Eugene depasquale biography
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When his 20-year-old brother died of muscular dystrophy while DePasquale was in law school, his father had to attend the funeral in shackles.
Now DePasquale hopes to win his bid for attorney general in November’s election and support Pennsylvanians fighting addiction.
“I’ve seen both sides of the criminal justice system,” DePasquale told the Pennsylvania Independent while on a brief break from campaigning in Gettysburg on July 23.
He frequently boasted that he was the first legislator to post his expenses online and that he had the lowest among lawmakers.
State: Pennsylvania
Party Affiliation: Democrat
After attending College of Wooster, University of Pittsburgh and Widener University Commonwealth Law School, DePasquale’s career has focused on uplifting Pennsylvanians, their communities, and their businesses. Wade in 2022, it was once again up to individual states to implement their own laws regulating abortion.
Tom Wolf, for denying access to key documents necessary for a thorough review.
DePasquale’s office also revealed troubling problems with the state’s child abuse hotline — where nearly 58,000 calls went unanswered over two years — and brought attention to the backlog of untested rape kits.
Earlier this year, he snagged the Democratic nomination over four competitors in a cordial primary.
In recent months, DePasquale has drawn heavily — more so than in campaigns past — on personal challenges he’s faced, ones he believes make him uniquely qualified to understand the struggles of people outside the halls of power.
At the Pennsylvania Press Club in Harrisburg this August, he talked about his father’s yearslong addiction to opioids after returning from the Vietnam War, which resulted in a decadelong federal prison sentence.
As Auditor General, he took on police bureaucracy to reduce backlogs in untested rape kits, held polluters accountable for harmful air pollution, and investigated improper gifts given to county officials from voting machine vendors. Born and raised in Pittsburg, DePasquale is a lifetime native to Pennsylvania. In 2006, he was elected to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and served until 2012, when he was elected Auditor General.
Michelle Henry, the current attorney general, is not running for reelection after being appointed to finish the term of Democrat Josh Shapiro after he left the office to become governor.
As attorney general, Shapiro negotiated billions of dollars in settlements with opioid manufacturers. DePasquale said that battle led to his father being sentenced to 10-and-a-half years in prison for dealing drugs when DePasquale was in his early 20s.
He once noted during a debate that he bought his district office furniture at a yard sale.
As auditor general, DePasquale made headlines with several of his office’s reports, including a 2019 performance audit of the state’s voter registration system in which he criticized the administration of fellow Democrat, then-Gov.
Born and raised in Pittsburg, DePasquale is a lifetime native to Pennsylvania. In Pennsylvania, abortion is legal through the 23rd week of pregnancy.
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“We don’t tolerate bullying in our public schools, period, end of story, and I will be putting directives out to our school districts to make sure that they know that I’m going to be watching that very closely.“Our kids, whoever they are, have the right to learn without being bullied,” DePasquale said.
Who is Eugene DePasquale, a Democrat running for Pa.
attorney general?
HARRISBURG — The race to become Pennsylvania’s next attorney general will be one of the more closely watched contests this fall, as six candidates jockey for the chance to occupy one of the most powerful offices in the state.
Democrat Eugene DePasquale will face Republican Dave Sunday, as well as four third-party contenders: Justin L.
Magill of the Constitution Party, Eric Settle of the Forward Party, Green Party candidate Richard L. Weiss, and Libertarian Robert Cowburn.
With a budget of $144 million and a staff of 1,060 prosecutors, attorneys, investigators, and other staff, the Office of Attorney General is, at its core, the law firm that represents Pennsylvania’s vast government and defends its laws in court.
But it also investigates and prosecutes everything from organized crime to political corruption, a mission that over the past several decades has boosted the office’s profile — and by extension, the public profile of the person at the helm of the agency.
Learn more about DePasquale below:
Who is Eugene DePasquale?
Website
Eugene DePasquale, 53, has spent much of his career in elected office.
He attended the College of Wooster, the University of Pittsburgh, and Widener University Commonwealth Law School.
As that money continues to come to the state, DePasquale says he wants to help make sure the settlement funds will go to the treatment and prevention programs that are saving Pennsylvanians’ lives.
“We now have this historic opioid settlement that we have the ability to distribute funds in a way that helps put a dent in the opioid epidemic in Pennsylvania,” DePasquale said.
Fighting right-wing attacks on democracy
DePasquale said one of his top priorities as attorney general would be to protect democracy.
In 2006, he was elected to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and served until 2012, when he was elected Auditor General. A federal judge dismissed the suit in March.
As the November election nears, Trump, Republican politicians and right-wing pundits have amplified lies about election integrity in Pennsylvania, an onslaught of disinformation that experts say could lead to violence.
Biden defeated Trump in Pennsylvania in 2020 by 80,555 votes.
Abortion access
Following the U.S.
Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Trump and Republican leaders in the Legislature filed lawsuits ahead of the 2020 election challenging the counting of mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania after Election Day. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of a state Supreme Court decision in those lawsuits allowing mail-in ballots to be received and counted up to three days after Election Day.
Earlier this year, 27 right-wing state lawmakers attempted to restrict voting access in Pennsylvania by filing a lawsuit that went after Democratic Gov.
Josh Shapiro over a recently implemented automatic voter registration program and President Joe Biden’s 2021 executive order directing federal agencies to expand voting access.
It’s not easy for Eugene DePasquale, the Democrat running for Pennsylvania attorney general, to pinpoint exactly when he knew he wanted to dedicate his life to public service, but he knows the decision was largely shaped by his father’s battle with addiction.
After being wounded by gunfire while fighting in Vietnam, DePasquale’s father spent decades fighting an addiction to painkillers.
He said he would work closely with schools to prevent and address the bullying of LGBTQ+ children.
“When it comes to bullying in our schools, I want to make it clear to our administrators, our principals, that it’s not going to be tolerated,” he said. In 2006, he was elected to the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, where he served three two-year terms representing York County.
In 2012, he ran and won the job of state auditor general, where he maxed out at two four-year terms at the helm of that office.
In 2020, he snagged the Democratic nomination to run against Republican U.S.
Rep. Scott Perry in the 10th Congressional District, but ultimately lost that race.
Though he does not have prosecutorial experience, DePasquale has centered his campaign around his years of working in Harrisburg, a deep bench of policy positions, and a long record of policy fights.
A Pittsburgh native who later made York his adopted home, DePasquale was part of a large freshman class of lawmakers ushered into office on a wave of public outrage after the 2005 pay raise controversy that scarred the legislature’s reputation.
When he ran for auditor general in 2012, he often touted his record in the legislature of minimizing government spending.