Philly DA candidates Larry Krasner and Patrick Dugan debated for the first time, and the gloves came off

The first public debate of the race for Philadelphia district attorney did not involve much in the way of pleasantries. What started as a tense conversation between two attorneys ended with jumbled yelling and one candidate telling the other to keep his wife’s name out of his mouth.

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, the city’s progressive top prosecutor, and his Democratic primary challenger, former Judge Patrick Dugan, faced off in person and in front of an audience for the first time Tuesday night during a community forum in West Philadelphia.

They quarreled over their records, with Dugan portraying Krasner as an incompetent bully and Krasner suggesting that Dugan is a conservative who does not believe in his reform mission.

In one heated moment, the district attorney said Dugan should condemn Republican President Donald Trump — and an indignant Dugan obliged. At another point, Krasner attacked Dugan over a decade-old case in which the judge acquitted a police officer charged with assaulting a woman at the city’s Puerto Rican Day Parade, saying he should have recused himself because he is married to a police officer.

So if there were any illusions that the campaign would start off with friendly dialogue, they were quickly shattered. The gloves came off, and there was really no warm-up round.

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The two-hour event, hosted by the nonprofit Human Rights Coalition, set a tone for the next two months as the candidates sprint toward the May 20 primary election. Voters will decide if they want to give Krasner, a national leader of the progressive prosecutor movement, a third term in office, or go a different direction with Dugan, who is presenting himself as a less ideological alternative.

Here are four takeaways from the first of many meetings between the candidates.

Krasner, who is framing his campaign around being a local foil to the president, tried multiple times to connect Dugan to Republicans.

The DA described another judge who was critical of his office as “right-wing,” saying he is “constantly under attack by the [judges] who fundamentally do not believe in our missions” and suggesting Dugan was among them. And Krasner said Republicans are supporting Dugan’s run and signed his petitions to get on the ballot.

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In the most heated moment of the night, Krasner told Dugan he should condemn Trump, “so all the people in the Northeast can see it.” (Northeast Philadelphia, where Dugan hails from, has the largest concentration of people who voted for Trump in the overwhelmingly Democratic city.)

The crowd gasped. Dugan stood up from his chair.

“Are you kidding? Do you think I’m a Trumper?” he said. “I categorically denounce Donald Trump and his policies. The guy’s a nut. I mean, come on. But wait a minute. We’re not running against Donald Trump. We’re running against each other.”

A moderator reminded the audience that this is a primary and that both candidates are Democrats.

Krasner said after the event that he made his comment about Northeast Philadelphia because some neighborhoods are “pro-Trump, and I’ll be curious to see whether his declaration here is the same declaration in those rooms.”

There has been little in the way of public campaigning in the race thus far, so the tone Dugan will take has been unclear. Will he frame himself as a more old-school, law-and-order candidate, or will he try to find a middle ground between progressive and tough-on-crime?

On Tuesday, it was the latter.

Dugan said he would retain some of Krasner’s reforms and even bolster them, including the office’s Conviction Integrity Unit, which reviews closed cases and works to exonerate the innocent. Krasner has made the office’s work to exonerate more than 50 people a central focus of his administration.

Instead, Dugan was critical of Krasner as a leader, saying he does not work well with other agencies. And Dugan framed his own positions on major policy issues as more flexible.

For example, Krasner opposes the death penalty. Dugan said he generally would not seek capital punishment, but left the door open in cases such as mass shootings. While Pennsylvania has a death penalty provision, a moratorium on executions has been in place for a decade under consecutive Democratic governors.

At another point, both were asked their position on cash bail, which is when defendants must pay money to be released from jail and get the money back if they return to court. Krasner has long vocally opposed the practice, which he reiterated, and said it cannot be eliminated without the state legislature. Dugan stopped short of saying he opposes cash bail but said he supports reforms.

Dugan at times struggled to land punches. His answers to questions often veered into the weeds and assumed that the more than 100 people in the audience knew the ins and outs of the city’s complicated criminal justice system.

At one point, Dugan tried to attack Krasner over his office’s handling of programs that divert low-level offenders to rehabilitation instead of jail. Dugan said he disagreed with recent testimony Krasner gave to City Council about one of those programs, but he did not describe what the program does. A moderator had to jump in and clarify.

Part of the problem may have been the format of the forum — candidates were asked to describe their positions on complex issues in a minute or less.

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Krasner, meanwhile, can have the opposite problem. The two-term district attorney has been touting his accomplishments for years and has a professorial quality that can read as self-assured to supporters and self-righteous to others.

At one point, Krasner quibbled with a moderator about a minor detail in a question on homicides. At another, he seemed annoyed by a question critical of his office’s handling of juvenile cases, starting his answer by saying, “Um, OK. I’m going to ask everybody to listen carefully.”

And Krasner started his opening statement by using a modified version of a quote reportedly from Hillary Clinton about her husband’s political rivals: “I always wonder what part of the 1990s they didn’t like, the peace or the prosperity?”

Krasner’s version: “I have a question for you,” he said to the room. “Which part don’t you like? The safety or the freedom?”

It did not come up until the closing statements, but one case that Dugan oversaw in 2013 elicited one of the strongest responses of the night and is likely to keep coming up on the campaign trail.

As he wrapped up his arguments, Krasner attacked Dugan for acquitting Philadelphia Police Lt. Jonathan Josey, who was charged with assault for hitting a woman at the city’s Puerto Rican Day Parade in an incident that was caught on video. Dugan, who presided over the nonjury trial, at the time called the video “disturbing” but said it was not enough to convict Josey.

Dugan faced criticism for not recusing himself from the case while his wife, Nancy Farrell Dugan, was on the police force. She was reportedly in the courtroom during the trial.

“Why don’t you go look at the video of the Josey case?” Krasner asked the audience Tuesday. “The one that was decided by this judge with his wife, a police officer, in the room.”

Dugan cut him off: “Don’t put my wife’s name in your mouth, young man.”

Krasner shot back: “Don’t put her in your courtroom when you’re deciding a cop’s innocence.”