Former city Managing Director Rich Negrin announced last week that he is seeking the Democratic nomination for district attorney next year.
Negrin is also a former assistant district attorney.
“Now I’m running for district attorney because I believe that, if we want our city to be a national model for fairness, equality and justice, we need a district attorney who has the integrity to lead us there. I want us to make progress in the fight against violent crime, I want us to have an honest conversation about fairness and justice, and I want a city that makes us proud,” he said.
Negrin described himself as “a relentless advocate for families and a crusader against violent crime,” noting that, in 1979, as a 13-year-old, he was present when his father was gunned down by assassins.
Negrin went on to play college football and played briefly as a lineman in the National Football League with the Cleveland Browns and the New York Jets.
In 1995, he began his career as a prosecutor in the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, eventually moving up to the Major Trials Unit. More recently, he served as managing director and deputy mayor, where he helped to oversee an annual budget of $5.5 billion and manage nearly 30,000 employees.
In addition, he served as vice chairman of the Philadelphia Board of Ethics from 2006 to 2010.
Negrin will be one of at least four candidates in the Democratic primary.
He’ll join incumbent Seth Williams, former federal prosecutor Joe Khan and former Municipal Court Judge Teresa Carr Deni.
The Republican candidate is expected to be Beth Grossman, a former assistant district attorney and onetime chief of staff at the city Department of Licenses and Inspections.
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Joe DeFelice, chairman of the Philadelphia Republican Party, welcomed the sentence of 10 years in federal prison for former U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah.
U.S. District Judge Harvey Bartle III imposed the sentence on Monday. Fattah will begin serving his sentence on Jan. 25.
Fattah was convicted in June of misusing charitable donations, campaign contributions, and federal grants to pay personal and political debts. He resigned after his conviction.
Among those writing letters on Fattah’s behalf before sentencing were U.S. Rep. Bob Brady and City Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown.
“We welcome a lengthy prison sentence for former Rep. Chaka Fattah, who ranks among the most canny and shameless denizens of Philadelphia’s Democratic culture of corruption, and serves as an example of the arrogance of incumbency,” DeFelice said.
“We hope that the sentence will be lived out and not stretched out by years of appeals, and that the Fattah family will fade into the night once all of the pertinent FBI probes surrounding them have been carried out. We’d also like to highlight our embarrassment at the sight of city Democrats lining up to influence Judge Bartle in his sentencing, urging for leniency for a convicted thief who defrauded his entire district. The voters of the Second Congressional District are owed significant recompense, not just from the money siphoned away by their former Congressman through decades of poor representation, but from his establishment enablers as well. The Philadelphia Republican Party envisions a future where flagrant corruption associated with one-party rule is a thing of the past.”
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U.S. District Judge Paul S. Diamond on Monday rejected the Green Party’s motion for a recount of the presidential vote in Pennsylvania, saying there is no evidence a hack occurred and that the voting system seemed to work fine.
Earlier, Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas denied a full forensic analysis of voting machines and their software, as requested by the Jill Stein campaign recount effort.
The federal injunction requested that experts in voting security and software be allowed to examine the central voting systems in the largest counties using the six types of machines present in Pennsylvania: Philadelphia, Allegheny, Montgomery, Lancaster, York and Washington counties.
The state’s presidential electors will cast their ballots on Dec. 19.
Stein has ended her bid for recounts in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. She raised about $7.3 million for the effort. In case of a surplus, she is asking supporters to vote where to direct the money.
The website is jill2016.com/recount_surplus ••
