10
QUEENS WEEKLY, JANUARY 12, 2020
Former Assistant District Attorney makes
a law-and-order bid for Borough President
BY MAX PARROTT
A day after Mayor Bill de Blasio
declared the official date for
the Borough President’s special
election to be March 24, a new, lawand
order challenger announced a
last minute bid for the office: former
Assistant District Attorney
James Quinn.
Though Quinn, a lifelong
Queens resident, is reportedly a
registered Democrat like the other
five declared candidates, both his
background and political platform
described in the political flyer that
was distributed to QNS on Friday
makes him stand out among the
rest of the field.
Quinn served as ADA in the
Queens County DA’s Office for 42
years. His platform promises to
fight against many of the recent
criminal justice reforms that city
and state legislators have championed
over the past year.
In the campaign materials, he
vows to stop the closing of Rikers
Island, to stop Mayor de Blasio
from building jails in Kew Gardens
or anywhere in Queens, and
to push back on the bail reform by
allowing judges to consider a defendant’s
“danger to society” when
setting bail.
The platform contains one economic
policy idea about working
“with businesses like Amazon to
bring high paying jobs and careers
to Queens.”
Though Quinn may not have
widespread political recognition
in the borough, over the past
couple months he’s come out as an
outspoken critic of the bail reform
legislation that took effect Jan. 1.
His name made the rounds in November
at the top of a document he
prepared that provided an exhaustive
list of the crimes that fall under
the new law. He recently joined
with Councilman Robert Holden
to present in a forum designed to
inform Kew Gardens residents
about the impact of this legislation,
where he argued that it would
drive up crime rates.
In a race where candidates
have been largely talking about
policies that emphasize racial and
economic justice, Quinn’s platform
is a marked turn toward the idea of
constituents’ safety. The pamphlet
argues he “knows how to protect
you and your families.”
In the Queens DA’s Office, his
roles included Executive Assistant
District Attorney, chief of the Narcotic
Investigations Bureau, deputy
chief of homicide and criminal
trial assistant. He’s tried over 30
murder cases and prosecuted hundreds
of “career criminals.”
Quinn lives in Richmond Hill
with his wife Susan. He was raised
in the Ravenswood Housing Projects
and attended public schools in
the Astoria and Long Island City
area before earning a Bachelor’s
from Columbia University and a
law degree from Fordham.
He will have until Jan. 13 to
collect the 2,000 valid signatures
Photo provided by the James Quinn campaign required to get on the ballot.