With weeks until election day, Philly DA Larry Krasner projects a landslide as Patrick Dugan tries to crack his coalition

The contest to be Philadelphia’s top prosecutor had the potential to be defined by wild cards as a half-dozen people considered challenging the controversial incumbent and rumors swirled of potential interference from out-of-town billionaires.

But with just five weeks until the May 20 primary election, the race is shaping up to be incumbent District Attorney Larry Krasner’s to lose.

The two-term progressive prosecutor has just one Democratic challenger, former Municipal Court President Judge Patrick Dugan, and no Republican is running. There’s been no sign of big money flowing in from out of town to support or oppose Krasner.

And this week, Krasner’s campaign set expectations high, releasing a poll it commissioned that shows him leading Dugan among likely Democratic primary voters by 37 percentage points. It’s so far the only polling of the race that has been made public.

From the Krasner campaign’s perspective, the survey of 500 people shows flashes of 2021, when he faced a well-funded and tougher-on-crime challenger in former prosecutor Carlos Vega. Krasner didn’t have the backing of the city’s Democratic Party and faced an angry police union that vehemently opposed him, leading many to believe he could be unseated.

Krasner won that primary in a landslide, dealing a 30-point blow to his opponent.

This time around, there are additional factors that would seem to benefit Krasner. The city last year saw a historic decline in homicides. The police union hasn’t made an endorsement. Much of the political attention this spring is on President Donald Trump, whom Krasner has for years vocally opposed.

Dugan’s camp says it’s far too early to count him out.

He’s taking a different approach than Vega did and presenting himself as a candidate who can balance criminal justice reform with tougher prosecution, leaning on his record as a judge overseeing programs that diverted people accused of low-level crimes out of the system.

With that framing, Dugan has showed signs of being able to pick off votes from what was once Krasner’s coalition. He notably won an endorsement from the city’s 8th Democratic Ward in Center City, one of the most voter-rich in Philadelphia, which had previously backed Krasner.

» READ MORE: Unions are fueling Patrick Dugan’s campaign for Philly DA as he far out-raises incumbent Larry Krasner

He also has in his corner the powerful and deep-pocketed Philadelphia Building Trades and Construction Council, an umbrella organization of dozens of unions that has poured money into Dugan’s campaign — leading him to post far stronger fundraising numbers than Krasner. The group, which has thousands of members, is also planning a get-out-the-vote operation ahead of election day.

The question is whether any of that can penetrate with voters in the final weeks of the campaign, given Krasner’s name recognition advantage. Neither candidate is yet running advertisements on television, which is generally considered one of the most effective ways to reach voters.

Krasner’s campaign manager Josh Uretsky said their strategy is working.

“Overwhelming majorities of Philadelphia’s Democratic voters want a fighter as district attorney,” he said in a statement. “Our campaign is resonating across Philadelphia because voters trust Larry.”

But Dugan’s campaign panned Krasner’s polling and said there are signs of “tangible Krasner fatigue,” like Democratic wards and unions backing Dugan.

“You can make an early internal poll say whatever you want it to say,” the campaign said in a statement, “but the facts are that Larry Krasner has failed to show voters why he deserves a third term as district attorney.”

Since launching his campaign in February, Krasner has attempted to nationalize the race, incorporating Trump into his pitch and framing himself as a “democracy advocate” who will fight for communities he says are marginalized by Republicans, like immigrants and LGBTQ people.

Krasner has at times used inflammatory language when talking about his GOP opponents. He’s described the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown as “Nazi stuff.” And in an interview last month with the magazine City & State Pennsylvania, Krasner said: “Right-wing Republican MAGA people ... are bullies who need to be punched in the face as hard as possible.”

Krasner’s strategy and tone has drawn criticism from Dugan and his supporters, who say the election should be about safety in Philadelphia, not national politics. Dugan says that he also opposes Trump, but that Krasner’s brash attitude isn’t helpful to securing justice in Philadelphia and has led to poor relationships with other city leaders.

“We’re not running against Donald Trump,” Dugan said during a community forum last month. “We’re running against each other.”

» READ MORE: Philly labor unions are split over who they want to be district attorney

But Krasner’s backers say it’s his fighting energy that keeps them coming back.

Robert Saleem Holbrook, a progressive activist and executive director of the prison abolition group Straight Ahead, said he rejects Dugan, who says often that he would “play nicer in the sandbox” than Krasner.

“Nice guys don’t get s— done in Philadelphia,” Holbrook said. “In the political climate we are in right now, we don’t want nice guys. We don’t want someone playing nice in the sandbox. We want someone upending the sandbox.”

Krasner’s campaign believes the poll it commissioned supports his strategy. The survey was conducted by Washington, D.C.-based Lake Research Partners, which polled likely Democratic primary voters in Philadelphia late last month. It found that voters leaned harder toward Krasner once they were presented with his campaign’s anti-Trump messaging.

Even without receiving any information about the candidates, Krasner led Dugan in the poll 58% to 21%, with 19% of voters undecided. The margin was higher among Black voters, who preferred Krasner by 51 percentage points.

Celinda Lake, president of the polling firm and a national political strategist, said Democrats nationally are frustrated and perceive that their own party is not adequately standing up to Trump, making it a moment ripe for Krasner’s style.

She added that her survey shows a majority of Philadelphia voters gave Krasner positive marks for job performance.

“Voters are ornery as sin right now, and people just don’t have positive job performances,” Lake said. “It’s really, really rare right now for an officeholder to have that kind of favorable job performance, because people are just mad at everybody.”

Where there are cracks in Krasner’s coalition, Dugan is looking to capitalize.

One way is to fight for endorsements in all of Philadelphia’s 66 Democratic wards. The party voted earlier this year to not endorse either candidate, leaving it up to individual, geographically based wards to decide whether they want to back Krasner, Dugan, or no one.

A ward endorsement can be meaningful, especially in off-year primaries when voter turnout is expected to be relatively low. Endorsed candidates win the backing of the party’s foot soldiers, and their names appear on sample ballots that are handed to voters on election day.

Dugan’s name will be on the samples across the western end of Center City this year, where the 8th Democratic Ward voted to endorse him, despite backing Krasner in 2017 and 2021.

Ward leader Elaine Petrossian said both candidates spoke to committee people in the ward and answered their questions about a range of topics. The committee then reconvened and discussed everything from mass incarceration to retail theft to what she called “core competencies” in the office.

Ultimately, they landed on Dugan. She said the outcome wasn’t a rejection of criminal justice reform, but of the “false binary” that reform can’t go hand-in-hand with strong prosecution.

“We want to be able to have a city that’s a leader in criminal justice reform and fair and equitable prosecution,” she said. “And we also want it to be a city that is safe and that people feel is peaceful so that the city can thrive.”

Dugan said it was a sign that voters are ready “to try a different way forward.”

He’s banking on that being the case in other neighborhoods across the city. Dugan is especially likely to win support in his political home base in Northeast Philadelphia, where voters in general lean more conservative and where there is a concentration of police officers whose union has in the past opposed Krasner.

The Northeast is also home to more Republicans than elsewhere in the city, and some have suggested that GOP voters could be an unlikely source boosting Dugan.

He may be helped in the messaging war by Republicans who strongly oppose Krasner. State Rep. Martina White, a Northeast Philadelphia Republican, recently posted a digital advertisement slamming Krasner’s call for Republicans to be “punched in the face,” calling it “just another example of alarming and irresponsible behavior from the tolerant left.”

And during a recent news conference, a union leader backing Dugan said he was encouraging his Republican members to switch their party affiliation so they could vote for Dugan in the Democratic primary.

Dugan said he’ll take the votes.

“Everybody in the city of Philadelphia is affected by crime,” he said. “Frankly, I want votes from every walk of life in the city of Philadelphia.”