HARRISBURG — The race to become Pennsylvania’s next attorney general will be one of the more closely watched contests this fall, as six candidates jockey for the chance to occupy one of the most powerful offices in the state.
With a budget of $144 million and a staff of 1,060 prosecutors, attorneys, investigators, and other staff, the Office of Attorney General is, at its core, the law firm that represents Pennsylvania’s vast government and defends its laws in court.
But it also investigates and prosecutes everything from organized crime to political corruption, a mission that over the past several decades has boosted the office’s profile — and by extension, the public profile of the person at the helm of the agency.
In recent years, the attorney general has played a central role in deciding issues with national political stakes, most notably through defending the commonwealth’s election laws, fighting attempts in 2020 to dispute President Joe Biden’s win in the state, and defending challenges to ballot access here.
The office has also produced some of the most notable investigations and prosecutions of the past two decades, including several politically explosive scandals enveloping Pennsylvania’s legislature. It also issued scathing grand jury reports, including one that made headlines across the globe for revealing how top Roman Catholic leaders in Pennsylvania covered up decades of child sex abuse involving more than 1,000 victims and hundreds of priests.
There is no incumbent in the race this year. Attorney General Michelle Henry was appointed to the job in 2023 by her predecessor, Democrat Josh Shapiro, who stepped down before his term was over to become governor. She is not running for a full term.
There are two major party candidates — Democrat Eugene DePasquale and Republican Dave Sunday — as well as four third-party contenders: Justin L. Magill of the Constitution Party, Eric Settle of the Forward Party, Green Party candidate Richard L. Weiss, and Libertarian Robert Cowburn.
The winner will serve a four-year term in an office with a rich history dating back nearly 400 years. Yet the attorney general has been an elected position only since 1980, with the first elected candidate sworn into office in 1981.
With several weeks to go until the Nov. 5 election, many voters are still picking who to vote for. An Emerson College poll of likely voters released in late August showed DePasquale and Sunday in a virtual dead heat, with 14% undecided.
Two TV debates, both featuring the two major party candidates, are currently scheduled for the race: 10 a.m., Oct. 3 on WGAL (the debate will air in the evening) and 7 p.m., Oct. 15 on ABC27.
This guide may be updated as additional information about the candidates becomes available.
What does the attorney general do?
Pennsylvania’s attorney general oversees hundreds of employees divided among criminal, civil, and public protection divisions.
The Commonwealth Attorneys Act prescribes the office’s primary duties, which include directing statewide grand juries, prosecuting crimes, and representing Pennsylvania if the state is audited or prosecuted federally.
The official mission of the office is to protect “life, property, and constitutional and consumer rights, so as to ensure safety and freedom for those living in and visiting the Commonwealth.”
The attorney general also sits on the Board of Pardons and appoints the state’s consumer advocate.
Elected attorneys general often bring their own prosecutorial brand to the office’s work, based on their backgrounds and particular legal areas of interest.
The office is one of Pennsylvania’s three independent row offices (the other two are the state treasurer and the state auditor general), and at least one past attorney general has seized on that fact to make legal decisions that have clashed with the governor — and even the office’s prescribed duties.
That tension came to a head most notably during Kathleen Kane’s tenure. In 2013, Kane refused to defend Republican Gov. Tom Corbett and the state’s health secretary in a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of a statewide same-sex marriage ban.
Kane was praised by progressive groups and elected officials for the decision, but also criticized by others who believed she was shirking her legal duty to defend Pennsylvania’s laws.
Democratic attorney general candidate Eugene DePasquale seen in the Capitol building in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
DePasquale, 53, has spent much of his career in elected office.
He attended the College of Wooster, the University of Pittsburgh, and Widener University Commonwealth Law School. In 2006, he was elected to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, where he served three two-year terms representing York County.
In 2012, he ran and won the job of state auditor general, where he maxed out at two four-year terms at the helm of that office.
In 2020, he snagged the Democratic nomination to run against Republican U.S. Rep. Scott Perry in the 10th Congressional District, but ultimately lost that race.
Though he does not have prosecutorial experience, DePasquale has centered his campaign around his years of working in Harrisburg, a deep bench of policy positions, and a long record of policy fights.
A Pittsburgh native who later made York his adopted home, DePasquale was part of a large freshman class of lawmakers ushered into office on a wave of public outrage after the 2005 pay raise controversy that scarred the legislature’s reputation.
When he ran for auditor general in 2012, he often touted his record in the legislature of minimizing government spending. He frequently boasted that he was the first legislator to post his expenses online and that he had the lowest among lawmakers. He once noted during a debate that he bought his district office furniture at a yard sale.
As auditor general, DePasquale made headlines with several of his office’s reports, 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.
DePasquale’s office also revealed troubling problems with the state’s child abuse hotline — where nearly 58,000 calls went unanswered over two years — and brought attention to the backlog of untested rape kits.
Earlier this year, he snagged the Democratic nomination over four competitors in a cordial primary.
In recent months, DePasquale has drawn heavily — more so than in campaigns past — on personal challenges he’s faced, ones he believes make him uniquely qualified to understand the struggles of people outside the halls of power.
At the Pennsylvania Press Club in Harrisburg this August, he talked about his father’s yearslong addiction to opioids after returning from the Vietnam War, which resulted in a decadelong federal prison sentence. He also discussed his family’s struggles taking care of his disabled brother, and the difficult decision he and his ex-wife faced after she experienced an ectopic pregnancy.
DePasquale is currently an adjunct professor at the University of Pittsburgh.
Top issues: If elected attorney general, DePasquale has said he would defend the state’s elections, rebuff any attempts to chip away at abortion access, prosecute hate crimes against the LGBTQ+ community, and crack down on businesses that violate consumer rights.
“I've got the spine to take on big corporations, big insurance companies, and to run complex investigations,” he said at a March debate.
When asked how he would address violent crime during the same debate, DePasquale said the state needs to focus on mental health in addition to getting guns away from “bad people.” He said the state needs to implement a so-called “red flag” law, which 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.
Endorsements: Democratic members of the legislature; county and local officials; U.S. Sen. John Fetterman (D., Pa.); former U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle (D., Pa.); labor unions including the Pennsylvania State Education Association, AFSCME Council 13, IBEW Local 98, and the Pennsylvania State Corrections Officers Association; and organizations including the Giffords Law Center, the Conservation Voters of PA and Planned Parenthood in Pennsylvania.
Born in Harrisburg and raised in Cumberland County, Sunday served in the U.S. Navy then attended Penn State University and Widener University Commonwealth Law School.
Sunday, 49, is a career prosecutor who has made public safety and battling the opioid epidemic the cornerstone of his campaign for the office.
The Republican has been York County’s district attorney since 2018. Sunday began his legal career as a law clerk for a York County Common Pleas judge before joining the county district attorney’s office. There, he handled cases involving drug and other major crimes, eventually rising to oversee some of the office’s biggest cases.
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.
In an interview last year with the York Daily Record, Sunday said the first galvanizing moment in his career came in 2012 when he prosecuted a case involving a man who had repeatedly scammed an older York County resident with Alzheimer's disease out of thousands of dollars.
The case, he told the newspaper, made his blood boil. It also made him realize that the criminal justice system needs to be more responsive to the people who unwittingly get entangled in it, including families of those charged with crimes.
The second galvanizing moment in his career was the opioid epidemic.
The epidemic produced a new wave of crime related to the desperation felt by people struggling with addiction. Sunday said it became imperative to go beyond prosecuting those crimes to understand the underlying causes of the 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 the county’s criminal caseload.
“What we do when we prosecute cases is just the tip of the iceberg,” he told the newspaper.
York County has seen a reduction in crime and its prison population during his tenure, according to the York Daily Record. The City of York experienced a 36% drop in gun crime from 2022 to 2023, the news outlet reported.
“Everyone is given the opportunity to change their life,” Sunday told the paper of the York County Group Violence Intervention initiative, where he is a founding member. “The reality is, if you don’t do that, you’re going to be arrested and be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, Sunday directed local law enforcement not to issue citations to businesses that violated Gov. Wolf’s business closure order. He issued a similar mandate not to prosecute citations related to Wolf’s 2021 order requiring masking in schools.
“This order includes built-in justifications and the language of the order does not include the details of how they can be proven,” Sunday said at the time.
Sunday was the first Republican to announce his candidacy for attorney general last year. Though he was endorsed by the party, he faced a challenger in this past spring’s primary election, which became a scrappier fight for the nomination than expected.
Sunday’s opponent, state Rep. Craig Williams of Delaware County, tried to brand Sunday as a progressive on criminal justice issues, a characterization that Sunday has denied. Earlier in life, Sunday was registered as a Democrat. In a letter to supporters, Sunday explained that when he was young, he followed family tradition when first registering to vote, but that it became clear after college that his views were firmly Republican.
During a debate between the two men this past March, Sunday said “the No. 1 issue” facing the state is the fentanyl epidemic.
“I’m running for attorney general because I believe that our open border and the fentanyl pouring in here is going to kill more Americans and more Pennsylvanians than we’ve ever seen in our lives,” Sunday said at the time.
Top issues: Public safety and the opioid epidemic are Sunday’s top priorities. He’s pointed to his collaborative work in York County as a model, and described his philosophy as “accountability and redemption.”
During a March debate, Sunday argued one of the No. 1 causes of crime is the failure to arrest, charge, and prosecute people for illegal possessions of firearms. “Because until that's done, we are never going to see a change,” he said.
Sunday said during the same debate that he does not believe the state constitution guarantees a right to abortion access, arguing that decision belongs to the legislature.
He later added, “I will follow the law, whatever that law is, as determined by the legislature.”
When asked about election integrity, Sunday said that in York County he assigned detectives to investigate criminal election complaints. “And as a result of that, we were able to see … that there was not material fraud in the county of York to have changed the York County election,” he said. “I can't speak to any other place.”
During the debate, Sunday said he does not support legalizing marijuana for recreational use, despite public support for it and a push by lawmakers to do so.
He also said he would seek the death penalty for qualifying crimes. The last execution in Pennsylvania occurred 25 years ago, and there is currently a moratorium on its use.
An attorney from Erie, Magill attended Pennsylvania Western University, Edinboro, and later, the Roger Williams University School of Law. While pursuing his law degree, he interned in the criminal division of the Rhode Island Attorney General’s Office. He served in the U.S. Army, and runs a private law practice specializing in estate planning and business startups.
The Constitution Party of Pennsylvania on its website says it advocates for a more limited role for government; removing government regulation, fees, and taxes to improve the economy; and restoring accountability in government. The national party’s platform opposes abortion and same-sex marriage; objects to laws requiring gun or ammunition registration; and believes “education as a whole” should not be separate from religious faith.
In an interview, Magill said he believes the government's purpose is to protect individual rights, and that “the right to life” is fundamental. Parents, he believes, should drive educational decisions for children, with schools being organized at the local or community level with direct parental involvement.
He said he does not have a campaign website, and noted he is running in part to allow voters to have a greater choice at the ballot. He believes the attorney general’s office employs “exceptional” staff who have carried out the agency’s mission well over the years.
Asked whether he would have difficulty defending laws he personally disagrees with, Magill said: “I celebrate the fact the office cannot make laws. Nobody other than your elected officials can terminate a law without violating the rights of the people. I think our courts have gone very awry on that issue. … It's good that they [the Office of Attorney General] are staying within the constitution.”
He says he will be truly independent in running the attorney general’s office, and will ensure the position is not beholden to any party. In his legal career, he has specialized in health care law and touted his involvement in helping pass a high-profile law in the 2000s that required insurance companies to cover autism services for individuals under 21 years of age.
Settle supports abortion rights as they currently stand, and has said he will work to reduce the number of illegal weapons in communities across the state. As attorney general, he said he would more closely monitor health care system mergers, and crack down on financial schemes that take advantage of vulnerable residents.
A lawyer from Allegheny County, Weiss supports criminal justice reforms that include ending cash bail, decriminalizing drug use and sex work, and establishing citizens' police review boards with strong police professionalism standards.
In a questionnaire to public radio station WPSU that he answered as a U.S. Senate candidate, Weiss said he believes nonviolent offenders should be diverted from incarceration to other programs. He said he favors using restorative justice — which he defined as a collaborative process involving repairing harm to victims and focusing on reintegrating perpetrators into the community — as an alternative to incarceration “as much as possible.”
He supports ending traffic stops; decriminalizing or legalizing cannabis; expunging past criminal records from cannabis convictions; releasing older and infirm inmates; and placing body cameras on officers and anyone arrested.
He also supports reinstating a ban on assault weapons, and legislation defining military and civilian-grade weapons.
Cowburn, a lawyer and president of the Libertarian Party in Pennsylvania, has made what he calls regulatory overreach at the state and federal levels the crux of his campaign. He has talked about removing regulatory barriers to economic development, although he has not specified which regulations he would target.
He argues public education has failed students — believing it emphasizes conformity over critical thinking — and said he supports expanding access to charter schools. If elected, he has said he would create a specialized unit within the office to root out public corruption at all levels of government.
He also has said he would advocate for electoral reforms, including reducing barriers for third-party candidates to run for office.
This guide includes language from a primary edition written by Félicie Jungels, Maya Mehrara, and Sophia Takla. They are graduate students at New York University in the American Journalism Online program and reported as part of a collaboration with Spotlight PA.
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