In Election Seen as Referendum on Reform Prosecutors, Larry Krasner Renominated for Second Term as Philadelphia District Attorney

In a pri­ma­ry elec­tion wide­ly con­sid­ered a ref­er­en­dum on reform pros­e­cu­tors, incum­bent Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner eas­i­ly secured a vic­to­ry against for­mer Philadelphia homi­cide pros­e­cu­tor Carlos Vega. Krasner won the May 18, 2021 elec­tion on a plat­form of con­tin­u­ing the reform he began four years ago when he was first elect­ed: eschew­ing use of the death penal­ty, ini­ti­at­ing sys­temic crim­i­nal jus­tice reforms, and end­ing mass incar­cer­a­tion. Krasner’s Democratic pri­ma­ry win all but ensures that he will be re-elect­ed in the November gen­er­al elec­tion in the heav­i­ly Democratic city. 

“We in this move­ment for crim­i­nal jus­tice reform just won a big one,” said Krasner in his vic­to­ry speech on Tuesday night. ​“Four years ago, we promised reform and a focus on seri­ous crime,” he said. ​“We kept those promis­es. And this time they put us back in office for what we have done. Not ideas, not promis­es, but realities.”

One of the most promi­nent reform pros­e­cu­tors in the U.S., Krasner insti­tut­ed broad changes in pol­i­cy, includ­ing not seek­ing the death penal­ty, revamp­ing the office’s con­vic­tion integri­ty unit, elim­i­nat­ing the pur­suit of cash bail for many offens­es, and stop­ping pros­e­cu­tion of offens­es such as mar­i­jua­na pos­ses­sion and sex work. The pre­vi­ous­ly mori­bund Conviction Integrity Unit has exon­er­at­ed 20 men wrong­ly con­vict­ed of mur­der under pri­or pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al admin­is­tra­tions, includ­ing three — Christopher Williams, Walter Ogrod, and Kareem Johnson — who had been sen­tenced to death.

“Our promise fun­da­men­tal­ly was that we would focus on seri­ous crime while bring­ing reform,” Krasner said while cam­paign­ing in the week before the elec­tion. ​“We said we would do some­thing about mass incar­cer­a­tion. We have cut the future years of incar­cer­a­tion in half.” On elec­tion night, Krasner said: ​“We hear all this talk about how some­how pro­gres­sive pros­e­cu­tion can’t sur­vive. That’s not what I see. What I see is that tra­di­tion­al pros­e­cu­tion can’t survive.”

Krasner char­ac­ter­ized his vic­to­ry as a man­date ​“from the peo­ple most affect­ed by seri­ous crime” and called for more fund­ing for crime pre­ven­tion in the city. ​“We have to invest in all those things because we were robbed of them a long time ago. And what we are fac­ing now is the consequences.”

Krasner’s vic­to­ry mar­gin was buoyed by over­whelm­ing sup­port from major­i­ty-Black areas of the city. ​“Black vot­ers — and not just Black vot­ers — believe that change is nec­es­sary and that the direc­tion that Larry Krasner is tak­ing is the right direc­tion,” said State Senator Vincent J. Hughes, who rep­re­sents some of the neigh­bor­hoods in which Krasner swamped his oppo­si­tion. ​“This is not a close vic­to­ry. It is an affir­ma­tion that we have to go in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion in the pur­suit of justice.”

During the cam­paign, Vega attacked Krasner’s poli­cies as ​“soft on crime” and was endorsed by the local Fraternal Order of Police, the largest police union in the U.S., and a group of more than 150 for­mer pros­e­cu­tors opposed to Krasner’s reforms. The Philadelphia Democratic Party did not endorse any can­di­date, free­ing up ward lead­ers from pre­dom­i­nant­ly white con­ser­v­a­tive neigh­bor­hoods to back Vega. 

Highlighting the divi­sions in the White-con­trolled Philadelphia police and fire unions, Krasner received the back­ing of the polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee for the Guardian Civic League of Philadelphia — a chap­ter of the National Association of Black Law Enforcement Officers, which rep­re­sents Black police offi­cers in the city — and by Club Valiants, a fra­ter­nal group rep­re­sent­ing Black and Latino fire­fight­ers in Philadelphia. The Innocence Project also assailed Vega for false­ly min­i­miz­ing his role in the retri­al of mur­der exoneree, Anthony Wright, whose ini­tial con­vic­tion had been over­turned after Wright’s lawyers dis­cov­ered evi­dence that homi­cide detec­tives had fab­ri­cat­ed a con­fes­sion they attrib­uted to Wright and plant­ed phys­i­cal evi­dence against him.

“It looks like tonight we did not get the result we want­ed, but even in defeat we have grace & we smile,” Vega wrote in a tweet after he con­ced­ed the election.