Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. might be facing his stiffest political challenge yet during a quarter-century in office.
The first TV commercial in the May 16 Democratic primary for DA — aired by an outside group that supports progressive candidates in elections for prosecutor and is backing Mr. Zappala’s opponent Matt Dugan — likely signals a sustained, bare-knuckle battle that could even stretch into the November general election, several Democratic insiders and other political observers said.
The broadside against Mr. Zappala — authorized and promoted by Mr. Dugan — began airing last week and is set to continue at least through April, according to AdImpact, which tracks political advertising. Pennsylvania Justice & Public Safety, a political action committee, is spending about $163,000 airing the ad so far, according to AdImpact. That’s roughly equal to the total cash that Mr. Zappala’s campaign reported having in the bank to end 2022, the most recent cut-off for candidates to report financial figures.
Neither Mr. Zappala nor any group supporting him has aired TV ads, according to AdImpact.
Mr. Dugan, the county’s chief public defender who announced his candidacy in January, is running as a criminal justice reformer in the mold of Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner and other progressive prosecutors across the country.
While critics of Mr. Dugan slammed the PAC support as an out-of-state influence, several Democratic insiders said it showed the seriousness of the challenge he’s mounting against Mr. Zappala. Mr. Dugan even upset the longtime incumbent for the county party’s formal endorsement last month.
“Plenty of people aren’t exactly excited about Dugan. But he’s the less problematic candidate compared to Zappala,” said a longtime Democratic organizer, citing a growing perception that Mr. Zappala “has not evolved with people’s understanding of the law.”
“We finally have an acceptable alternative,” said the organizer, who, like some others interviewed for this article, spoke on condition of anonymity because of a pressure campaign not to speak with The Post-Gazette during an ongoing strike by some P-G employees.
Representatives for Mr. Zappala and Mr. Dugan did not make the candidates available for interviews.
The new TV ad echoes former public defender Lisa Middleman, now a county judge, who portrayed the local criminal justice system as racist, sexist and classist when she ran for DA against Mr. Zappala as an independent in 2019. Mr. Zappala fended off his first primary challenge in two decades that spring, beating defense attorney Turahn Jenkins with 59% of the vote before winning re-election against Ms. Middleman that November with 57%.
“For over 20 years, Steve Zappala has betrayed our values,” the ad says. It highlights news reports critical of Mr. Zappala, including racially charged allegations against his office. The same PAC sent out similar mailers, which arrived last week at some voters’ homes.
Pennsylvania Justice & Public Safety PAC registered last monthin Allegheny County, listing a shared Washington, D.C., mailing address and a direct relationship with the national Justice & Public Safety PAC. That PAC has financial backing from billionaire liberal donor George Soros and has helped elect progressive prosecutors across the country, claiming victories in more than a dozen states over the last six years.
The Pennsylvania PAC did not answer messages seeking comment.
At a news conference last week, Mr. Dugan said he is “unapologetic” about calling for reforms in the criminal justice system.
“Yes, we have violent crime in Allegheny County, and it’s up,” he said outside the county courthouse. “But the vast majority of folks we see in these buildings, day in and day out, are low-level, non-violent folks who are just struggling to get by.”
Mr. Dugan called for a focus on “the core drivers of crime,” resources for low-level offenders who have repeated encounters with the justice system, and for partnerships with community groups and government agencies.
“And when violent crime occurs, we will prosecute it fairly and justly,” he said. “And we will recognize the humanity of all actors in the criminal justice system, from witnesses to victims to defendants.”
Still, private polling generally shows Mr. Zappala is in a “very strong position and will likely be able to withstand any attacks” from Mr. Dugan and his supporters, a person familiar with the Zappala campaign’s strategy said. The new commercial “is a panic move on [the Dugan camp’s] part to try to shake up the race because they’re down by big numbers,” the person said.
“The [Zappala] campaign needs to remind people that while Steve is a reformer, he understands there needs to be a balance,” the person added. “He will always be tough when it comes to dealing with the most violent criminals.”
Mr. Zappala’s campaign will highlight his focus on police-worn body cameras — now widely adopted by local police departments — with advertising starting soon, the person familiar with the campaign said.
No debates between the candidates have been scheduled yet. In the absence of any public polling in the race, the campaigns and their supporters have looked to put a positive spin on private survey data.
In one recent private poll of likely Democratic primary voters, 47% of respondents had positive feelings about Mr. Zappala, and 15% had negative feelings about the incumbent, according to survey results obtained by the Post-Gazette. But that poll didn’t include a head-to-head matchup with Mr. Dugan.
And Mr. Dugan’s campaign has been circulating a separate polling memo to potential donors. That memo says that while Mr. Zappala enjoys an initial 30-point lead in Mr. Dugan’s own polling, the race becomes a virtual tie after likely primary voters learn about Mr. Dugan’s background. (Campaigns often circulate such memos summarizing their own polling without providing full data, and the memos are almost always written to paint the best possible picture of the candidate’s prospects.)
No Republican candidate is running. But county GOP chair Sam DeMarco said he expects some Republican voters will write in Mr. Zappala for their party’s nomination in the May 16 primary. Mr. Zappala won the GOP nomination that way in 2019 (becoming both parties’ nominee), and it would take at least 500 write-in votes to do it again — provided those votes survive any challenges and that no one else draws more Republican write-in votes.
Winning the Republican nomination would secure Mr. Zappala a spot on the November ballot even if he loses the Democratic primary. Some Republicans worry Mr. Dugan could be too lenient with lower-level offenses and see Mr. Zappala as “tough on crime,” Mr. DeMarco said.
“Many of us out there believe accountability for low-level crimes can prevent those folks from progressing to bigger crimes,” he said.
And if Mr. Dugan is getting even indirect financial support from Mr. Soros — a liberal lightning rod for conservatives — that’s likely to become an election issue as voters “look at the records of these other folks he has funded and wonder what that would mean for them,” Mr. DeMarco said.
Mr. Krasner, who was re-elected to a second four-year term in 2021, is among the progressive prosecutors who have benefited from Mr. Soros’ largesse. The billionaire gave more than $1 million in 2017 to a group that supported Mr. Krasner’s first campaign.
Mr. Krasner has stopped pursuing cash bail in some misdemeanor and nonviolent felony cases, and has charged fewer people with crimes than his predecessors. Late last year, the state House, then controlled by Republicans, impeached him amid soaring violent crime in Philadelphia. His impeachment trial in the state Senate has been postponed while a court battle plays out over whether the impeachment itself was constitutional.
While a connection between rising crime and progressive prosecutors is accepted as a given by many Republicans and even some Democrats, the reality is far more complicated. Crime has jumped in many places across the country, not only those with left-leaning prosecutors, said Carissa Byrne Hessick, director of the Prosecutors and Politics Project at the University of North Carolina School of Law.
Homicides in Allegheny County climbed from 93 in 2019 to 122 last year, according to county statistics, during Mr. Zappala’s tenure.
Comparisons of crime rates under progressive vs. more traditional prosecutors actually tend not to flatter the traditional “law and order” ones, Ms. Hessick said. And some evidence suggests that burdening the criminal justice system with too many low-level offenses may worsen crime over the long-term by destabilizing those people’s lives and making it more likely they’ll commit crimes again, she said.
It might be natural to assume harsh punishments for all offenders will curb crime. “But I think that’s a symptom of a larger problem,” Ms. Hessick said, “which is that we actually don’t have a good understanding of why people commit crimes.”
Adam Smeltz: asmeltz@post-gazette.com, @asmeltz
First Published: April 10, 2023, 7:33 p.m.
Updated: April 11, 2023, 3:43 p.m.
