Democratic incumbents Seth Williams and Alan Butkovitz handily won re-election to Philadelphia District Attorney and City Controller, respectively.
Williams had won 77 percent of the vote, with 60 percent of precincts tallied as of 9:20 p.m. while Republican challenger Daniel Alvarez had 22.5 percent. Butkovitz sailed to victory, with nearly 80 percent of the vote, while Republican challenger Terrance Tracy won just 20 percent through 9:20 p.m.
As expected, turnout was extremely low in the off-year election, with just 65,000 cast ballots reported as of 9:20 p.m. and 60 percent of all votes reported. There are 1,024,000 registered voters in the city.
Williams celebrated his Election Day victory with a party at Galdo's Catering in South Philadelphia. He said, in the coming term, he plans to continue his "tremendous relationship" with Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey and expand his office's successful GunStat and focused deterrence programs.
"I look forward to finding more innovative ways to prevent crime and reduce recidivism and gun violence," Williams said.
He also hopes to coordinate with other city agencies to target truancy, which he called "the gateway to criminal behavior."
"You're eight times more likely to go to state prison if you're a high school dropout and, unfortunately, in Philadelphia, you're 20 times more likely to be a homicide victim if you're a high school dropout," he said. "So it doesn't sound sexy, it doesn't sound like something a tough prosecutor talks about, but if we're going to be smart and tough on crime, we need to do all we can to reduce truancy and keep kids in school."
Butkovitz has identified as priority areas the school district's funding formula, particularly as it relates to charter schools, as well as identifying ways to more aggressively pursue delinquent taxes owed to the city.
"We're doing a re-review of charter schools, which will include an examination of the funding formulas, which appear to compensate charter schools for having a more expensive education of students with disabilities who do not actually attend charter school, and whether there should be some re-design of that funding formula," he said.
Other items on Butkovitz's agenda include ensuring planned improvements to the Department of Licenses of Inspections are actually implemented, as well as urging the city to set aside money for unresolved municipal labor contracts.
"Our review of it was that these are just deferred payments, and we were proven to be correct on that in the firefighter contract," he said. "It was inevitable that was going to be paid, so we wanted it accounted for and not popping up as a surprise. I think that applies, in general, to the city union contracts. They have gone six years without a contract. There will eventually be a reckoning, and we think that should be dealt with truthfully."
No word on where Butkovitz planned to celebrate his win.