IN A CANDID moment in Mount Airy several weeks ago, Seth Williams flashed some of the self-confidence that has driven his campaign for district attorney for the last six years.
"Having been there [in the D.A.'s office] for 10 1/2 years, I knew, or I thought, that I could do a better job than the boss," Williams told 40 people at the Lutheran Seminary, on Germantown Avenue.
"I've felt that way wherever I've worked - at Sears at 63rd and Market, when I delivered pizzas for Domino's, when I drove a cab at Penn State," Williams said. "So I left the D.A.'s office in 2003 so that I could run for D.A. in 2005."
Underfunded and widely written off as a serious contender, Williams lost that 2005 race to incumbent Lynne Abraham. But Williams got 46 percent of the vote, demonstrating strong support throughout minority neighborhoods, and he never really stopped campaigning.
Even during a two-year stint as the city's inspector general from 2005 through 2007, when Williams was barred from politicking by the city Home Rule Charter, it was an open understanding that he intended to run again for D.A.
This year, with Abraham retiring after 19 years as the city's top prosecutor, Williams is still running, and no one is writing him off - least of all himself, appearing on stage after stage with his four Democratic opponents and telling audiences what he will do after he's elected.
"The criminal-justice system is broken," Williams proclaims at nearly all his public appearances. His favorite piece of evidence: 59 percent of all felony charges are dismissed before trial, he says, echoing a theme from 2005. The figure reflects a panoply of reasons why charges are dismissed, including judicial actions on procedural grounds, witnesses failing to appear, victims changing their stories and prosecutors deciding that original charges were excessive.
Williams claims he's the most qualified of the five candidates, by virtue of more years working in the D.A.'s office, and of holding two supervisory positions before he left - running its Municipal Court unit and then a unit dealing with repeat offenders.
Through months of public appearances, Williams and the other candidates agree on many of the problems in the D.A.'s office. But his opponents are dubious about Williams' biggest proposal - to revamp the office along geographic lines.
Williams says he would assign teams of city prosecutors to police districts and detective divisions, making them more familiar with the crime patterns in each community, and more responsive to victims and witnesses.
The same assistant D.A.s would handle criminal cases from the time defendants are charged to the moment they're sent away to prison, Williams suggests.
Other cities have taken this approach successfully, and Abraham herself has pushed to expand community-based prosecution beyond the repeat-offender unit, where it already occurs.
But in the middle of a city fiscal crisis, it would require significantly more prosecutors and expenditures for office space, besides creating major scheduling problems for the courts. Abraham's efforts have been stymied for years by opposition in the court system, prosecutors say.
"Seth is talking about putting prosecutors out there in the community, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year," opponent Dan McElhatton complained at a debate the other day. "Where are we going to get the money?"
Williams' response to Mayor Nutter's budget proposal, calling for a 22 percent, $7 million cut in the D.A.'s spending? "We shouldn't allow it," he told an audience at the Free Library recently. [Editor's note: The Nutter administration yesterday said about $4 million would be restored to the D.A.'s budget. Story on Page 6.]
With campaign advertising held down by the city's contribution limits, Williams' name recognition has been a valuable asset.
He entered the race as the best-known of the candidates - thanks to his campaign four years ago and the publicity he got as inspector general, investigating municipal wrongdoing in the final two years of the Street administration.
Unlike past inspectors general, who seemed to prefer anonymity, Williams sought news coverage of his efforts and made himself accessible to reporters - to the point of staying in touch when he was sent off to Army Reserve duty in Germany to talk with a reporter about payroll abuse in the city Health Department.
Unlike most prosecutors, he was willing to publicly confirm the existence of ongoing investigations.
The downside to Williams' public history is that he has a record to shoot at.
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