Eugene DePasquale, Democrat, Candidate for Attorney General
When it comes to the economy, my guiding principle is fairness. Workers deserve a fair shot to make a living, support their families and be safe on the job. Billionaires should pay their fair share. I think workers should be safe from harassment and discrimination, and I believe that no full time worker should live in poverty because of shamefully low wages, worker misclassification or wage theft. As your Attorney General, I'd always be on the lookout for fairness.
The cost of housing has skyrocketed, there's no denying that. As Attorney General, I'd go after any policy or regulation that seeks to discriminate some folks from renting or owning a home, and I agree with Kamala Harris' proposal to drastically increase our housing stock in the coming years.
This one is personal for me. Growing up, my brother had muscular dystrophy which meant that we couldn't ever get health insurance and even routine care was often prohibitively expensive. Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, families like mine can't be denied coverage anymore and I'm a strong supporter of that law and its many tenets to get good coverage to every American. Having lived the difficulty of not being able to get insurance, I'll always fight to defend others from the same fate.
We need a humane, orderly immigration process. We have to reform the legal immigration process so that there are fewer illegal crossings, and I believe if you try to jump the line by coming here illegally, you should go to the back of the line of that legal process. I support border security and increased investment at the border, many of the pieces of the bipartisan deal that was in Congress.
I will never prosecute a woman or her doctor for having an abortion in this state. I don't care what regressive policy the state legislature sneaks through; I will never use the Attorney General's office to lock up a woman for receiving care. My own family has dealt with an ectopic pregnancy that we had to terminate at 10 weeks to preserve our ability to have children in the future (which we did - 2 healthy ones!). That procedure is now illegal in many states. It's not an outlandish possibility it could happen here but let me be clear, as your Attorney General, I will never enforce an abortion ban.
Gun violence is tearing communities apart, and so much of it is heartbreakingly preventable. I support emergency risk protection orders or Red Flag Laws, and universal background checks. Without stepping on 2nd Amendment rights, we have to do more to ensure that the dangerous people who intend to use a firearm against another person or themselves do not have that opportunity. The presence of a gun in the home drastically increases the risk of completed suicide, and this is a major problem for our veterans. Red Flag laws can temporarily remove those firearms until those people get the care they need.
The constitution of this great state clearly says that you have the right to clean air and water. As Attorney General, if some out of state mega trillionaire corporation comes here and thinks they can violate that right, I'm going to stand up for you.
No matter who you are or who you love, we deserve the same rights in this Commonwealth and I have no interest in engaging in culture wars that are simply intended to bully our young LGTBQ+ friends and neighbors.
The cost of higher education is extraordinary. Having helped my two children pay for college, I've seen this firsthand recently. It's important that education remain accessible, whether that's a 2 year degree, a 4 year degree, or job training, and cost should not stop someone from seeking the training they need for the 21st century jobs that we have in this state. Like then-Attorney General Josh Shapiro, I'd be on the lookout for predatory lending practices that keep students in debt for decades beyond their graduation. I would also keep an eye on shady practices of for-profit education entities that have been shown to misled students about their accreditation.
I'm ready for the job of Attorney General. I've led a complicated statewide agency before and I'm ready to hit the ground running on my very first day. I led an investigation that found thousands of untested rape kits and fought to end the backlog and bring violent sexual offenders to justice; I investigated nursing homes that were putting our aging Pennsylvanians in danger; and when I found that calls to the child abuse hotline were going unanswered, I worked with counties until their programs were ready to handle every single call. I have a record of making this state safer, and I share the values of working families in this state. I look forward to the opportunity to put my experience and my values to work for you.