Allegheny County primary race for DA offers clear differences between candidates

Longtime Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. is facing chief public defender Matt Dugan in a Democratic primary race featuring candidates with widely divergent views.

Zappala has garnered headlines during the campaign for targeting security measures at Kennywood amusement park, while Dugan has been boosted by large sums of campaign donations from national “criminal justice” groups looking to take down the 25-year incumbent.

For voters, there is a clear difference between the candidates.

Dugan, 43, of Moon Township, said the district attorney’s office should be helping to divert low-level offenders to community services so resources can be freed up to more aggressively prosecute violent crimes. He said that message has resonated with Democrats, pointing to him securing the county Democratic Party’s endorsement and support from various criminal justice groups.

Zappala, 66, of Fox Chapel, defended his record and said his efforts have increased public safety and police accountability, including increased body camera usage for police officers. His campaign also touted Zappala’s support for abortion and LGBTQ rights. He said Dugan is being influenced by outside groups, and they will call the shots if Dugan wins.

National policing expert and University of Pittsburgh law professor David Harris said both candidates have different paths to convince voters to their respective sides.

He said Dugan has likely gathered support from many progressive voters, but he needs to convince other Democratic voters that his platform won’t result in increased crime. Zappala, who has argued that Dugan’s would result in increased crime, needs to focus on maintaining his core of mainstream voters and appears to be doing so by focusing on Democratic mainstay issues such as abortion rights.

Different messages

Dugan said his message has stayed consistent through the campaign, and his ideas for reform are popular among the county’s Democratic voters.

“We have had the same message since we started meeting with voters in December. We need to look at how and why we prosecute low-level offenders, so we can focus more time and energy on violent crime,” Dugan said.

Homicide rates teetered up and down for a decade before 2019, when Allegheny County recorded 93 homicides. Then, between 2019 and 2022, homicides increased by 31% in Allegheny County, according to county data. Last year, Allegheny County saw 122 homicides, the most of any year since 2007.

Dugan said Zappala’s strategies aren’t helping to reduce violent crime. He said that a district attorney should be good at working with city governments, violence prevention groups and community members to create better resources for low-level offenders.

“The voters are receptive to a new approach,” he said. “I think folks realize the current policies are not working; no one believes there will be a course correction if Zappala is reelected to a seventh term.”

The Zappala campaign did not make Zappala available for an interview.

Campaign manager Mike Mikus defended Zappala’s record and said Zappala’s experience in the office is valuable.

“I think the voters know who Steve Zappala is. He has been a reformer, he knows maintaining public safety is job one,” Mikus said.

Mikus said Dugan “would go easy on criminals.” He said Dugan is supported by the same criminal justice groups that supported controversial Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner. Mikus said Dugan’s policies would lead to similar rates of increased homicide that Philadelphia has seen under Krasner.

The Zappala campaign is touting his record on abortion and LGTBQ rights. Mikus said Zappala would not prosecute abortions in Allegheny County if state or federal law made them illegal, something that is unlikely to occur while Democrats control the White House and Pennsylvania governor’s mansion.

Mikus said Zappala has been instrumental in securing funding for police body cameras and has helped to get nearly every agency in the county to use body cameras.

National attention

Campaign finance reports showed Zappala has out-raised Dugan this year. Zappala pulled in $227,000 and Dugan raised $77,000, filings show.

While considered in-kind contributions — money going directly into Dugan’s campaign, the Pennsylvania Justice and Public Safety political action committee has spent $760,000 on ads supporting Dugan.

The group funds criminal justice reform candidates and is financed largely by liberal billionaire George Soros.

Other groups also have gotten involved in the race. Color Of Change PAC, a criminal-justice political action committee, endorsed Dugan. It cited his stances on prioritizing offenses that “pose an actual threat to public health and safety” and diverting “people in need of mental health services or substance use treatment out of our criminal legal system.”

The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania is sending out about 65,000 mailers and knocking on more than 50,000 doors in Allegheny County to talk about the race, said the ACLU’s Danitra Sherman. She said part of the reason the organization chose to get involved was because of racial disparities in the county’s criminal justice system.

A 2020 report found that 67% of incarcerated people at the Allegheny County Jail were Black, even though Allegheny County’s population at the time was less than 13% Black.

The Washington, D.C.-based Civil Rights Corps also has gone after Zappala during the campaign. It filed an ethics complaint against Zappala, citing Tribune-Review stories about Zappala’s 2021 instructions not to offer plea deals to a Black lawyer who called his office “systematically racist,” and 2023 story about assistant district attorneys who said they couldn’t withdraw criminal charges in one case or make a plea deal in another because of the timing of Zappala’s reelection campaign.

Zappala’s campaign said the involvement of these groups in the race shows Dugan is being influenced by outside groups that don’t understand local issues.

“Matt Dugan’s campaign finance report showed he is being bought by an out-of-state ‘dark money’ group,” Mikus said.

Dugan said he earned support from these criminal justice groups because of the success of his message and campaign.

Dugan acknowledged that the extra funds have helped raise his name recognition, which he says was a tall task against Zappala, a 25-year incumbent.

“I needed name recognition; that requires getting on TV, but also I have been everywhere, talking to everyone,” Dugan said, adding that his campaign has coordinated with Pennsylvania Justice and Public Safety on its campaign ads.

“We are steering the ship,” Dugan said. “We are beholden to no one.”

Mikus said he does not buy it, noting outside groups are spending 10 times as much money on the race as Dugan’s campaign.

“With 91% of a candidate’s funding being from one source, you are living in an alternate universe if you think they will not control him while in office,” Mikus said.

Dugan questioned other attacks made by Zappala that the challenger said “really sound more like a Republican campaign than a Democratic campaign.”

Zappala has a history garnering Republican support. Last week, Allegheny County GOP Chairman Sam DeMarco encouraged Republican voters to write-in Zappala on their ballots to place him on the Republican ticket for the November election. This followed similar efforts in April from a local Republican committee.

Mikus said Zappala’s campaign had no part in those calls from Republicans. He said the campaign can’t control what other people do.

He again criticized Dugan for receiving funding from Pennsylvania Justice and Public Safety, noting its ties to Soros, who was criticized in 2022 for allegedly firing workers from his charity after they formed a labor union.