case in the battleground state — was reelected last year amid attempts by Republican lawmakers to investigate her or oust her, though her investigation of the president fell apart.

Republicans who controlled Pennsylvania's House of Representatives impeached Krasner in 2022 on seven articles, including complaints that his office wasn’t always prosecuting crimes, enforcing bail or communicating with victims as it was required to do.

Krasner sued. The Senate never took up the House's articles of impeachment, and the state Supreme Court last year quashed it, albeit in a ruling that faulted the process and didn't contemplate the GOP’s underlying claims.

Trump and crime figure into Philadelphia's 2025 race

Meanwhile, some big-city Democrats, including Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker, turned to pro-police public safety messaging.

Philadelphia’s rising homicide rate spiked to record levels starting in 2020, and, in 2022, then-police Chief Danielle Outlaw accused Krasner’s office of releasing violent criminals back onto the streets after three SWAT team members were shot while serving a warrant.

Things have changed.

Crime of all sorts is down, and Philadelphia this year is on track to report the fewest number of homicides since Krasner took office. The city’s jail population is down by almost half in the past decade.

Krasner turns questions about progressive crime-fighting policy into a discussion of new technologies and strategies that he's using to solve or prevent crimes and a strong pro-public safety message: “We are serious as a heart attack about going after serious crime and violent crime," he said.

Krasner’s opponent in the May 20 Democratic primary is 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. No Republican filed to run.

Dugan has aimed to make the race about Krasner's crime-fighting policies — he calls him “Let ’em Go Larry” — and accused Krasner of tearing down the district attorneys' office and staffing it with ill-prepared and inexperienced lawyers.

“It just isn’t fair to our city, to the rule of law and to our victims," Dugan said.

Krasner, perhaps sensing the moment is bigger, has repeatedly invoked Trump and suggested that he is the best candidate to stand up to him.

It is “fair game” after Trump hammered Krasner and other big-city prosecutors on the campaign trail, Krasner said.

“They targeted us for a long time. These are people who are trying to end the rule of law. They are trying to end the power of the judiciary,” Krasner said. “One of the things we need from prosecutors now is something we never needed before, and that is that they are going to fight and defend democracy. Because he's out to end it.”

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Follow Marc Levy on X at https://x.com/timelywriter.