Three of the five district attorneys serving New York City are up for reelection this year, all of them Democrats: the Bronx’s Darcel Clark, Queen’s Melinda Katz, and Staten Island’s Michael McMahon. But while all three serve parts of the same city, the contours of each race differ considerably.
Clark, whose 2015 win in this loyally blue borough made her the first woman of color to serve as district attorney anywhere in the state, faces a challenge from the left in the June 27 primary in the form of civil rights attorney Tess Cohen. Cohen has argued that the incumbent hasn't proved to be the criminal justice reformer she pledged to be. “She made changes when she came into the office,” Cohen said to the Gotham Gazette’s Samar Khurshid. “But her reforms are the reforms that people were starting to do 10-15 years ago, and it's not where reforms are now and where we know we need to go.”
Cohen has further charged that Clark has lost the trust of residents thanks to several scandals, which Khurshid explains include "favoritism in promotions, accepting large donations from corrections officers that fall under her jurisdiction, bungling the prosecution of a Rikers Island physician’s assistant accused of multiple rapes, and retaliating against her own staffers who complained about working conditions."
Cohen, though, acknowledges that she has a tough task as she tries to become the first white person elected borough-wide in this diverse community since the 1980s. “Certainly the fact that I would be running to represent people who are dealing with systemic, implicit or explicit racism that I have never and will never experience weighed heavily on me as I was making a decision,” she said, “But in the end, what I see is an opportunity to make things significantly better for communities of color in the Bronx, and that outweighs my other concerns.”
Clark, unsurprisingly, views what she calls her own “smart on crime” record very differently than Cohen does. “My job is not just prosecution,” she told the Gazette, “We can't prosecute our way out of the work that we do. … This job is about prevention.” The incumbent, who has the local party establishment on her side, also continues to tout herself as a reformer, despite Cohen’s criticism, adding, “I think my community knows that I'm one of them.”
The dynamics are distinct across the East River in Queens, where Katz’s main intra-party opponent is former Queens Supreme Court Administrative Judge George Grasso. Katz famously won the 2019 primary to serve as district attorney for this similarly Democratic borough by 60 votes against Tiffany Cabán, a progressive who now serves on the New York City Council, but this time her foe is arguing she hasn’t done enough to prosecute crime.
“In my opinion, this is an artificially created crime wave by what I call progressive activists in the state legislature and City Hall,” Grasso said as he launched his campaign last year. He added, “They’re not reducing the daily jail population, they’re creating major stress on public safety across the board in Queens and throughout the city.”
Grasso, who is a former NYPD official, has the backing of Bill Bratton, who served two separate stints as police commissioner under Rudy Giuliani and Bill de Blasio. Katz, for her part, sports endorsements from Queens Borough President Donovan Richards and several major unions. Also in the running is Devian Daniels, who lost a 2021 primary for a Civil Court judgeship 80-19; Daniels has the support of Hiram Monserrate, a former state senator who continues to seek elected office more than a decade after he was expelled following a conviction for assault.
McMahon, finally, is up for a third term in Staten Island, a longtime Republican bastion that favored Trump 57-42, but he currently doesn’t face any serious opposition ahead of the April 6 filing deadline. McMahon previously served one term in the U.S. House after he won in 2008 following a cascade of Republican debacles, but he went on to lose to a pre-disgrace Mike Grimm. He’s had far more staying power as district attorney, though: McMahon won his 2015 race 55-45, and he prevailed in an uncontested contest four years later.
