H H H H H H PRIMARY VOTERS’ GUIDE 2021 H H H H H H
Manhattan District Attorney race
Caribbean L 34 ife, JUNE 4-10, 2021
Visit PoliticsNY.com to Watch Debates & Learn More About Each Candidate
BY MARK HALLUM
With the Manhattan District Attorney’s office
set to be vacated by Cy Vance at the end of
2021, no small crowd of candidates have lined up to
take his place overseeing hundreds of prosecutors
and high-profile cases against the likes of Donald
Trump.
But who are the nine candidates?
It’s an important question to ask as the 2021 mayoral
race has eclipsed the DA election in terms of
public attention and the Democratic primary falls
on the same day: June 22.
The majority of the nine candidates are seeking
to reform the office and dole out justice by more
modern standards of giving the New Yorkers a shot
at a better life rather than a life of recidivism:
Tahanie Aboushi,
like the others in the
race, is reform minded
as well, hoping to
turn the DA’s office
from “one that destroys
communities
to one that restores
them.”
Aboushi is a civil
rights attorney who became interested in law at 14
when her father was sentenced to 22 years in prison,
and sees the criminal justice system as an “antiquated”
approach that has never resulted in a change in
terms of making communities safer.
Alvin Bragg has
explained that as a
teenager growing up
in Harlem, he was
subject to repeated
instances of stop and
frisk by NYPD officers
which encouraged
him to become
a prosecutor, helping
Preet Bharara in the US Attorney’s office and becoming
Chief Deputy Attorney General for New
York.
Bragg plans to shift the focus of the Manhattan
DA’s office from that which prosecutes lowlevel
crimes and enact reforms that will see the
end of racial disparities in the criminal justice
system.
Liz Crotty began
her legal career in
2000 and worked her
way through the
Manhattan District
Attorney’s Office as
an Assistant District
Attorney in both the
Trial Division and the
Investigation Division.
For the last 12 years, however, Crotty has worked
at her own law firm which she operates alongside
her partner. As DA, she hopes to establish a sex
crimes and domestic violence bureau, while focusing
on prosecuting white-collar crimes.
Diana Florence
worked in the Manhattan
DA’s office,
under Vance who
has held the seat for
about a decade and
described current
operations as a
“concierge system
of justice” for the
wealthy.
Florence has had a career spanning 25 years
prosecuting real estate and other corporations for
defrauding 9/11 charities, wage theft and creating
dangerous work conditions. As opposed to punishing
the poor for petty crime, she plans to go after
the money corporations owe to government.
Lucy Lang is a former
assistant district
attorney who
has expressed a desire
to keep communities
safe while prioritizing
ending
mass incarceration,
as well.
Having a history of
working alongside clients who were the victims of
crimes as well as incarcerated individuals who may
be serving time unfairly, Lang also served as director
of the Institute for Innovation in Prosecution at
John Jay College.
Eliza Orlins acts as
the only public defender
in the race with a
decade on the job and
has described the
Manhattan DA’s office
as a “cruel” and overlypunitive
system that
drive over-incarceration
in New York.
Orlins has specifically mentioned dismantling
the “human and financial costs of mass incarceration,
the school-to-prison pipeline” in her run for
DA, claiming that the system as it stands is “rigged”
poor, black and brown New Yorkers.
Dan Quart, a Washington
Heights native,
has been a litigator
for 25 years but is
no stranger to politics.
In 2011, he ran
for state Assembly
where he has served
his constituents as a
lawmaker in Albany.
He has explained that as the district attorney, he
will decline to prosecute low-level crimes that do
not pose a public safety risk. As well as reforming
the sex crimes unit to be more “survivor-centered”
in nature, Quart plans to bring greater transparency
to the office.
Tali Farhadian
Weinstein immigrated
to the United
States 40 years ago at
four years old fleeing
violence in Iran, and
believes that the DA’s
office needs to act
with sensitivity as
the city recovers
from COVID-19.
Farhadian has served as Counsel to Attorney General
Eric Holder under the Obama administration
and also served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in New
York, and plans to establish a Bureau of Gender-Violence
as well as a Conviction Review Unit within a
new Post-Conviction Justice Bureau.
/PoliticsNY.com
