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HARRISBURG — Republican Dave Sunday has won the election to be Pennsylvania’s next attorney general, defeating Democrat Eugene DePasquale in a closely watched race to become the state’s top prosecutor.
The Associated Press called the race for Sunday at 3:18 a.m. on Wednesday. Unofficial results show Sunday with 51% of the vote to 46.2%.
The newly elected attorney general will helm an office that functions as the law firm for Pennsylvania’s myriad agencies, with a primary mission of defending the state’s laws.
The office, with a budget of $144 million and a staff of over 1,000 lawyers, investigators and other staff, also prosecutes everything from bad business practices to environmental crimes to political corruption.
It has, over the past two decades, also served as a political stepping stone for the person leading it: Former attorneys general Tom Corbett, a Republican, and Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, went on to make successful runs for governor.
Sunday, 49, is a career prosecutor who has served as York County’s district attorney since 2018. He ran on a platform of promoting greater public safety and combating the ongoing opioid epidemic.
He has summarized his approach to law enforcement and criminal justice with two words: accountability and redemption. As York County’s district attorney, he said he believed it was his responsibility to go beyond prosecuting crimes by people struggling with addiction, and to understand what was driving the opioid crisis.
The York County District Attorney’s Office began working with the coroner as well as community organizations toward that goal, a collaborative effort Sunday said led to decreases in crime, in opioid deaths and in the county’s criminal caseload.
He has said that if elected attorney general, he would mirror that collaborative effort statewide.
On the campaign trail, Sunday emphasized his decades of experience working as a prosecutor in York, even before being elected district attorney, when he handled cases involving drug and other major crimes.
He was also appointed by the Department of Justice in 2013 as a special assistant U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, where he worked on drug, gang and illegal gun cases, including prosecuting over 100 members and affiliates of the Latin Kings, a violent criminal gang operating in York County.
During the campaign, Sunday found himself on the defensive on certain issues, most notably his stance on abortion. He declined to voice his personal opinion on abortion, but has said he does not believe the state constitution guarantees a right to one.
He also sidestepped questions during a debate earlier this year about whether there were any circumstances under which he would prosecute a person who has sought or performed an abortion. He has instead said that he does not believe that scenario will ever come to fruition, as Pennsylvania is unlikely to change its current laws, which permit abortions until 24 weeks in a pregnancy.
Sunday did say, multiple times, that the role of the attorney general is not to make law, but to defend the laws that are on the books.
DePasquale, who has spent the majority of his career in elected office, centered his campaign on his long experience in public policy, working in state government and leading a large and complex state office.
He served three two-year terms representing York County in the state legislature before being elected in 2012 as state auditor general, a job he held for eight years.
During his campaign for attorney general, DePasquale emphasized several of the reports the auditor general’s office completed during his tenure, including a 2019 performance audit of the state’s voter registration system in which he criticized the administration of fellow Democrat, then-Gov. Tom Wolf, for denying access to key documents necessary for a thorough review.
Under his watch, the office also revealed problems with the state’s child abuse hotline — where nearly 58,000 calls went unanswered over two years — and brought attention to a backlog of untested rape kits.
A Pittsburgh native who later made York his adopted home, DePasquale campaigned on defending the state’s elections, rebuffing any attempts to chip away at abortion access, prosecuting hate crimes against the LGBTQ+ community and cracking down on businesses that violate consumer rights.
He also said he believes the state needs to implement a so-called “red flag” law that would allow law enforcement or family to petition a judge to temporarily take away an individual’s firearms if it appears that person may harm themselves or others.
But DePasquale got flak on the campaign trail for his lack of experience as a prosecutor, with Sunday insisting that such a background is essential for the job, given that every decision as attorney general could “lead to a courtroom.” Some critics have also tried to paint DePasquale as a perennial candidate driven by ambition for higher office.
Also appearing on the ballot this year for attorney general were third-party candidates: Libertarian Robert Cowburn, Green Party candidate Richard L. Weiss, Constitution Party candidate Justin Magill and Forward Party candidate Eric Settle.
Though the race between DePasquale and Sunday was far lower profile than the presidential matchup, it was costly and at times tense.
The latest campaign finance reports show that DePasquale spent just over $5.1 million. Though Sunday’s campaign directly spent considerably less, political action committees supporting his candidacy poured millions of dollars into television ads on his behalf.
Sunday has received significant support from a PAC bankrolled by Pennsylvania’s richest man, GOP megadonor Jeff Yass, who primarily sinks money into efforts to elect candidates who support alternatives to public schools.
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