Nearly 3/4 of All Contributions to Larry Krasner This Year Came from Outside Philly
Hundreds of individual donations poured in from California, and a couple even came from as far as Qatar.
Larry Krasner, the district attorney of Philadelphia (photo by Getty Images)
Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner sure does have a lot of friends — or at least supporters — in faraway places.
With polls set to open in the city on Tuesday morning at 7 a.m., Philly Mag analyzed the contributions made to Larry Krasner for District Attorney, the official campaign, from January 1st through Saturday. We found that almost three-quarters of those contributions came from outside of Philadelphia, according to city campaign records as of Sunday evening. Pretty impressive in a municipal election.
During that period, the Krasner campaign received a total of 2,855 contributions. Of those, only 795 (around 28 percent) came from the city where he’s seeking reelection.
The rest come from all sorts of places.
Connecticut. Texas. Coral Gables, Florida. The gorgeous town of Grand Lake in Colorado. More than 18 percent originate all the way on the other side of the country, in California. Krasner has even received money from the other side of the world, with two recorded contributions from Doha, Qatar.
When you look at big-money givers, the spread between Krasner’s Philly donations and not-Philly donations gets even bigger. Since January 1st, Krasner has received 25 contributions of $3,100 (the maximum for individual donors), of which just 16 percent have come from within the city. Some of Krasner’s bigger-name deep-pocketed donors include Patty Quillin, the wife of Netflix’s CEO, and Sarah Barton, the wife of Zillow’s founder.
This isn’t the first time lots of outside money has poured into Krasner’s campaign coffers. Leading up to his election in 2017, conservative talk-show hosts went absolutely nuts about liberal kingmaker George Soros and the $1.7 million he pumped into the Krasner war chest.
Since then, Krasner’s profile has skyrocketed. Less than one year after Philadelphians elected him, Krasner was profiled in both the New Yorker and New York Times. More recently, he’s enjoyed some exposure that a candidate can only dream of. In April, Penguin Random House published his memoir, For the People: A Story of Justice and Power. But that’s not all! The same day his book came out, PBS released Philly DA, an eight-part nationally televised docu-series all about Krasner. Local PBS station WHYY had the good sense to hold off airing the show until after the primary, but Philly residents can, naturally, stream it anytime they want. Entertainment critic Robert Daniels of RogerEbert.com wrote that the series feels just like a “publicity machine.”
Carlos Vega, the former Philly prosecutor running against Krasner in the primary, has about as low a profile as Krasner’s is high. So naturally, most of his campaign contributions come from, you know, actual Philadelphians.
Since January 1st, Vega has received 1,226 campaign contributions, with 823 of those (about 67 percent) coming from Philadelphia. Next time around, he might want to hire somebody to steal some of that big California money from Krasner, since Vega wound up with just a couple of $250-and-under donations from the Golden State.
Sixty-five percent of Vega’s top individual contributors are from Philadelphia. Some of the more recognizable names on his $3,100 contributor list include really rich personal injury attorney (and son of Arlen) Shanin Specter and venture capitalist and Philadelphia Inquirer chairman Josh Kopelman.
Vega’s contributors purportedly also include a ton of Philly cops. The local police union has been organizing a major get-out-the-vote effort for Vega, since they pretty much hate Krasner, and it’s been behind the effort to get thousands of Republicans in Philadelphia to temporarily switch their party registration to Democrat so they can vote against Krasner on Tuesday.
Colorful criminal defense attorney Chuck Peruto, the unopposed Republican candidate in the primary, has said he’ll drop out of the race if Vega wins, but most political insiders we’ve talked to say Vega’s chances aren’t great. If Krasner comes out of Tuesday with a victory, the general election in November will be nothing if not interesting.
