HARRISBURG (TNS) — The Democratic and Republican candidates for Pennsylvania Attorney General on Thursday night faced off on an array of issues including abortion, gun control, violent crime and immigration in their first debate.
Moderator Brian Roche, an anchor on host station WGAL, guided Democratic candidate Eugene DePasquale and Republican Dave Sunday through a battery of questions that touched on racial injustice in the criminal system, the death penalty, reproductive and abortion rights and the protection of fair and free elections.
While the candidates avoided combative exchanges, they sparred with personal attacks over their respective resumes.
Sunday, the York County District Attorney and a career prosecutor, repeatedly assailed his opponent for his lack of criminal prosecution experience and emphasizing the fact that his office has tried 40,000 criminal cases.
“He would need a tutorial on day one on how to even find a courtroom, what it means to have an adversarial system, what it means to work through defense attorneys, what it means to advocate in front of a judge, he said. “How does it mean, what does it mean to work in front of a jury? Pennsylvanians deserve better.”
DePasquale — a former state legislator and two-term state auditor general — countered each attack by detailing the various statewide investigations he led that resulted in major crackdowns and reforms of failing state systems.
As auditor general during the governorships of Republican Tom Corbett and Democrat Tom Wolf, DePasquale performed audits critical of those administrations, including uncovering a massive backlog of rape kits and thousands of unanswered calls to the state’s child abuse hotline.
“As state’s top investigator, I made sure that we got rapists off the street, and I also made sure our children were better protected,” DePasquale said. “That same type of statewide experience is exactly what I’ll use.”
The Attorney General’s office has increasingly played a critical role in some of the most divisive political issues of the moment. As the top prosecutor, the attorney general has wide-ranging powers, including representing Pennsylvania in court.
Roche alluded to those powers time and again with probing questions on the course of action each of the candidates would pledge to do when it came to issues such as upholding abortion laws and fair elections.
Roche asked the candidates, would they prosecute a person who had an abortion or a doctor who performed one, if Pennsylvania were to ban abortions?
“I want to be very clear. I will never prosecute a woman or a doctor that performs an abortion,” DePasquale said. “If you want someone that’s going to put a woman in jail that has an abortion, you’re going to need another attorney general, because it’s not going to be me.”
DePasquale shared his own personal experience with abortion: that of his wife’s ectopic pregnancy in her 10th week of gestation.
“That, what was technically an abortion that night, saved Tracy’s life and preserved our ability to have two kids who are now doing great, 24 and 21, respectively. And we couldn’t be any happier with our kids,” he said. “But in five states today, that could land Tracy, myself and Dr. Ross in prison for making that decision.”
Sunday shared that he regularly speaks to his wife and his mother about the issue of abortion.
“And what I’ve discovered is a lot of people are still unclear on a few things,” he said. “In Pennsylvania, abortion is legal through the end of the six months of pregnancy, and after that, there’s exceptions for rape, incest, and life of the mother. That’s the law in Pennsylvania. That’s been the law here for over 40 years… And just like I would every other law, I will absolutely enforce and defend the abortion laws in Pennsylvania. Period.”
Sunday said he thought it was doubtful that 13 million Pennsylvanians would overturn the current law.
“It would never happen,” Sunday said of the hypothetical abortion ban scenario. “And that’s something that I feel very strongly about. I will absolutely support the abortion laws in Pennsylvania.”
DePasquale countered that Project 2025 is calling for a nationwide ban, noting that “Republican allies of Dave are trying to push a constitutional amendment in the Legislature that would override the governor and create a statewide ban in Pennsylvania.”
Asked what their top priority in office would be, DePasquale said protecting democracy.
“It is clearly been under threat, and we also have to make sure that our democracy is working for everybody,” he said. “The next attorney general will be dealing with litigation that will protect everyone’s right to vote, and make sure that that vote is counted accurately.”
Sunday countered that he would leverage his extensive prosecutorial experience and fighting crime as district attorney to protect communities and fight crime.
“(I) can tell you right now, if our community’s not safe, nothing else matters,” Sunday said “Our children are facing a brutal epidemic in fentanyl that kills 15 Pennsylvanians every day.
“We’re looking at internet crime, where predators are going after our children every single, single day. And we have seniors that are being attacked relentlessly from people that are trying to defraud them.”
On the topic of upholding free and fair elections, DePasquale said the attorney general’s job is to make sure that every legitimate vote is counted.
“We must defend Pennsylvania’s law,” he said. “We must make sure that the voters pick the winner, not the lawyers. This is important for our democracy, and that’s something I will make sure that we start on day one as attorney general, because the next attorney general will be sworn in before the next president. So we will be dealing with those lawsuits, and I’ll be ready for that on day one.”
He added that Pennsylvania must not allow a presidential candidate who loses an election and “happens to be a sore loser” to distort “our judgment.”
“We must defend Pennsylvania’s law,” he said.
DePasquale noted that as auditor general he took a lead role in investigating the voter registration system that ensured the 2020 election was secure.
Sunday vowed to protect democracy by enforcing the rule of law.
“As a career prosecutor, as a district attorney running to be the attorney general, I will handle this just like I’ve handled everything that’s come across my desk — in a nonpartisan fashion,” he said. “It is very simple. You apply the facts to the law. It doesn’t matter what your political party is. It doesn’t matter if you’re right, left, up, down, middle — none of it matters because our Constitution and our country is what comes first. And that’s my guarantee.”
On the topic of legalizing marijuana, Sunday was adamantly opposed to the idea, noting that the majority of DUIs these days involve marijuana use.
“Some of the most horrific traffic crashes and deaths that we’ve seen have been people under those circumstances,” he said. “And so, because of how serious this is, you know, once you put the toothpaste out of the tube, it’s not going back in. We have to at least consider the public safety impact of this as we progress.
DePasquale noted that in 2017 he released a report calling for the regulation and taxation of cannabis.
“I believe it would be smart policy and smart safety for our communities to legalize it,” he said. “By legalizing it, you would actually make it harder for children to get it. You’d also make sure that the product is safer. You would also make sure that law enforcement is involved in the drafting of it. And certainly we need to make sure that we have the technology available for that anyone that’s driving under the influence, whether it be alcohol or marijuana, is prosecuted fully on that.”
Roche asked the candidates about their positions on the death penalty, noting that Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, has continued Gov. Wolf’s moratorium on executions and has called upon the General Assembly to repeal the death penalty.
DePasquale said he has “serious reservations about capital punishment.”
“I believe life in prison is a very tough sentence,” he said. “And it also gives you the ability that if there is a mistake in the conviction to try to correct that error.”
Sunday said that, given the heinous nature of death penalty cases he supports keeping the death penalty legal.
“The Legislature has made it clear that there are certain factors that if they’re at play, then the jury, could have the ability to render a verdict of death,” he said. “When you talk about, some of the brutal, violent murders of police officers, the just sad, brutal murders of children, if the death penalty is called for in those cases, then I will support it and I will seek the death penalty.”
