George Soros, Progressives to Spend Millions to Elect Reformist Prosecutors
A broad progressive coalition is spending millions of dollars to oust hard-line prosecutors around the country and replace them with criminal justice reform advocates.
The allies are hoping to replicate what is already happening in Philadelphia, where new District Attorney Larry Krasner (D) is reshaping the city’s criminal justice system with the goal of ending mass incarceration. Billionaire George Soros, who backed Krasner’s election in 2017 with a $1.45 million donation, is investing in other district attorney races across the nation this cycle. The American Civil Liberties Union, which received grant funding from Soros’ Open Society Foundations in 2014 to support criminal justice reform, is planning voter education and outreach programs in as many as 10 states. And political action committees like Real Justice and Color of Change are directly intervening in key races.
Soros, the ACLU, the two PACs and a constellation of allied state-level groups hope that by organizing activists, educating voters and dumping money into district attorney races across the country, they can slowly start to replace more of the country’s 2,400 top prosecutors with reformers like Krasner. They also aim to change the way the public views elections for district attorneys, who are some of the most powerful people in the criminal justice system. The groups have targeted races in about a dozen counties that collectively contain around 5 percent of the U.S. population.
Real Justice endorsed Krasner in the Philadelphia DA election last year. The group works to elect reform-minded prosecutors around the nation and is hoping to be deeply involved in about 15 races in 2018, activist and writer Shaun King, the group’s co-founder, told HuffPost last week.
This year, Real Justice has raised about $1 million in funding, according to the Federal Election Commission; King said he expects the group to use every dollar and staff member it has in those 15 races. Real Justice has already announced endorsements for six district attorney candidates — four in California and two in Texas. The political action committee arm of Color of Change, the longtime civil rights advocacy group, has raised about $2 million, according to the FEC, and has announced endorsements for three district attorney candidates.
One of the reformers’ favored candidates has already lost. Both Real Justice and Color of Change backed Judge Elizabeth Frizell, who was running for district attorney in Dallas County, Texas. She came in second in the county’s Democratic primary in March, and has since filed a lawsuit alleging that voter fraud cost her the win.
But Tuesday night, two black, reform-minded candidates in North Carolina ― former criminal defense attorney Satana Deberry in Durham County and former Assistant District Attorney Faris Dixon in Pitt County, both of whom are backed by Color of Change ― won their Democratic primary elections.
“We’re starting to send a message. We’re starting to get phone calls from DAs around the country asking us about our demands. We’re getting calls from candidates,” said Rashad Robinson, executive director of Color of Change’s nonprofit civil rights organization and spokesman for the group’s political action committee arm. “And as an organization that couldn’t get DAs to return our calls, this is the power of actually being engaged in the democracy this way.”
The political action committee expects to be involved in five to seven more races in various states this election cycle, Robinson said
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