It was a bad night for some progressive prosecutors in Pennsylvania and Virginia, with voters choosing to side with tough-on-crime candidates over their more reform-minded challengers.
In Pennsylvania, an acrimonious district attorney race in Allegheny County ended with victory for the incumbent Stephen Zappala, a registered Democrat who had been booted off the ticket after losing the primary race to public defender Matt Dugan. Zappala launched a write-in campaign and won the Republican nomination, setting up the rare rematch.
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Zappala, a 25-year incumbent in the southwestern Pennsylvania county, which sees Democrats outnumber Republicans 2 to 1, became a local flashpoint in the national debate over criminal justice and the liberal push for reform.
Zappala claimed Dugan, who had never prosecuted a case in his life, would turn Allegheny County, the state’s second most populous county, into a mini San Francisco or Los Angeles, two progressive havens that have seen crime skyrocket in recent years — and the voters seemed to agree.
Dugan had advocated eliminating cash bail, lowering incarceration rates, and looking for ways other than criminal convictions to address nonviolent crimes often driven by addiction and mental illness.
Zappala, still technically a Democrat, took the stage at an event at Cupka’s II on Pittsburgh’s South Side with his wife and three of their four sons as well as former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett, a Republican, by his side.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do,” Zappala said in an 11-minute speech, where he mentioned tackling an uptick in juvenile crime.
In the state’s Washington County race, Republican Jason Walsh beat Democratic challenger Christina DeMarco-Breeden with 61% of the vote. Walsh was appointed to the post following the 2021 death of incumbent Eugene Vittone.
In the two years that Walsh has been in office, he has turned Washington County into the epicenter of the death penalty fight and has made a name for himself for how frequently he has pushed for the death penalty and been tough on crime.
Of the county’s nine murders in 2021, he sought the death penalty in five. His office has 12 capital cases that have yet to go to trial, making up about 25% of the total pending death penalty cases in Pennsylvania, though Washington County only makes up about 2% of the state’s population.
It was a mixed bag in Virginia for a trio of progressive prosecutors funded by megadonor George Soros who swept their Democratic primaries. Arlington County Commonwealth’s Attorney Parisa Dehghani-Tafti and Fairfax County’s Steve Descano won their races while Loudoun County’s Buta Biberaj, who was elected to her post in 2019, lost to Robert Anderson, who last served as commonwealth’s attorney two decades ago. Biberaj has not conceded despite the Virginia Public Access Project calling the race for her opponent shortly after midnight.
“There is no current path to victory for Buta Biberaj and we look forward to waiting for the due process to run course,” Anderson said Wednesday. “I am confident the results will remain the same, and look forward to serving as your next Commonwealth’s Attorney.”
Under Biberaj’s watch, crime rates have risen and she has had to deal with voters and political rivals claiming she hasn’t done enough to keep the community safe.
In New York’s Broome County, Republican Paul Battisti forged a comeback to win a race he narrowly lost four years ago.
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Battisti defeated former Democratic Binghamton Mayor Matt Ryan with 56% of the vote, according to the latest unofficial results from the Broome County Board of Elections.
Battisti will take office at the end of the year.
