Victory in Philadelphia Buoys Supporters of Progressive District Attorney

Larry Krasner, part of a new breed of prosecutors, easily defeated Carlos Vega in Tuesday’s primary in spite of a rise in homicides.

PHILADELPHIA — The overwhelming Democratic primary victory on Tuesday of Larry Krasner, the Philadelphia district attorney whose opponent tried to paint him as soft on crime, represented a major step forward for the growing progressive prosecutorial movement of which Mr. Krasner is a leader, advocates of criminal justice reform said. With some ballots still to be counted, Mr. Krasner was winning by nearly 50,000 votes out of about 160,000 votes cast, indicating that even with gun crime rising sharply, voters were willing to stick with a candidate who had stopped prosecuting several categories of low-level crime and had pledged to further change the system that he argued locks up too many people for too many minor offenses. “We hear all this talk about how somehow progressive prosecution can’t survive,” Mr. Krasner said in his victory remarks on Tuesday night. “That’s not what I see. What I see is that traditional prosecution can’t survive.”