Voters still largely undecided on their top choice in Manhattan DA race
With less than 48 days before the Democratic primary, voters appear to be largely undecided on who should be the party’s nominee for Manhattan District Attorney.
There are a few contenders who stand out in a crowded field of career prosecutors, civil rights attorneys and one public defender, including former Assistant U.S. Attorney Tali Farhadian Weinstein, former Manhattan prosecutor Lucy Lang and former New York State Chief Deputy Attorney General Alvin Bragg.
Those three candidates came out on top in a recent public poll conducted by Benenson Strategy Group, which surveyed over 1,550 likely Democratic primary voters in Manhattan.
Yet in that poll — the first and so far the only public poll to look at the race — 44% of respondents said they still don’t know who’d they’d pick to be the borough’s next top prosecutor.
“The public understands very little about how [district attorneys] do what they do, why they do what they do, how decisions are made,” Michael Jacobson, a sociology professor and executive director of the CUNY Institute for State and Local Governance, told the Daily News. “Unlike policing, where now we have videos, and [those incidents] become news ... you don’t see the DAs at work.
“Now [you] have a bunch of folks who are different degrees of what is considered progressive,” Jacobson added, noting that most of the Manhattan DA candidates don’t embrace a tough-on-crime approach. “Unless you are really parsing out their position papers and going over their websites, and listening to their speeches, I can understand people saying, ‘What’s the difference, exactly, between these people?’”
Some of those differences were revealed Tuesday night during a fiery 90-minute debate on Spectrum News NY1, which could help voters determine which person can best transform the justice system while curtailing high crime rates that have skyrocketed during the pandemic.
One key moment was when Lang grilled Bragg about his leadership of the New York State Attorney General’s Office of Special Investigation. Lang said the office prosecuted over 40 cases of police-involved killings under Bragg, yet did not secure a single conviction.
“It is hard work, Lucy,” Bragg shot back, noting he has the support of Gwen Carr, Eric Garner’s mother, because of his work in that unit. “It was very painful, those acquittals … Get in the arena with me and do the work.”
Candidates Tahanie Aboushi, Liz Crotty, and Dan Quart all pressed Farhadian Weinstein about accepting large amounts of money from Wall Street donors, and how she would prosecute hedge funds — including leaders at her husband’s firm, Saba Capital Management — that backed her campaign.
“I will prosecute anyone who breaks the law, including my donors. I would expect all of you to do the same,” she responded, noting that she would also recuse herself from handling a case brought against her husband Boaz Weinstein, or his firm.
Yet whether voters plug into the DA race remains to be seen, said Dr. Christina Greer, an associate professor of political science and American studies at Fordham University.
“I don’t think a lot of people are giving it thought, especially because we have a mayor’s race going on,” said Greer, noting that while there is widespread voter apathy, New Yorkers are paying more attention to the mayor and City Council candidates. “We tend to get people to pay attention closer to election day, and I hope that’s the case here.”
