Allegheny Co. D.A.'s Race 2023: Change Could Loom In The Courthouse

PITTSBURGH, PA — Stephen Zappala has been Allegheny County district attorney since 1998. After 25 years in office, will he be reelected to a new term this year?

Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey, U.S. Rep. Summer Lee of Pittsburgh the county Democratic Committee hope he will not be. Gainey, Lee and the county Democratic Committee all have endorsed Zappala's opponent in the upcoming May 16 Democratic primary, county Public Defender Matt Dugan.

Those endorsements are somewhat surprising in a county where Democrats hold a strong grip on most of the top elected offices and generally do not back challengers to incumbents. But Zappala has grown increasingly controversial in recent years and seems to have alienated some elected officials who normally would back him.

In 2021, calls for Zappala to resign occurred after he instructed his office not to offer plea deals to a Black attorney who publicly called his office "systemically racist."

Most recently, Zappala drew the ire of Democratic state Rep. Nick Pisciottano of West Mifflin. He criticized the district attorney after Zappala last month vowed to keep Kennywood from openingits season over security concerns. Those issues were resolved in a meeting between officials of Kennywood, Zappala's office and the Pennsylvania State Police and Kennywood will open as scheduled on April 22.

Dugan, of Moon, was appointed county public defender in January 2020 after having served as acting public defender since June 2019.

Dugan began his career with the Public Defender’s Office in 2007 as a trial attorney. In 2013, he was promoted to the position of trial manager and became deputy of the pretrial division in 2016. He assumed the role of chief deputy director in 2018.

Dugan recently has begun running a campaign commercial in which he states that Zappala has "betrayed our values."