PITTSBURGH (KDKA) – Meet David Freed, Cumberland County’s District Attorney and the Republican candidate for Attorney General.

“I believe that tough times and tough issues call for a tough prosecutor. That’s my background. I have been making those gut decisions that a chief law enforcement officer has to make for the last seven years as the elected DA. Five years before that as First Assistant. My background fits perfectly with what’s required for the office,” said Freed.

Freed is Governor Corbett’s choice for Attorney General — which led KDKA political editor Jon Delano to ask him how independent Freed would be in investigating misconduct in the administration.

Freed: “We’ll follow the evidence where it leads. That’s what a chief prosecutor has to do.”

Delano: “The governor couldn’t pick up the phone and call you and say, ‘Hey, I helped you win this election, lay off.’”

Freed: “I don’t believe he would ever do that. It wouldn’t make a difference if he did.”

Freed is unopposed for the Republican nomination on April 24 and will face off in November against either former suburban Philadelphia Congressman Patrick Murphy of Bucks County or former Assistant District Attorney Kathleen Kane of Lackawanna County, the two Democrats running.

The son-in-law of the state’s first elected Attorney General Leroy Zimmerman, Freed stresses his experience.

“I’ve had to deal with cases from the smallest incidences of shoplifting all the way up to capital murder, and everything in between.”

While his Democratic challengers say former AG Tom Corbett mishandled the Jerry Sandusky case by moving too slowly with too few investigators, Freed won’t criticize.

“It’s very difficult for me to second-guess a prosecutor because only the person doing the case knows when you have enough,” he said.

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