By the time the primary polls closed in May, Krasner had won in a blowout, netting 38% in the crowded field, with turnout topping 150,000 votes — an increase of more than 50,000 over the previous two open DA races in Philadelphia. Khan, the establishment front-runner, came in second with just over 20% of the Democratic vote.
But the results, and the disconnect between the primary's other candidates and the populace, illuminates a major point about the race.
While it's fair to say that the mobilization of the city's progressives was, in many respects, a reaction to Trumpism nationally, it does little to explain how a 57-year-old white man was able to drive turnout for the city's near-majority African-American population.
In numerous majority-minority neighborhoods, Krasner netted more than 1000 votes more than Williams, the city's first black DA, did during the 2009 primary.
Prominent African-American lawyer Michael Coard, who has worked on activist cases with Krasner for a decade, wrote a ringing endorsement before the primary in the Philadelphia Tribune, the city's African-American paper, calling Krasner "the Blackest white D.A. candidate ever."
By the time the Democratic primary was in full swing in the spring, Coard told Business Insider that a "sleeping giant" of progressive Philadelphians and communities of color had "woken" to campaign, canvas, and vouch for Krasner.
In many ways, the Democratic primary represented a correction to decades of voting patterns for district attorney. As John Pfaff, a professor at Fordham Law School, explained, the traditional voting base for a DA tends to be white, middle class, and affluent — meaning, he said, "those who have the loudest political voice tend to be those with the least exposure to prosecutorial punitiveness."
When DA's take "tough on crime" stances, as they have for decades, affluent populations see benefits in public safety, while poor and minority families "bear the brunt" of over-enforcement, Pfaff said. By mobilizing the city's African-American population, Krasner opened space for the possibility of drastic reform.
William Wagner, a canvasser for the ACLU's "Smart Justice" campaign and and a formerly incarcerated person, put it another way. "Voting for a DA, where I come from, is something that we don't care about."
But this year was different, he told me, because "the candidates are specifically campaigning on the issues that we want our constituents to vote for."