Two district attorneys based in opposite ends of Pennsylvania―Allegheny County’s Stephen Zappala and Northampton County’s Terry Houck―face serious challenges from the left in their Democratic primaries, but each may still be on the November general election ballot anyway as Republicans. That’s because local GOP voters don’t have any candidates to choose from in these races, and each incumbent could collect enough write-in Republican votes to advance to November even if their actual party rejects them.
We’ll start with Zappala, who has spent the last 25 years as the top prosecutor for Pittsburgh and many of its suburbs. The district attorney has long had a bad relationship with criminal justice reformers, and he memorably declared during his 2019 campaign that he was "done with socialists and ACLU forums." His Democratic primary foe is county Chief Public Defender Matt Dugan, who launched his bid by declaring, "Police are looking for alternatives to arrest, prosecute, and punish." His campaign has also argued, "Steve Zappala has presided over the increase of crime in Allegheny County."
Zappala’s detractors, as Bolts Magazine’s Alex Burness wrote last month, have highlighted how about two-thirds of the county’s prison inmates are Black even though African Americans make up only 12% of the overall population. They’ve also faulted him for rarely prosecuting police officers for misconduct and for a 2021 incident where the incumbent forbade his prosecutors from offering any plea deals to clients represented by a prominent Black attorney who had called the district attorney's office "systematically racist." Zappala did away with that policy after a backlash, but critics like Rep. Summer Lee have hardly forgiven him.
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