Copyright The Philadelphia Inquirer
Less than 24 hours before Philadelphia voters will head to the polls to pick a district attorney on Election Day, former Municipal Court Judge Patrick Dugan announced Monday that he has secured the support of the city’s police union in his bid for top prosecutor. The news amounted to a last-minute turnabout for the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5, which avoided weighing in on the race for nearly a year. While the FOP had in the past opposed incumbent District Attorney Larry Krasner, neither Krasner nor Dugan sought an endorsement ahead of the May primary, when both candidates ran as Democrats. But the backing that Dugan announced Monday was not a typical FOP endorsement. The FOP’s support comes far later in the process than in past elections for Philadelphia district attorney, when the union spent months of campaigning and thousands of dollars opposing Krasner. Under the leadership of former police union president John McNesby, the FOP donated directly to Krasner’s opponents, ran cheeky ads on billboards, and even once deployed a Mr. Softee ice cream truck to reinforce their message that Krasner was “soft on crime.” No FOP-funded advertising is planned for Dugan, who lost the spring Democratic primary but won the Republican nomination through a write-in campaign to challenge Krasner again in the general election. And the police union does not intend to financially contribute to Dugan’s campaign, according to sources close to the union’s leadership who requested anonymity to speak freely about internal dynamics. In addition, the FOP this year did not conduct its typical endorsement process, which usually requires candidates to answer a detailed questionnaire and then win a vote by the union’s campaign committee. Instead, a rank-and-file member made a surprise motion at a recent general membership meeting asking for the union to support Dugan, said Steve Weiler, a retired police officer and a member of the FOP executive board who said the members there voted “overwhelmingly” in favor of the motion. Weiler said FOP members roundly reject Krasner, a former civil rights lawyer who sued the Philadelphia Police Department 75 times before becoming district attorney, then earned a reputation for prosecuting officers for crimes. “The police officers on the street don’t feel safe,” Weiler said. “They feel like every time they take the street, their jobs could be in jeopardy for doing their job. It’s not safe thinking like that as a police officer.” Conspicuously absent from Dugan’s news conference Monday was Roosevelt Poplar, the police union president who succeeded McNesby and has a working relationship with Krasner. Poplar did not respond to a request for comment through a spokesperson. » READ MORE: After years of warring with the FOP, Philly DA Larry Krasner says he likes its new president However, Dugan said he’s proud to have the police union membership’s backing, saying he’s been supported by rank-and-file members “since day one.” “They’ve always supported me,” he said. “I’ve never bumped into a member who said they’re not going to endorse me.” Krasner said Dugan’s framing of the FOP support as an official endorsement, despite the union not going through its typical process, is dishonest. “Will you please notify me if Pat Dugan ever says anything in his campaign that is true?” Krasner said Monday. It remains to be seen what impact the late FOP backing will have for Dugan, who faces steep odds in Tuesday’s election. Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans 6-1 in the city, and it has been 35 years since Philadelphia had a Republican district attorney. The lead-up to the election has been subdued, with Krasner largely ignoring Dugan’s attempts to debate and neither candidate spending money to advertise on television. » READ MORE: The Philly DA race is Krasner vs. Dugan, again. With a week to go, only one seems to be campaigning. And Dugan has struggled to fundraise this fall since announcing that he would run as the Republican nominee. He ran as a Democrat in the spring and lost to Krasner in the primary by about 28 percentage points. In the lead-up to the May primary, Dugan had the support of significant portions of organized labor, including the Philadelphia Building & Construction Trades Council, an umbrella organization composed of about 30 unions. But shortly after Dugan announced he’d run again in the fall as a Republican, Ryan Boyer, the business manager of the building trades, said he was “shocked.” Boyer said the group would not support Dugan again and would “do whatever we can to make sure that District Attorney Krasner wins.” » READ MORE: Philly’s building trades unions have turned against Pat Dugan as he runs against DA Larry Krasner as a Republican However, Dugan retains support from some individual building trades unions. On Monday, he stood alongside the leaders of several, including those that represent electricians, sprinkler fitters, and insulators. The most politically powerful among those is the deep-pocketed Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which has long been one of the most politically influential organized labor groups in the state for decades. In the spring, Local 98 gave Dugan’s campaign the maximum contributions allowed under city campaign finance law in a calendar year, meaning the union could not financially contribute directly to Dugan this fall. Business manager Mark Lynch said the union is helping Dugan in other ways, including mobilizing members to knock on doors in recent weeks and deploying 800 people to assist with get-out-the-vote efforts on Election Day. “We’ve had a full force operation,” Lynch said, “and we won’t rest until Judge Dugan’s our next DA.”
