Sources: http://www.lynneabraham.com/ http://www.phillymag.com/articles/lynne-abraham-can-woman-win-philadelphia-mayors-race/#8XcITrwhfAtmwYG1.99 http://www.philly.com/philly/news/breaking/20150312_Abraham__mayoral_candidates_should_reject__dark_money_.html#pRQyojxhc3hk1i4m.99 http://www.philly.com/philly/news/Philly420_Lynne_Abrahams_Marijuana_Madness.html#muxtclULXItg6Svs.99

Lynne M. Abraham (born January 31, 1941)[citation needed] is an American attorney who served as the District Attorney of the City of Philadelphia from May 1991 to January 2010. She was the first woman to serve as Philadelphia's district attorney. Abraham won election to that position four times. As district attorney, she oversaw the largest such office in Pennsylvania. She earned the nicknames "Deadliest DA" and "Queen of Death" for the high rate at which her office sought the death penalty in past decades. [not that the mayor has anything to do with the death penalty]

She is a connoisseur of art. She’s also a voracious reader and traveler, and a big-league talker who might be waxing on criminal justice one moment and then launch into a dead-on impression of George Carlin the next. As a young prosecutor she carried a .38 under her belt, and cans of cat food in her legal brief bag in case she spied any hungry strays. She loves jazz and sweets. She built a Japanese garden in the backyard of her rowhouse in Old City.

Her own poll conducted in November gave her a big early lead: She drew 31 percent of the vote, with nobody else getting more than 12 percent. (Williams was at nine.) Chalk those early numbers up in large part to name recognition.

As a prosecutor, Abraham started doing her own investigations, because the cops weren’t thorough enough to suit her. It was an era of gang warfare in many parts of the city. “Oh, the gang boys were captivated by me,” she says. “They used to call me ‘Miss Ann,’ ‘Miss Ann,’ which was slang for ‘white woman.’ But I loved these kids. They were bright, they were very good at what they did, for all the wrong reasons.” She started carrying the .38. “I was really stupid, walking around 33rd and York at 2:30 in the morning, but I figured that no harm would come to me — and you know what? No harm ever came to me.” She never had to draw her gun. Lynne Abraham loves old war stories about pounding the pavement, about going anywhere in her city in the pursuit of justice. She loves even more the stories about taking on the old boys.

As a prosecutor, Abraham started doing her own investigations, because the cops weren’t thorough enough to suit her. It was an era of gang warfare in many parts of the city. “Oh, the gang boys were captivated by me,” she says. “They used to call me ‘Miss Ann,’ ‘Miss Ann,’ which was slang for ‘white woman.’ But I loved these kids. They were bright, they were very good at what they did, for all the wrong reasons.” She started carrying the .38. “I was really stupid, walking around 33rd and York at 2:30 in the morning, but I figured that no harm would come to me — and you know what? No harm ever came to me.” She never had to draw her gun.

Funding

Even as Democratic mayoral candidate Lynne M. Abraham called upon her opponents Wedesday to reject campaign help from third party groups unfettered by funding restrictions ["Dark Money"], Jim Kenney received just such a boost from an ad produced by a political action committee with ties to the Electrical Workers Union. Building a Better Pennsylvania, which in the past has been funded by labor unions active in the construction industry, unveiled a 30-second ad on WPHL17 that supports Kenney's bid for mayor.

Abraham's pledge calls on candidates who benefit from advertising paid for by third-party interests to donate the equivalent of the ads' costs to the school district.

This ties in directly with our Positive Campaign Promise idea. Although, the ad was a positive ad, not negative

Issues

When it comes to weed she was highly critical of council’s decriminalization of marijuana, a policy change popular among voters.

• "I absolutely, totally disagree that our jails are filled with people who are low-level marijuana possessors," she said. Not true. Going back to the UCRS data from 2005-2009, when Abraham was D.A., there were 19,766 adults arrested for less than 30 grams of cannabis. That is an average of 13 people per day. Every single one was put into handcuffs and put into a Philadelphia holding cell.
• When she testified before a U.S. Senate subcommittee hearing in 2010, she claimed that cannabis consumers were all frequent criminals and any ease of law enforcement pressure on marijuana could result in a crime wave. Of course, none of that is true and sounds more like 1937 than the 21st Century.

Her sensitivity over issues of race — principally, her reputation for pushing for maximum sentences for defendants, a stance that resonated badly in the inner city — will certainly come up during her campaign.

Her grasp of the issues seems pretty superficial. In New York, she identified the mess of public education as far and away the most important one facing Philadelphia, and we talked about it for some time, but the only interesting idea she offered was to go to Governor Tom Wolf and demand that he keep the School Reform Commission. On other parts of the problem — funding, say, or how to handle the teachers union — she’s suggested nothing new. Her adviser, lawyer Michael Sklaroff, says a plan on education will develop during the campaign. The same goes for other issues — on city finances, or Philadelphia’s future role as an energy hub, Abraham has many questions but no concrete answers.