At this writing, Bucks County Republican committeepersons expect to endorse District Attorney Jennifer Schorn on Thursday evening in her first run for a full four-year term. Appointed a year ago to replace her fellow Republican Matt Weintraub when he became a judge, no primary challenger against her has clearly emerged within the GOP. Nor have local Democratic leaders publicly said who they want to oppose her after the May 20 primary. 

Regional scuttlebutt hints that former county Solicitor Joe Khan will make a bid for Bucks’s top-prosecutor slot. Yet the Bucks County Democratic Committee mentions his likely candidacy (or any other contender’s) nowhere on its website or social media pages. The committee did not return a voicemail requesting comment and Khan himself didn’t reply to interview requests. 

No matter who tries to win her job from her, Schorn herself believes her quarter-century-long record should persuade voters in Pennsylvania’s least politically predictable county to keep her in office. 

“It’s been a privilege to work in this capacity for 25 years as a public servant,” she said. “I get to work with the best of the best — the men and women who are trying to make a difference and keep their communities safe [and] advocate for people.” 

The Upper Southampton native and Archbishop Wood alumna began to see advocacy for the vulnerable, children especially, as her calling while still an undergraduate at St. Joseph’s University. Mulling different career possibilities in that realm, she got accepted to Widener University School of Law and decided prosecution, hopefully in her home county, would best suit her intentions.

Law degree in hand, Schorn would get her “dream come true” from a local dignitary she recognized and admired for years, Bucks District Attorney Alan Rubenstein, who hired her in 1999 shortly before he took the Common Pleas bench as a judge. 

“He was tough on crime, he was a wonderful trial attorney, he was fabulous in the courtroom, and his policies and practices made sure that the community was aware that in Bucks County you will be held accountable for the crimes you commit,” she recalled. “It was clear if you came to Bucks County and committed [violent or predatory] crimes, you would be identified, apprehended, and prosecuted…. I knew that this [office] was where I wanted to be.” 

Schorn would eventually lead the trials and grand jury divisions of the Bucks DA’s office, filling the first assistant district attorney spot in 2021. A mother of two children whose husband has served the Middletown Township Police Department for nearly 26 years, she now lives in Furlong. 

She personally led numerous high-profile cases as a junior prosecutor and later as a department head and first assistant DA. Those included the prosecutions of fourteen-year-old Grace Packer’s killers who respectively got a death and life sentence, and of George Shaw who sexually assaulted and murdered fourteen-year-old Barbara Rowan 40 years ago. 

Bucks County Republican Chair Pat Poprik thinks that ability to prosecute crimes so far in the past makes Schorn a standout among prosecutors.

“One of her signature accomplishments has been her leadership in solving long-standing cold cases, delivering long-overdue justice to victims and their families,” Poprik told Broad + Liberty. “Through relentless investigative work and dedication under her guidance, the District Attorney’s office has successfully closed cases that had remained unsolved for decades, giving families the answers and closure they deserve.” 

Just two weeks after taking over for Weintraub, Schorn began trying Robert Atkins for his 1991 murder of Joy Hibbs in Bristol Township, eventually gaining justice for Hibbs’s husband and children. Currently, she is at work addressing the grisly rampage allegedly committed by Andre Gordon who she says carjacked someone in Trenton to get to Falls Township, gunned down his own stepmother and half-sister, went to Levittown to kill the mother of his two children, and carjacked again to return to New Jersey.

While working under Weintraub, who Schorn particularly credits with keeping Bucks County peaceful and safe, she aided and later grew the county’s Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, in which most Bucks police agencies now participate. The task force has apprehended many child predators, some of whom went beyond online solicitation and child-pornography usage to commit in-person physical abuse. 

While Schorn believes rapists and other sex criminals will always harbor predatory capabilities that warrant either incarceration or the registration requirements of Megan’s Law, she says reform programs sometimes work for other perpetrators, especially young ones. 

“If you are an individual committed to rehabilitation and proving that you’re not going to repeat the cycle and [have] a low risk of recidivism and you’re committed to all the programs that are available for [rehabilitation], then we are about focusing on those programs to make sure that we can identify the low-level offenders who are candidates for rehabilitation and give them the chance for rehabilitation,” she said. 

Dealing with lawbreakers gets more difficult for a suburban county bordering crime-heavy Philadelphia when that city’s district attorney shows comparatively little interest in fighting crime. Philadelphia’s Larry Krasner, a Democrat who is himself seeking reelection this year, has been especially lax, often prosecuting miscreants to the minimal extent. Republican state lawmakers attempted unavailingly to impeach and remove him in 2022, citing failure to disclose evidence and other charges.

Krasner’s defenders mention that, while murder and other offenses skyrocketed during his first five years in office, they subsided over the last year. Schorn has concerns about the accuracy of crime-statistic reporting, an issue A. Benjamin Mannes has explained in Broad + Liberty. And while she feels fondly toward the City of Brotherly Love, she says Bucks often feels the spillover effects of Philadelphia-based crime that Krasner hasn’t aggressively confronted.  

“What happens is [criminals] get caught when they travel into Bucks County or they travel into other collar counties,” she said. “And sadly, though, at times when they do get caught, they’re putting the lives of the men and women in law enforcement in danger and other community members in danger.” 

While some Democrats don’t quite match Krasner’s doctrinaire leftism, Bucks Republicans suggest Khan poses his own set of problems. Schorn herself, while not referring to him by name, said residents should be wary of a candidate with higher electoral ambitions who may consider the DA office just a stop on a grander political journey. 

Khan, a former Philadelphia prosecutor who ran in a primary against Krasner in 2017, resigned his solicitorship in 2023 to pursue a failed run for Pennsylvania attorney general. He now works at the Curtin & Heefner law firm where state senator and Bucks Democratic Chairman Steve Santarsiero is his colleague.

“We can’t have someone that is using this office as a political stepping stone or to achieve some sort of political recognition or entrée into the political arena, if you will, having tried multiple other arenas and not having been successful,” Schorn said. “That is a dangerous recipe for public safety if you have an individual who isn’t committed.”

Jamie Cohen Walker, a Chalfont resident who has been active in local campaigns, decried Khan’s ideological commitments that became evident to her when she requested county communications pertaining to Covid-19 countermeasures. A critic of extended school closings, she successfully asked the state Office of Open Records to instruct the county to hand over relevant documents. Khan, however, sued her and fellow requester Megan Brock; the case is ongoing.

“He advised as their solicitor to sue mothers to hide emails that we won in the Office of Open Records,” Walker lamented. “And this lawsuit — if the Bucks County Democratic commissioners win — makes the entire state of Pennsylvania less transparent for their constituents.” 

Poprik echoed Walker’s reproof of Khan.

“Mr. Khan has spent the last several years running, unsuccessfully, for various political offices, including Philadelphia district attorney,” the chairwoman said. “Mr. Khan is the model of a far-left progressive political opportunist who we simply cannot trust to keep our communities safe. The choice this November will be clear, and I am confident Bucks County voters will do the right thing by keeping Jen Schorn as our district attorney.” 

Bradley Vasoli is a politics and government correspondent at Broad + Liberty.