Race to watch: Pennsylvania’s 2024 general election for attorney general

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Several row offices in Pennsylvania are up for election in 2024 — attorney general, auditor general and treasurer. In the race for attorney general, six candidates are on the ballot.

The attorney general is the highest-ranking law enforcement official in Pennsylvania. While the position existed as early as 1643 in the colony of New Sweden, it later became enshrined in the state constitution in 1776. Prior to 1980, the office was an appointed position.

Tasked with prosecuting organized crime and public corruption, the attorney general represents the Commonwealth in legal battles and leads statewide and multi-county investigating grand juries, among a lengthy list of other duties.

The Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General employs hundreds of attorneys, investigators and other staff. Democratic Attorney General Michelle Henry currently holds the office. Gov. Josh Shapiro chose Henry to finish out his second term after he became governor in 2022.

Henry is not running to retain the office. Democrat Eugene DePasquale and Republican Dave Sunday are representing the major parties.

Forward Party candidate Eric Settle, Constitution Party candidate Justin Magill, Green Party candidate Richard Weiss and Libertarian Rob Cowburn will also be on the ballot.

Major party candidates

Democratic candidate Eugene DePasquale

Eugene DePasquale, 53, grew up in Pittsburgh with a love of sports, “Star Wars” and his younger brothers, Vincent and Anthony. Anthony struggled with muscular dystrophy. DePasquale said he and his siblings grew up without health insurance.

DePasquale attended Widener University Commonwealth Law School. He got his start in 2002 working as the director for the City of York Department of Economic Development. From 2003 to 2006, he worked as the deputy secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. DePasquale said the experience taught him a big lesson: nuance.

“Things are never simple,” he said.

DePasquale served in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives from 2007 to 2013. He said his biggest accomplishment was keeping a simple campaign promise to a constituent who complained about Harrisburg politicians being secluded.

He committed to putting his expenses online. DePasquale did not realize that people were going to make a big deal out of transparency — but they did. He said some considered him a reformer bringing accountability to the state capital.

“I became the first legislator to post my expenses online and also helped rewrite the state’s open records law,” DePasquale said.

He also worked alongside then-state Rep. Josh Shapiro to ban texting while driving across Pennsylvania.

DePasquale made a name for himself as Pennsylvania’s “eccentric” auditor general, turning a sleepy state agency into a newsmaker.

“Without trying to be funny about it, I thought it was implied in the office that because it’s an elected office you weren’t there just to make sure the numbers added up. That was an important part of the job, but there was this other role of making sure the government programs were working as designed,” DePasquale said.

He won. He took office in 2013. As the chief fiscal watchdog, DePasquale started early. On his first day in Harrisburg, he issued an audit into safe drinking water. He later took aim at the shale gas industry and the state Department of Environmental Protection’s inability to oversee it. Under his leadership, publicly announced audits from Harrisburg soon became commonplace.

DePasquale said people challenged his authority but the court system ultimately backed him up.

In 2016, DePasquale uncovered the state child abuse hotline’s failure to answer calls. He was elected to a second term later that year.

In 2019, DePasquale found county officials accepted gifts and trips from voting machine vendors. From a investigation looking into a reduced backlog in rape kits to the discovery of the state’s fuel tax being used to fund state police, DePasquale also critiqued former Gov. Tom Wolf’s pandemic-era business shutdown waiver program.

DePasquale failed to unseat Republican U.S. Rep. Scott Perry from his Congressional seat in 2020.

He used the break after finishing his second term to spend more time with his children. He went on a “birthday hike” with his son. He went to see Bruce Springsteen and Taylor Swift concerts with his daughter. DePasquale trained for Ironman Triathlons.

“After the governor got elected, I realized there was an opening there and I thought my skills were well-suited for the challenges ahead — the threats to democracy, the threats to abortion rights,” he said.

He said there’s value in having experience running a “complicated state agency.” As part of his campaign for attorney general, DePasquale is prioritizing abortion rights, democracy, consumer protections, public corruption, the environment and the enshrinement of LGBTQ rights.

DePasquale knocked his opponent’s apprehension to share his opinion on abortion. In regards to the opioid crisis, DePasquale said he has seen the suffering first hand.

“My dad was wounded in Vietnam, which led to eventually addiction to painkillers and eventually him dealing and incarceration,” he said. “So I’ve seen both sides of the most failed war in the history of the United States and that’s the war on drugs.”

He said he wants to “turn the War on Drugs into a battle against addiction” by leveraging the office as a collaborator between rehab programs, law enforcement, county governments and advocacy organizations.

DePasquale wants potential constituents to see him as a fighter. He said he sees a more expansive purpose for the attorney general’s office.

“Public safety is critical and if anybody harms a fellow Pennsylvanian, I will make sure that they get prosecuted but I believe the office is about more than that and that’s where I’m going to make sure that the office is fulfilling all of our rights — all of our freedoms,” he said.

DePasquale is currently an adjunct professor at the University of Pittsburgh.

Republican candidate Dave Sunday

Dave Sunday, 49, is the York County district attorney. He’s held the role since 2018. His office handles about 9,000 cases each year. He grew up in central Pennsylvania. Sunday joined the Navy at 18.

“I come from a blue collar background. My father’s a retired public school teacher. My mom is from the coal region,” Sunday said.

He said he grew up during his four years in the Navy. When he returned home, he attended Penn State Harrisburg and received a degree in finance. Sunday then attended Widener Law School. During his eight years in college and law school, Sunday worked as a corporate analyst at UPS.

Sunday said his tenure in the military and with UPS forged his leadership skills and established the foundation for his criminal justice philosophies. After law school, he worked as a law clerk in the York County Court of Common Pleas.

He then transitioned to the county district attorney’s office. Sunday started off prosecuting felony drug cases.

He graduated to leading the office’s major crime unit. Sunday was also appointed as a special assistant U.S. attorney for Pennsylvania’s federal court to help prosecute gang cases.

“Through that, I led some large scale like gang conspiracy prosecutions — including one against a gang called the Latin Kings that were trafficking heroin into York city, where we arrested and indicted 100 of them in an operation,” Sunday said.

Eventually, he worked his way up to leading litigation within the district attorney’s office. He helped reorient the York County Drug Task Force and equipped police offices with naloxone.

As opioid deaths skyrocketed in York County, Sunday said he began supporting the community — holding town halls and meeting with affected families. He said he developed a passion for tackling addiction.

“The opioid epidemic was decimating families, just destroying families,” Sunday said. “So many people didn’t want to talk about it. No one wanted to let people know what was happening. People were dying and it was one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen and it really transformed my thoughts on safe communities.”

Since encountering addiction amongst his constituents, Sunday said he’s learned a sobering lesson.

“Our prisons have become the de facto mental health service providers for our Commonwealth and that’s a terrible situation,” he said.

In 2014, Sunday helped create the York County Heroin Task Force, now known as the York Opioid Collaborative.

“We work with the hospitals, with the police, with first responders,” Sunday said. “And essentially the goal of this is to do everything we can to decrease barriers to treatment and to also decrease the likelihood of children using in the first place.”

Since taking over as district attorney, Sunday said there’s been a meaningful reduction in crime, homicides and overdose death rates. In 2020, state House Republicans appointed Sunday to the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing.

Sunday said he’s been motivated to run for attorney general by the positive work that has already been done around the state. He believes he has something valuable to add to the game plan. He decided that he was going to run in 2022 after having a conversation with his wife about his desire to bring people together.

“I’ve been supported by people from all parts of the political spectrum and I think the world needs a little bit more of that and so she was like, ‘Well, here’s your chance,’” Sunday said.

While the attorney general’s office has a broad scope of responsibilities. Sunday has touted his numbers as York’s top prosecutor and focused his campaign on public safety.

“I’m telling everybody the exact same thing — and this is from Erie to Wayne County to West Philadelphia — if our community is not safe, nothing else matters,” Sunday said.

He said his philosophy is “accountability and redemption.” Sunday wants to use the attorney general’s office as a bully pulpit between prosecutors across the state. If a re-entry program is working in one county, Sunday said he wants to elevate it.

“One of the things we can do is show people best practices with how things work in other parts of the state,” Sunday said.

In addition to addressing the opioid crisis, Sunday said that he wants to leverage the attorney general’s office to protect seniors in Pennsylvania.

“I think that the way we treat our aging population is a direct reflection on who we are as a community and so that’s very, very important to me,” he said.

Sunday was the first Republican to jump in the race for attorney general and he has the endorsement of the Pennsylvania Republican Party.

He defeated state Rep. Craig Williams in the primary to be the party’s sole nominee in November. Sunday disagreed with Williams over the legislator’s role in attempting to impeach Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner.

“Our elected officials are elected by the people. One of the things that I think we need to get away from as a society is basically painting with a broad brush and substituting our personal feelings for the law,” Sunday said.

Sunday said Philadelphia voters should decide Krasner’s future.

Minor party candidates

Eric Settle, the Forward Party candidate for attorney general, is campaigning on reforming Pennsylvania’s voting laws to allow for rank choice voting, reducing gun violence and regulating the Commonwealth’s hospital acquisition regulation.

Constitution Party candidate Justin Magill doesn’t appear to have a campaign website, but the state party’s platform highlights seven principles: life, liberty, family, property, the Constitution, state’s rights and American sovereignty.

Green Party candidate Richard Weiss is sticking to the national party’s platform for his campaign. In a WPSU questionnaire in 2022 when he was a U.S. Senate candidate, Weiss said he supports renewable energy, Medicare for all, reproductive rights, gun regulation and “restorative justice reforms that reduce crime and save money, while improving police professionalism.”

On his campaign website, Libertarian Rob Cowburn said he wants to remove regulatory economic barriers in Pennsylvania, promote charter schools, eradicate corruption and reduce roadblocks for third parties to enter the political system.