It's Williams vs. Untermeyer for D.A.

LOOK FOR the city's next district attorney to put a focus on fighting handguns, making the legal system more considerate to crime victims and witnesses, and trying to keep minor crimes from bogging down the courts.

The race for D.A. is now down to two candidates - Democrat Seth Williams and Republican Michael W. Untermeyer. No matter who wins the general election in November, both are promising similar changes in the D.A.'s office, run for the past 19 years by retiring incumbent Lynne Abraham.

With strong support from most of the city's African-American leadership - but not Mayor Nutter - Williams defeated four Democratic opponents to win the nomination.

As the early returns came in last night, Williams fell more than 2,000 votes behind former prosecutor Dan McCaffery, the brother of state Supreme Court Justice Seamus McCaffery, who had heavy backing from the building trade unions.

But Williams, 42, a former prosecutor and city inspector general, caught and passed McCaffery as votes came in from the city's strongest minority wards. Eventually his margin grew to nearly 12,000 votes, nearly 42 percent of the Democrats who went to the polls.

Overall turnout among Democrats was projected at around 108,000 voters, the lowest total since 1993, when Abraham and former City Controller Jonathan Saidel were renominated with no opposition at all. The figure represents about 13 percent of the city's 835,000 registered Democrats.

Democrats now outnumber Republicans in Philadelphia by better than 6-to-1, making Williams the odds-on favorite to win the November election.

But city voters have sometimes bucked the odds to elect a Republican as the city's top prosecutor - most recently, electing Ron Castille as D.A. in 1985 and 1989.

Untermeyer, 58, a lawyer and real-estate developer who was a registered Democrat until early this year, said that a Democratic D.A. will not be independent enough to tackle municipal corruption.

"It will be difficult for any individual who wins that office with the backing of the Democratic machine, to turn around and investigate individuals in the party that helped him get elected," Untermeyer said.

Besides McCaffery, the other Democratic also-rans were Brian J. Grady, 40, a lawyer from Roxborough; former City Councilman Dan McElhatton, 59, who got a late-in-the-game endorsement from Nutter, a former Council colleague; and Michael Turner, 52, a civil litigator with a big Center City firm.

All were former city prosecutors. McCaffery, Grady and Turner were campaigning for public office for the first time.

Among the Democratic candidates, there were occasional differences on emphasis, but no major policy disputes.

All said that the D.A.'s office should take all possible steps to get guns off the streets, focusing the D.A.'s limited resources on violent crime and paying more attention to municipal corruption.

With financial backing from the unions - and a $200,000 bank loan secured by his home - McCaffery was the only candidate who mounted broadcast television advertising, a $475,000 buy over the past two weeks, according to his campaign manager, Josh Morrow.

Williams and Untermeyer vow that they will use all the powers of the office to go after illegal guns.

Williams said that he would expand a task force on gun trafficking, pressuring defendants in gun-related crimes to disclose where they acquired their weapons and conducting sting operations to catch those who are selling guns illegally.

Untermeyer said he would establish a "zero tolerance policy" on gun-related crimes, refusing any plea bargains.

Both candidates say that they want to move to a system where the same prosecutor handles a case from beginning to end.

Currently, a case may go through arraignment and several preliminary hearings, with different prosecutors involved at every stage, depending on the nature of the case and where the hearings are scheduled. Victims and witnesses may be asked to go through the facts repeatedly for one prosecutor after another, and appear for court sessions that are postponed without warning.

"It will be necessary to knock heads with the court system to do this," Untermeyer said. "Some judges embrace the idea, some are totally resistant. But ultimately, it will be more effective. Witnesses will show up in court because they won't be frustrated and burned out long before the case goes to trial."

Williams wants to go even further, assigning prosecutors to neighborhoods where they'll handle cases on a geographic basis and become more familiar with crime problems in different neighborhoods.

Both Untermeyer and Williams's Democratic opponents questioned the financial feasibility of Williams' "community-based prosecution" proposal.

But Williams said that it could be initiated with homicide cases and expanded as circumstances permit. *