ARLINGTON, VA — With the Democratic primary for commonwealth’s attorney of Arlington County and the City of Falls Church only a week away, incumbent Parisa Dehghani-Tafti is asking voters to give her a second term to continue reforming the prosecutor’s office, while challenger Josh Katcher wants voters to let him implement his version of criminal justice reform.
Dehghani-Tafti has the backing of most elected officials in Arlington in the June 20 primary, while Katcher has been endorsed by the Arlington police union, Arlington County Board member Libby Garvey and Reid Goldstein, the outgoing chairman of the Arlington School Board.
Among Dehghani-Tafti’s endorsements is from Paul Ferguson, who served on the Arlington County Board for 10 years before his election as Clerk of the Circuit Court of Arlington County and the City of Falls Church in 2008.
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Ferguson said the interactions between his office and the commonwealth’s attorney office under Dehghani-Tafti since 2020 have been “both collaborative and efficient.”
“From my vantage point, crimes are effectively prosecuted, allowing Arlington to continue to be a safe community,” Ferguson said in his endorsement. “Parisa has instituted many common-sense, cost-effective policies, which will continue if she is re-elected.”
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In the campaign for commonwealth’s attorney, Katcher has accused incumbent Dehghani-Tafti of mismanaging the office, leading to the departure of many attorneys.
Ferguson said in his statement that in the three-and-a-half years that he has worked with Dehghani-Tafti, 25 employees have left his office out of a staff of 31.
“I find it amusing that one of the main issues her opponent raises is retention of staff. With a tight labor market and workers opting for jobs for which they can telework, those of us who must mandate in person attendance have faced challenges,” Ferguson said. “Parisa has a strong record of recruiting talented prosecutors to work for Arlington County.”
In his endorsement of Katcher, Dr. Alfred O. Taylor Jr., a prominent community activist and lifelong Arlington resident, said he believes the commonwealth’s attorney office needs a leader with the experience to try cases and “remain focused on safety in our schools and our community.”
Garvey, in her endorsement of Katcher, said she believes that he knows it is important to be “tough on those who are a danger to our community.” But he also believes in “using compassion and commonsense for those who will be contributing members of our community if given a chance and the right support,” Garvey said.
Among newspaper endorsements, Dehghani-Tafti received backing from The Washington Post and the Falls Church News-Press, while Katcher won the endorsement of the Arlington GazetteLeader.
“What Ms. Dehghani-Tafti has started is bearing fruit, and there’s no need to go back to the drawing board,” the Post wrote in its endorsement.
READ ALSO: Arlington Commonwealth’s Attorney Race Centers On Type Of Reformer
In the Democratic primary challenges faced by the other reform prosecutors who entered office in 2020, the Post chose to endorse the challengers to Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano and Loudoun County Commonwealth’s Attorney Buta Biberaj.
In its endorsement of Katcher, the GazetteLeader wrote that Dehghani-Tafti “still has her fans living behind upper-middle-class/upper-class ramparts where real-world implications of catch-and-release justice have yet to breach.”
“We’re sure the career criminals are giddy both with the office’s policies, and the revolving door of staff, which combine to make full-throttled prosecution largely impossible,” the GazetteLeader wrote.
The GazetteLeader, which often leans to the right in its political endorsements, noted that Katcher’s campaign “has been something of a muddle (it has the decided feel of being run by consultants lacking deep roots in the community), and his messaging seems to lack consistency and vigor.”
Four years ago, as a reform prosecutor candidate, Dehghani-Tafti made many promises on the campaign trail in her successful run for office in 2019 against incumbent Theo Stamos. And in her campaign for re-election, she has listed the campaign promises she has kept, including not seeking cash bail for defendants because the practice is believed to unfairly keep people in jail simply because they are poor.
Instead, the commonwealth’s attorney office under Dehghani-Tafti has asked for people to be held in jail if they pose a danger or a flight risk.
During her time as commonwealth’s attorney, Dehghani-Tafti says her office has focused prosecutions on violent crimes, gun crimes, sexual offenses and crimes against children.
Nassir Aboreden, deputy commonwealth’s attorney under Dehghani-Tafti, told Patch that the Arlington commonwealth’s attorney office has secured lengthy sentences on every carjacking case since he joined the office in 2020.
“The idea that we don’t prosecute cases would be a surprise if you asked any member of the criminal defense bar in Arlington,” he said.
Dehghani-Tafti also says she has kept her promise to provide prompt electronic discovery to defense attorney and public defenders. During Stamos’s tenure as commonwealth’s attorney, defense attorneys were required to come to a room to take notes, a time-consuming effort that often hindered their ability to provide the best defense to their clients.
Katcher, who resigned as deputy commonwealth’s attorney for Arlington last summer to run for commonwealth’s attorney, said he worries that reform prosecutors are being caricatured by Republicans as caring only about leniency for criminal suspects. The criminal justice reform movement may lose its momentum in a few years, he warned, if the debate continues to focus on who is tough on crime and who is soft on crime.
“I hate that spectrum,” Katcher told Patch. “Democrats should be smart on crime. I think we have an opportunity to own this issue because we’re the only ones pushing out into this evolution of prosecution in the 21st century.”
Juvenile Justice
On the issue of juvenile justice, Dehghani-Tafti notes her office has never charged a juvenile as an adult in her more than three years in office.
In his campaign for commonwealth’s attorney, Katcher has enlisted the help of Rose Kehoe, the grieving mother of Braylon Meade, a 17-year-old who was killed by a drunk driver in Arlington last November.
In an April 10 letter to local public officials, Kehoe asked them to withdraw their support for Dehghani-Tafti for re-election. Kehoe was upset that Dehghani-Tafti did not agree to try the drunk driver, also a 17-year-old, as an adult.
In campaign advertisements leading up to the June 20 primary election, Katcher’s campaign has featured Kehoe talking about her son and criticizing Dehghani-Tafti for not providing her family with the “support” or “attention” that victims deserve.
In its endorsement of Dehghani-Tafti, The Washington Post wrote that she has “shown a willingness to make — and own — difficult choices.”
“In a case that’s become a flash point in this race, she resisted intense community pressure to try a 17-year-old as an adult in a vehicular manslaughter case,” the newspaper wrote.
In an interview with the Post, Dehghani-Tafti said “you can’t be guided by emotion, even when it’s genuine and horrifying.”
While welcoming Kehoe’s support, Katcher says he firmly believes “that we need to dry to keep children out of the justice system.”
“Whenever possible, that means not charging them in the first place and not trying them as adults,” Katcher says on his website.
READ ALSO: Arlington Candidates Debate Prosecution Of Teen In Braylon Meade Case
During the tenure of Stamos as commonwealth’s attorney, juveniles were occasionally transferred to adult criminal court, according to Lauren Brice, a former attorney in the Office of the Public Defender for Arlington County and the City of Falls Church, who represented clients when both Stamos and Dehghani-Tafti served as commonwealth’s attorney.
The decisions about whether to try a juvenile as an adult under Stamos never had any real strategy or reasoning, Brice told Patch.
Katcher served as an attorney under Stamos for about nine years before he was kept on as a prosecutor when Dehghani-Tafti came to office in January 2020.
“There were children charged with serious, violent felonies that received deferred dispositions and others who got adult felony convictions,” Brice told Patch about what she saw during Stamos’ tenure as commonwealth’s attorney. “Throughout this time, Josh was a staple in the office and never said anything about the practice. If he was unhappy with the treatment of juveniles under Theo, he kept it to himself.”
Campaign Funding
Over the past four years, opponents of Dehghani-Tafti have criticized her for the contributions her campaigns have received from political action committees and super PACs controlled by billionaire philanthropist George Soros, who is Jewish and survived the Nazi occupation of Hungary during World War II. Soros, an American citizen, lives in New York City.
Many of Soros’ critics on the hard right of the political spectrum often refer to the political contributions he has provided to liberal and progressive organizations over the past 20 years as part of a “nefarious agenda” or “Marxist agenda.”
In the current campaign for commonwealth’s attorney, Soros’ PACs have once again contributed large amounts to Dehghani-Tafti’s campaign as part of his belief in criminal justice reform.
On Tuesday, Katcher’s campaign said finance data from the second quarter shows that “a flood of outside spending fueled her campaign.”
“Taking $1 million from SuperPACs and outside interests is not what a reformer would do,” Ben Jones, campaign manager for Josh Katcher, said in a statement Tuesday. “Citizens of Arlington County and the City of Falls Church deserve to know who is trying to influence their elected officials — especially the Commonwealth’s Attorney, who plays such an important role in securing justice for the whole community.”
Dehghani-Tafti’s campaign on Tuesday highlighted the support it has received from elected officials in Arlington and across Virginia as well as the support it has attracted from national groups “dedicated to building a safe and just criminal legal system.”
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Among the political action committees highlighted by her campaign on Tuesday was the Justice & Public Safety PAC, “the premiere criminal justice reform group in our country and was founded by George Soros, who has spent a lifetime and his fortune building democracy here at home and abroad,” Dehghani-Tafti’s campaign said.
“There are those, like our opponent, who will seek to sow distrust in these upstanding organizations, who have already aimed to diminish their right to bring together the voices of those who are normally disenfranchised, and support both democracy and Democratic values; those who utilize Republican scare tactics, demonizing the hard work of members of these American institutions,” Dehghani-Tafti’s campaign said.
Early in-person voting in the Democratic Party primary is being held at Courthouse Plaza through June 16 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday. Early voting will also take place at Courthouse Plaza on Saturday, June 17, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on each day. Extra hours will be provided for voting at Courthouse Plaza on Tuesday, June 13 and Thursday, June 15, from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m.
In-person early voting will also be held at the Madison Community Center and Walter Reed Community Center on these dates:
On Election Day, Tuesday, June 20, all Arlington polling places will be open from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. Voters must vote at their assigned location. Visit the Arlington County elections website to see where to vote and to see the list of Arlington’s polling places.
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