George Bochetto

A longtime trial lawyer who runs his own firm, Bochetto, 69, has frequently joined high-profile cultural flashpoints, battling what he called “woke” liberals. Along with defending the Columbus statue, he is leading a lawsuit against Mayor Jim Kenney arguing that the city discriminated against Italian Americans, including by changing Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples’ Day. He worked with groups critical of the removal of the statue of former Mayor Frank Rizzo and worked with Maureen Faulkner to try to disqualify District Attorney Larry Krasner from appeals involving Mumia Abu-Jamal, the man convicted of killing Faulkner’s husband, Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner. (The petition was dismissed by the state Supreme Court.) Bochetto’s firm also wrote some of the legal briefs defending former President Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial, after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. Bochetto’s firm focused on the First Amendment arguments, work that he pointed out later won praise from legal scholar Alan Dershowitz. Bochetto, unlike many Republican candidates around the country, acknowledged President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory. He also said he would have voted to certify Pennsylvania’s 2020 election result, as 92 senators did. Bochetto said he would put $1 million of his own money into his US Senate campaign. He was born in Brooklyn and grew up in an orphanage until he was adopted, and came to Philadelphia for Temple Law School in 1975. He briefly ran for mayor in 1999.