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      In Nassau County D.A.'s Race, Kaminsky and Donnelly Clash on Bail Reform

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      A special election for Nassau County district attorney has centered on recent changes to New York’s bail laws.When the district attorney seat in Nassau County became vacant earlier this year, Todd Kaminsky, a Democratic state senator and a former federal prosecutor, was widely seen as a shoo-in.But the special election next Tuesday has become increasingly competitive, largely because Mr. Kaminsky’s Republican opponent, Anne Donnelly, has effectively framed the contest as a suburban referendum on the state’s recent laws to loosen bail restrictions.Backed by an influx of money from the local Republican Party, Ms. Donnelly’s campaign has run a barrage of ads that incessantly attack Mr. Kaminsky for supporting the state’s bail reform laws. They falsely depict Mr. Kaminsky as the mastermind behind the 2019 legislation; highlight mug shots of violent criminals her campaign says were released as a result of the law; and urge voters to “keep Nassau safe” by voting against “‘Turn ‘Em Loose’ Todd.”The race has become a key test of just how far Democrats can pursue left-leaning criminal justice policies before those policies return to haunt moderate members, like Mr. Kaminsky, in competitive districts with ever-crucial swing voters — even in Nassau County, which has trended Democratic in recent elections.Jay Jacobs, the chairman of the New York State Democratic Party, said Ms. Donnelly was a “substandard” candidate who had distorted the damage done by changes in bail laws and who mischaracterized Mr. Kaminsky’s record on the issue. But he acknowledged that the race had become competitive because of the passage of bail reform.“My question to the far left is: What do you win when you force things too far and you end up losing good progressives who are more moderate?” said Mr. Jacobs, who is also the leader of the Democratic Party in Nassau County.Anne Donnelly, the Republican candidate, said that “bail reform makes people less safe.”Johnny Milano for The New York TimesBail reform is also playing a notable role in neighboring Suffolk County, where Timothy Sini, the Democratic district attorney, and Ray Tierney, the Republican challenger, have both criticized the changes to state law, saying they endanger public safety.“We fought hard against this law,” Mr. Sini, a former police commissioner credited with taking on the MS-13 gang, said during a recent town hall. But nowhere has the issue seemed more divisive in New York than in Nassau County, where the district attorney contest has become one of the state’s most bitterly fought races.Mr. Kaminsky and Ms. Donnelly have dueled over crucial newspaper endorsements, spent millions in advertising and traded accusations of lying and fearmongering about violent crime in Nassau County — made up of mostly affluent white suburbs that have long been heralded as the safest in the country.“There’s been an extensive effort by Republicans in this race to give people the perception that crime is on the rise here, and that city crime, which is out of control, is coming here,” Mr. Kaminsky said in an interview. “That has been their underlying and explicit message from Day 1.”Ms. Donnelly, who has worked in Nassau’s district attorney office for more than 30 years, said in an interview that Nassau was “a very safe county,” but that “bail reform makes people less safe and has put a revolving door on the front of the courthouse where criminals are not held accountable.”“I made bail reform an issue against my opponent because he owns bail reform,” she said. “He voted for it. He made sure it got passed. It’s not moderate.”In 2019, after regaining full control of the State Legislature for the first time in years, Democrats passed a law that sharply curtailed judges’ ability to set cash bail for most misdemeanors and some nonviolent felonies. It was an effort meant to stop the poor from being jailed before trial simply because they couldn’t afford to post bail, while those charged with the same crime who had more resources were released.The law created significant backlash after law enforcement officials raised the specter of dangerous criminals on the loose. It then became a political flash point in Albany, pitting moderate Democrats against the progressive wing of the party in 2020, an election year. Democrats ultimately agreed to roll back certain parts of the law that year after acknowledging some limitations.At the same time, Republicans spent millions of dollars attacking Democrats for supporting the original law, as well as the defund the police movement, running ads that were meant to stoke fears over the supposed harm to public safety from the law.Their tactic worked, to an extent. Democrats lost two House seats in 2020, as well as two State Senate seats just outside of New York City, including on Long Island. But Democrats in the State Capitol ultimately expanded their majority in the State Senate, buoyed by record turnout from the 2020 presidential election and an aggressive mail-in vote campaign.Now, the district attorney race has catapulted the bail law, and Mr. Kaminsky’s involvement in it, to the forefront for a second year in a row.“This race has become a talisman for how deeply this bail reform issue cuts with voters,” said Bruce Gyory, a Democratic political consultant. “You can bet that if Kaminsky were to lose this race, having gone into it as such a clear favorite, that the Republicans and some of their allies will double down and run against incumbent Democrats on this issue.”Mr. Kaminsky said Ms. Donnelly was being “dishonest” in saying that he wrote the bail law in 2019. While he voted for the state budget that included the bail law, he was not a co-sponsor of the law and was one of the Democrats who lobbied for a more restrained version of the law, in 2019, as well as when it was rolled back in 2020.“The Republicans have basically said, ‘What’s the penalty for lying?’” Mr. Kaminsky said. “I think being honest is a central character trait of being the district attorney, which has to have the most integrity of any position in government.”Mr. Kaminsky entered the race with an edge.Once a reliable G.O.P. stronghold, Nassau County has turned more Democratic over the past few decades as a result of demographic changes, mirroring a national political shift of traditionally conservative suburban voters slowly moving to the left. The county has more registered Democrats than Republicans — it voted twice for Barack Obama, as well as for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020 — but it still has a sizable contingent of independent voters. The previous district attorney, Madeline Singas, who resigned this year to become an associate judge on the State Court of Appeals, is a Democrat.Mr. Kaminsky jump-started his campaign with nearly $1.5 million he raised as a State Senate candidate. Since then, he has raised an additional $1.5 million, including $20,000 from Michael R. Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor.Ms. Donnelly, in her first run for public office, has received just over $250,000 in campaign contributions, including nearly $50,000 from Ronald S. Lauder, the billionaire cosmetics heir who spent millions of dollars last year in support of candidates running against Democrats who supported bail reform. Her campaign has also received substantial financial support from the county’s Republican Party, which has transferred more than $720,000 to her campaign account.The Daily News editorial board endorsed Mr. Kaminsky, but he suffered a blow after the editorial board of Newsday, the largest daily newspaper headquartered on Long Island, announced on Saturday it was endorsing Ms. Donnelly. The endorsement portrayed Mr. Kaminsky as an ambitious politician who was late to push back against bail reform, “perhaps to stay in the graces of New York City progressives who hold the key to success for statewide office.”National politics could also play a role in the race if President Biden’s sagging approval ratings energize more Republicans to vote next week or dampen enthusiasm among Democrats, especially in an off-year election.Indeed, some political observers are eyeing the Nassau race — as well as the races for governor in New Jersey and Virginia — as an early test of Democrats’ ability to protect their slim majority in Congress in next year’s midterm elections, when many of the most competitive races will play out in swing suburban districts.“As important as this race might be for people in Nassau, it’s about a heck of a lot more than who the next chief law enforcement officer in the county will be,” said Lawrence Levy, the executive dean of the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University, on Long Island.“It’s about how specific issues like bail reform and other law-and-order issues will play to the impact of the party’s national brand,” he said. “Long Island, even if it doesn’t count in national elections because it’s in a blue state, is a typical suburban swing region, so what happens here can be a bellwether for what might happen next year.”Katie Glueck contributed reporting. 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      Thomas Kenniff, Manhattan D.A. Candidate, Sees a City on the Brink

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      Thomas Kenniff, who is facing Alvin Bragg in the Nov. 2 election, has focused his campaign on a recent increase in some types of crime.Thomas Kenniff believes that New York City is teetering on a precipice.Mr. Kenniff, the Republican candidate for Manhattan district attorney, is not referring to Covid-19 or climate-related disasters, like the flooding that killed 13 people in the city last month.No, it is crime that worries Mr. Kenniff — crime, and progressive policies that he believes have contributed to its rise, particularly the bail reform law that went into effect in January 2020, which stopped criminal courts from setting cash bail on most misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies.Though legal experts who have studied the matter say there is no clear connection between that law and the rise in some categories of violent crime, including murders and shootings, Mr. Kenniff, 46, is convinced that a link exists.“As a result of misguided criminal justice policies that embrace criminals at the expense of victims, we are seeing an increase in violent crime and a decrease in quality of life like nothing we have experienced in years,” he said in a recent debate with his Democratic opponent, Alvin Bragg. The election, on Nov. 2, will determine the leader of an office that handles tens of thousands of cases a year and conducts many high-profile investigations, including an ongoing inquiry into former President Donald J. Trump and his family business.Mr. Bragg, 48, has an overwhelming advantage. Democrats outnumber Republicans in Manhattan by nearly eight to one, and residents of the borough — which Mr. Kenniff left for Long Island about four years ago — have not elected a Republican as their district attorney since 1937.Alvin Bragg, the Democratic nominee for Manhattan district attorney, supported the bail reform law that Mr. Kenniff has criticized.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesBut Mr. Kenniff, a major in the Army National Guard and veteran of the Iraq War, says he expects to compete with Mr. Bragg given the number of Manhattanites he hears from who are concerned about crime.“I do think there is something fermenting in response to what is happening on the street level that Alvin Bragg has not condemned in any meaningful way,” Mr. Kenniff said.Asked to respond, a spokesman for Mr. Bragg, Richard Fife, said that Mr. Kenniff had spent the campaign “making ridiculous attacks playing on people’s fears.”“Alvin Bragg understands from personal experience the safety concerns families face and the inequities embedded into our system,” Mr. Fife said.Mr. Kenniff has consistently asserted — as have other law enforcement figures, most prominently Commissioner Dermot Shea of the New York Police Department — that the bail overhaul is partly behind the spike in certain categories of gun crime, which began in the summer of 2020.Experts disagree, and point toward similar spikes in murders and shootings in cities around the country, regardless of their bail laws.“There is no evidence linking the bail reforms to the uptick in shootings and homicides,” said Michael Rempel, the director of jail reform at the Center for Court Innovation, a nonprofit organization that works in partnership with the mayor’s office, the state courts and other institutional players in the criminal justice system.Mr. Kenniff, who now works primarily as a defense lawyer, said that he sees a correlation and rejects arguments like Mr. Rempel’s.“I reject it based on what I’ve seen in my own practice and the people I’ve represented,” he said. “I reject it based on what I see on the streets.”From Long Island to IraqMr. Kenniff was born in Brooklyn in 1975 and grew up in Massapequa, in a waterfront house on the South Shore of Long Island. He attended the University of Rochester, where he majored in history. And he began to consider the possibility of being a lawyer, in part because of the unlikely influence of the actor Tom Cruise.“Whatever part he was playing, you wanted to do that,” Mr. Kenniff said. “I saw ‘Days of Thunder,’ I wanted to be a racecar driver. I saw ‘Cocktail,’ I wanted to become a bartender.”The movie that really influenced Mr. Kenniff was “A Few Good Men,” in which Mr. Cruise plays a member of the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, military lawyers who prosecute and defend members of the armed services.After graduating from Hofstra’s law school, and spending several years at a law firm and the Westchester district attorney’s office, Mr. Kenniff began the commissioning process. In early 2005, he was deployed to a military base right outside of Tikrit, Iraq.While abroad, he defended soldiers who were charged with violations of military law and provided counsel to soldiers and civilians. He also sweated out a number of rocket attacks, said his roommate, Major Robert Kincaid, who added that Mr. Kenniff soon got used to the strikes.“We heard the alarms go off and I was like, ‘Oh, we’re supposed to go to the shelter,’” Mr. Kincaid recalled. “And he looks at me and goes, ‘Are you going to do that? I think it’s safer in here.’”Mr. Kenniff returned to the United States toward the end of 2005 and after about six more months as a prosecutor in Westchester, he left the office to start a law firm with another veteran, Steven M. Raiser, where over the past 15 years he has done defense work for a wide range of clients.Mr. Kenniff spent long stretches of the pandemic housed at a hotel in Manhattan, like other service members, and on active duty at the Javits Center, which was transformed into a field hospital. During that time, Mr. Kenniff began following the nascent Democratic primary for Manhattan district attorney and grew alarmed at what he was hearing.A Return to ‘Broken Windows’Eight candidates ran as Democrats to become Manhattan district attorney, including three without any prosecutorial experience.But as murders and shootings continued to rise in the early months of 2021, voters leaned toward more experienced contenders like Mr. Bragg, a former federal prosecutor. Mr. Bragg won a close primary, leaving him poised to become the first Black Manhattan district attorney.Mr. Kenniff said he is concerned that Mr. Bragg — who supported the bail law and has pledged to dedicate new units in the office to hold the police accountable and to review the office’s past convictions — will implement lenient policies that will encourage crime.Asked about his own priorities, Mr. Kenniff said that he wanted to focus on reducing gun crime, which he believes means also cracking down on misdemeanors, including fare evasion and graffiti-related crimes.He said he believes in the merits of “broken windows” policing, the idea that actively policing and prosecuting petty crimes will have a healthy effect on the overall crime rate. The theory has been called into question by a number of criminologists and others, who say it naturally leads to discriminatory overpolicing.“I’m not trying to upend the whole concept of a prosecutor’s office,” Mr. Kenniff said. “I don’t need 20-page manifestoes about how I’m going to do this, this and that.”Mr. Kenniff has reserved much of his energy for criticizing the bail law, which was passed in an effort to ensure that poor people were not disproportionately penalized because they could not afford bail. The law effectively eliminated money bail and pretrial detention for almost all misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies, but allowed for bail to be set on virtually all violent felonies.It was met with immediate resistance from opponents, who argued that it would lead to the release of dangerous criminals. In April 2020, the law was amended to allow judges more discretion to jail defendants. (It remains illegal in New York for judges to consider a defendant’s threat to public safety in setting bail, as it has been for the last 50 years.)The law remains a target of conservatives, including Mr. Kenniff, who says that along with the disbandment of the police’s anti-crime units and local politicians’ lack of support for the police, the law was key to rises in gun crime. He argues that the pretrial release of those charged with crimes like gun possession and misdemeanor assault has endangered communities.As of yet, there is no evidence of that. The mayor’s office of criminal justice has found that the bail law had no discernible effect on the rate of rearrest. And studies conducted in Chicago, Philadelphia and New Jersey, which made similar changes, found that their rates of recidivism had not gone up.None of that carries weight with Mr. Kenniff.“The notion that these policies haven’t contributed to what is going on on the street is just utterly counterintuitive,” he said. “So would I be skeptical, am I skeptical, of studies and statistics that say otherwise? Sure.” More