The Democratic and Republican candidates for Pennsylvania Attorney General on Thursday night faced off on an array of issues including abortion, gun control, violent crime and immigration in their first debate. Moderator Brian Roche, an anchor on host station WGAL, guided Democratic candidate Eugene DePasquale and Republican Dave Sunday through a battery of questions that touched on racial injustice in the criminal system, the death penalty, reproductive and abortion rights and the protection of fair and free elections. While the candidates avoided combative exchanges, they sparred with personal attacks over their respective resumes.
Sunday, the York County District Attorney and a career prosecutor, repeatedly assailed his opponent for his lack of criminal prosecution experience and emphasizing the fact that his office has tried 40,000 criminal cases. “He would need a tutorial on day one on how to even find a courtroom, what it means to have an adversarial system, what it means to work through defense attorneys, what it means to advocate in front of a judge, he said. “How does it mean, what does it mean to work in front of a jury? Pennsylvanians deserve better.
” DePasquale — a former state legislator and two-term state auditor general — countered each attack by detailing the various statewide investigations he led that resulted in major crackdowns and reforms of failing state systems. As auditor general during the governorships of Republican Tom Corbett and Democrat.