How Larry Krasner won Philadelphia’s district attorney primary — again

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner handily defeated a challenge in Tuesday’s Democratic primary from former Municipal Court Judge Patrick Dugan with crucial backing from Black political leaders in the city and a strategy focused on nationalizing the race.

Krasner bucked a trend that saw the progressive prosecutor movement losing steam in other cities, and he is now poised to secure a third term in November’s general election because no Republican has filed to run.

» READ MORE: Philly DA Larry Krasner has all but secured a third term. What will he do with it?

In the end, Krasner won the race comfortably. He led Dugan by 29 percentage points with 99% of precincts reporting as of Wednesday afternoon.

“Voters resonated with Larry’s record,” Krasner spokesperson Anthony Campisi said. “Larry delivered on his promise of improving public safety while creating a fairer and more effective criminal justice system and explaining that those two things go hand in hand.”

Here’s how Krasner pulled off the win:

Endorsements from Black Democratic elected officials and the political organizations many of them came up through are the most important variables in Philadelphia politics. So when it became clear earlier this year that Krasner had the backing of political leaders from a key voting bloc in the city, many political observers viewed the race as effectively over.

It wasn’t just the fact that Krasner won the backing of high-profile Black politicians in an election between two white men. It was who endorsed him.

State Sen. Anthony Hardy Williams and City Council President Kenyatta Johnson are the leaders of the political group started by Williams’ father that dominates elections in Southwest Philadelphia and western South Philadelphia.

State Sen. Vincent Hughes is the most prominent figure in the West Philadelphia-based political family tree that used to be headed by U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah before he was convicted on corruption charges in 2016.

U.S. Rep. Dwight Evans is a leader of the vaunted Northwest Coalition, which regularly plays kingmaker — or queenmaker, in the case of Mayor Cherelle L. Parker — in Philly politics. (Parker largely stayed out of the district attorney race ahead of the election, but the 50th Ward, which she leads, endorsed Krasner.)

And while North Philadelphia is less politically organized than other parts of the city, Krasner received the endorsement of State Sen. Sharif Street, the son of former Mayor John F. Street, and the chair of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, whose district includes much of North Philly.

Those camps are often at odds with one another in Democratic primaries. But they stayed united behind Krasner, leaving Dugan little room to gain ground with the city’s most important constituencies.

Krasner’s popularity among Black elected officials, many of whom are also Democratic ward leaders, was especially important because the Democratic City Committee declined to make an endorsement in the race, leaving the candidates to fight for the backing of individual wards across the city.

An Inquirer analysis of preliminary election results shows that Krasner won 78% of the vote in majority-Black wards, 56% in majority-Latino wards, and 52% in majority-white wards. Dugan, meanwhile, took in majority-white wards where more than half of voters lacked college degrees.

Krasner’s popularity among Black voters and elected officials is often underrated, Campisi said, because people focus on his support from progressive voters in white, highly educated neighborhoods.

“Folks misread where Larry’s political support comes from,” Campisi said, adding that Krasner does well in Black neighborhoods “because so many of those communities have been on the front lines for generations — not just impacted by high rates of violence but also impacted by mass incarceration."

When it came to messaging, Krasner’s game plan was simple: He sought to present himself as the ultimate antagonist to President Donald Trump and to tie Dugan to the increasingly unpopular Republican president.

“For seven years, I have stood up for Philadelphia,” Krasner said in a TV ad. “Some people don’t like that — Donald Trump and his billionaire buddies, the shooting groups and the gun lobby, the old system that denied people justice for too long.”

In debates, Krasner leaned into links between the GOP and Dugan due to the former judge’s base of support in Trump-friendly Northeast Philly. In one instance, Krasner asked Dugan to publicly condemn Trump “so all the people in the Northeast can see it.”

“Are you kidding? Do you think I’m a Trumper?” Dugan said. “I categorically denounce Donald Trump and his policies.”

Despite being a self-described “lifelong Democrat,” Dugan seemed to realize he needed to separate himself from the White House and the right more generally. He vowed to stand up to Trump in a TV ad, and he branded himself “the real reformer,” an apparent nod to Krasner’s reputation as a champion of criminal justice reform.

He also apparently did not seek the endorsement of the Philly police officers union, the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5, which is seen as friendly to Trump and which backed Krasner’s challenger in 2021.

» READ MORE: Patrick Dugan lost the Democratic primary to Philly DA Larry Krasner. But Republicans say he may now win the GOP nomination.

It likely did not help Dugan that the Philadelphia Republican Party itself was saying nice things about him by the end of the race. No Republican filed to run for district attorney this year, and the Philly GOP launched a last-minute write-in campaign to allow Dugan to run as the Republican nominee in the general election if he lost to Krasner.

Dugan’s campaign has said he will not accept the GOP nomination.

The strategy that prevailed in Philadelphia on Tuesday did not appear to work on the other side of the Keystone State, where yet another progressive vs. moderate Democrat contest took place.

Incumbent Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey, a progressive backed by the Working Families Party, lost a tight primary race against center-left Corey O’Connor, the county controller. Like Krasner, Gainey and allies worked to paint O’Connor as someone aligned with Trump and real estate interests, NBC News reported.

» READ MORE: What’s going on with the Pittsburgh mayoral race and what it could mean for the rest of Pennsylvania

That approach appeared to have played differently in Pittsburgh than in Philly. With almost all votes counted Wednesday, O’Connor scored 52.8% of the vote.

The progressive WFP also backed Krasner this year, as it has done since he was first elected in 2017. Nicholas Gavio, Mid-Atlantic communications director for WFP, said there is an “appetite in the Democratic Party right now for candidates who will stand up to Trump and who have that background.”

But, he said, it is difficult to compare Gainey’s loss with Krasner’s success, noting the differences in their positions, spending in the races, and that Krasner had already been reelected once before, while Gainey has been in office for one term.

“It‘s kind of tough to extrapolate that one question out from everything else,” Gavio said. “You know, the spending deficit in Pittsburgh, the fact that Larry has been elected for eight years, much more time to kind of build up than the mayor, who was only in office for, you know, three and some change.”

Tuesday’s primary in Pennsylvania was the first election in the state since Trump’s November victory — an event that led Democrats searching for what went wrong, with many wondering if the party needs to shift more left or more center.

Despite Gainey’s loss, Gavio believes progressivism will still be embraced in Pittsburgh, pointing to other liberal elected officials in Western Pennsylvania, like U.S. Rep. Summer Lee (D., Pa.) and Sara Innamorato, the Allegheny County executive.

“The progressive movement in Pittsburgh is strong still, I’d say,” he said.

Telling the story of this year’s Philadelphia district attorney race in some ways requires recounting what didn’t happen.

At the beginning of the election cycle, there were rumors that critics of Krasner could recruit a high-profile challenger to take him on, or that big political spenders like Elon Musk or George Soros would get involved.

None of those things materialized.

Dugan ended up being Krasner’s sole challenger, and while he was respected, the former judge had nowhere near the name recognition required to make a splash in the race on day one.

Potential Democratic challenger candidates included former City Councilmember Derek Green, who ran for mayor in 2023; State Rep. Jared Solomon; attorney Keir Bradford-Grey, the former head of the public defenders; and former prosecutor Carlos Vega, who unsuccessfully challenged Krasner four years ago. Republican mayoral candidate David Oh, a former Council member, flirted with running for the GOP nomination.

In the end, all passed on the race, leaving Dugan as Krasner’s lone challenger. He benefited from the support of most of the unions in the deep-pocketed Philadelphia Building and Construction Trades Council, which helped give Dugan a fundraising advantage and funded a super PAC that attacked Krasner while Dugan ran biographical TV ads introducing himself to voters.

But that spending did not go far enough to raise Dugan’s profile outside his base of largely white working-class voters in Northeast Philadelphia, the only part of the city where he dominated in Tuesday’s primary.

In the end, there was no big, outside money — for either side.

» READ MORE: DA Larry Krasner has a fundraising advantage among Philly residents. Challenger Patrick Dugan is dominating the suburbs.

Soros, the billionaire liberal donor who is a frequent target of right-wing conspiracy theories, did not donate to Krasner’s campaign this time. In 2017, he contributed $1.7 million to Philadelphia Justice and Public Safety PAC to help fuel the shocking victory that made Krasner a national figure. And in 2021, Soros gave $259,000 to the Pennsylvania Justice and Public Safety PAC, which supported Krasner that year, according to campaign finance filings.

It was because of Soros’ previous financial backing of Krasner that Musk signaled back in December that he and his conservative political action committee, America PAC, could target Krasner and other progressive district attorneys who had been backed by Soros.

But, again, that did not happen. In fact, Musk said Tuesday during a virtual interview with Bloomberg News at the Qatar Economic Forum that he plans to do “a lot less” political spending in the future. The last race that Musk was prominently involved in was the Wisconsin state Supreme Court race, in which the conservative candidate he was stumping for lost.

“I think I’ve done enough,” Musk said Tuesday, adding that “if I see a reason to do political spending in the future, I will do it. I do not currently see a reason.”

In terms of other interest in the race: The WFP spent $80,000 on a door-knocking, get-out-the-vote effort for Krasner. In 2017, the WFP knocked on 70,000 doors for his first election, and in 2021, amid the pandemic, the party made more than 100,000 calls, sent three pieces of mail, and placed digital ads, Gavio said.

The WFP’s assessment of the district attorney race found that Krasner was in a strong spot to succeed, Gavio said, adding of the canvassing program that “we thought that was the best way to kind of work on the race.”

But for the Concerned Citizens of Philadelphia, which spent hundreds of thousands of dollars against Krasner, the task was not as easy. It was an “uphill battle,” said Mohamed “Mo” Rushdy, a prominent developer who was the primary organizer of the super PAC, powered by building trades unions and real estate interests.

Rushdy credited Krasner’s incumbent status and the public safety policies from Parker and Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel for the district attorney’s success over Dugan.

He said that the super PAC is finished with its work for now, but that the coalition of building trades unions and real estate interests could get involved in future elections.

But did Concerned Citizens have any impact on Dugan’s chances?

“Who knows whether we had an effect of two points or 10 points?” Rushdy said.

Graphics editor John Duchneskie contributed to this article.