PHILADELPHIA (CN) — York County District Attorney Dave Sunday and former Pennsylvania Auditor General Eugene DePasquale dominated Tuesday’s primary election for the Keystone State’s attorney general seat, setting up a high-stakes race for the state’s top prosecutor role.
In the Republican primary, Sunday clobbered his lone competitor, state Representative Craig Williams, by over 40 points with 77% of votes tallied, according to the Associated Press.
During his victory speech in York, Sunday thanked his mother, wife, son and employees, before giving thanks to the police officers in the room.
"If a community is not safe, nothing matters, and you guys get it done every day," he said.
On the other side of the aisle, DePasquale came on top in a crowded five-candidate Democratic race, raking in 37.6% of the vote with 83% of votes tallied Tuesday evening.
"This was not an easy race," DePasquale said during his victory speech in Pittsburgh. "We ran against four incredibly qualified, tough opponents. They made me better. Hopefully, I made them better."
During the early stages of the race, campaign fundraising was relatively even between the two Republican candidates. However, Williams’ push to become the state’s top prosecutor hit an insurmountable snag after the state Republican Party endorsed Sunday for the role.
“When you get an endorsement, it’s an asset that you can use when you’re reaching out to funders and others — ‘Hey, I’m already endorsed, they think I’m the best candidate,'” said Chris Borick, a political science professor at Muhlenberg College.
“And so as this time set in and candidates started to do more of their outreach in this home stretch, I can only imagine for Williams, the lack of an endorsement became a bit of an anchor in terms of getting donor support," he added.
While Williams received over $112,000 in donations between Jan. 1 and March 4, they sputtered to less than $7,500 from March 5 to April 8. In contrast, Sunday received approximately $162,000 and $122,000 in those same respective periods.
Following the state party’s endorsement of Sunday, Williams took a more aggressive tone throughout his campaign, bashing Sunday as a progressive Democrat and taunting his opponent for stuttering during a debate by dubbing him “Stumbling Sunday.”
Despite Williams’ efforts though, his campaign’s populist overhaul could not ultimately surmount Sunday’s political machine.
“Are the Republican voters going into the polls today knowing that Sunday got the endorsement and Williams didn’t? I’d say overwhelmingly no,” Borick added. “But the endorsement has certainly helped people see more Sunday communications than Williams would have had the opportunity to do with his limited funding.”
In the Democratic race, DePasquale won nearly twice as many votes as the second-place candidate, Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer, as of 11 p.m. Eastern Time.
Despite receiving minimal campaign donations compared to his competitors, DePasquale found electoral success in large part due to a staunch base in western Pennsylvania, where DePasquale was born and currently resides.
Unlike DePasquale, the other four Democratic candidates were all from the Greater Philadelphia area, leaving them each unable to maintain a monopoly of their hometown's votes.
“We’ve seen historically that if you have a crowded field and one candidate stands out regionally, like a western Pennsylvania candidate when everyone else is from the southeast, it’s an advantage,” Borick said before polls closed Tuesday. “While there’s not as many voters in the southwest and in the Pittsburgh area — especially for Democrats — if you can more or less overperform there, it opens up the door for a chance that is not present for the rest of the candidates.”
With his opponents clustered in the state’s southeast corner, DePasquale made immense gains in the rest of the state, holding a lead in nearly every county west of the Delaware Valley as of Tuesday evening.
Sunday and DePasquale's party nomination wings set up what is predicted to be a competitive race.
“I would argue a lot’s at stake,” Borick said. “The attorney general’s position is a very powerful office in the state. Short of the governor, you can make a case that it might be the most important position, given the real powers of the office and the discretion at the hands of an attorney general to direct resources toward the goals that they seek.”
Additionally, attorneys general in Pennsylvania have frequently used the position as a stepping stone to the state’s governorship — two of the last three governors in Pennsylvania were the state’s top prosecutor first.
And as attorneys general across the country have ramped up attacks against federal policies enacted by presidents, the seat has taken on a growing national importance.
“Attorneys general have become sort of the bulwark in opposition to federal mandates,” said Berwood Yost, director of the Floyd Institute for Public Policy at Franklin & Marshall College.
“We have seen attorneys general, who felt that federal legislation had gone too far, suing to stop the advancement of that kind of stuff," he added. "And so the ability of the attorney general to do those kinds of things gives them great power.”
Democrats in Pennsylvania have had great success in recent elections for attorney general, winning the election every year since 2012. However, prior to the 2012 election, no Democrat had ever reached the seat since it became an elected position in 1980.
"We’ll see if there’s any built-in advantage right now,” Borick said. “Contemporary results suggest it’s been a productive period for Democrats, but long-term history still says Republicans can have pretty significant success in the state.”
“One thing I can assure is it will be hotly contested,” he added
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