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      No Prosecutorial Experience? These D.A. Candidates Say That’s an Asset.

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      Tahanie Aboushi, Eliza Orlins and Dan Quart are running behind a broad rethinking of how the criminal justice system should work.The only two men who have led the Manhattan district attorney’s office over the last 45 years were scions of the establishment, leading the country’s most prominent local prosecutor’s office with a traditional emphasis on fighting crime.Yet Eliza Orlins, Tahanie Aboushi and Dan Quart, three candidates running to be the next district attorney, have consistently argued that if voters want the criminal justice system to change, they should be wary of anyone who has ties to the establishment — or any experience at all as a prosecutor.In cities around the country, a wave of prosecutorial candidates has won elections by pledging to do less harm to defendants who commit low-level crimes. The nonprosecutorial candidates in Manhattan have taken up that argument, and advanced it, adding that only a leader whose perspective is unblemished by a history of putting people behind bars can make the system less punitive and less racist.But with a week to go in the race, the trio of candidates have lagged in the fund-raising battle and in available surveys. They have had a hard time distinguishing themselves from one another, and from former prosecutors like Alvin Bragg and Lucy Lang, who have also pledged to help end mass incarceration while arguing that their experience will help them enact change.Some observers say that the trio’s unilateral criticism of prosecutors has been detrimental to the public’s understanding of the race. Zephyr Teachout, the anticorruption activist, has said that just because Mr. Bragg, whom she has endorsed, has been a prosecutor does not mean that he is not a reformer.“Some people want to say basically that if you’re a prosecutor you have no business here,” said Ms. Teachout. “This is just nonsense.”All three candidates have sought to claim the mantle of one of the country’s most prominent progressive prosecutors, Larry Krasner, who when he was first elected Philadelphia district attorney in 2017, had never charged anyone with a crime.But many of Mr. Krasner’s peers around the country who are considered progressive prosecutors — Kim Foxx in Chicago, Rachael Rollins in Boston, George Gascón in Los Angeles and others — had experience charging crimes before they were elected.Miriam Krinsky, the executive director of Fair and Just Prosecution, an organization that calls for shrinking the criminal-legal system and increasing transparency, accountability, and fairness, said in an interview that it had become increasingly common for those without any experience to be elected as prosecutors. She cautioned against drawing hard rules about candidates’ past experiences, no matter what they were.“Just as I would be reluctant to embrace the view that you have to have prosecutorial experience to run a prosecutor’s office, I similarly would reject the view that you can’t achieve reform and run a reform prosecutor’s office if you have been a prosecutor,” she said. “It’s the person. It’s their philosophy. It’s their vision that we should look at.”‘Rage at Injustice’Eliza Orlins has said she would halve the size of the office she is seeking to lead. Sarah Blesener for The New York TimesMs. Orlins, 38, has more criminal courtroom experience than Ms. Aboushi and Mr. Quart. A celebrity on Twitter thanks in part to her appearances on the show “Survivor,” she has been a public defender for the last decade.Born and raised on the Upper East Side of New York with stints in Hong Kong and Washington, D.C., Ms. Orlins has wanted to be a lawyer since she was a small child. She went to Fordham Law School, graduating in 2008, and joined Legal Aid as a staff attorney the following year.In her early years with the organization, she said, she was appalled at the machinery of the criminal justice system, which she saw as harshly punitive, particularly toward Black people. Her perspective has not changed.“I’m fueled by rage at injustice,” she said in an interview. “People say you can’t be motivated by anger and I’m like, ‘Oh yeah? Watch me.’”Starting in 2016, Ms. Orlins began to vent that anger at Donald J. Trump, then a candidate for president and now a subject of a major investigation within the district attorney’s office. “I DETEST TRUMP!!!!!!!!” she wrote on Twitter in March of that year.She blasted his supporters online, too, and in October 2016 dressed up as one of them for Halloween, complete with a red Trump campaign hat that she embellished so that it said “Make America White Again.” In August of last year, when she had already announced her campaign, she tweeted threateningly at Ivanka Trump.Asked about her tweets, Ms. Orlins has said that she does not regret them and will evaluate evidence against the Trump family without prejudice. But legal ethicists have said that her past statements could threaten Ms. Orlins’s ability to lead any potential prosecution of Mr. Trump were she to be elected.She has vowed to cut the district attorney’s office in half and said that she would decline to prosecute the vast majority of misdemeanors. She has been particularly outspoken about decriminalizing certain forms of sex work: When the district attorney’s office recently announced it would stop prosecuting prostitution, Ms. Orlins took partial credit for pushing them on the issue.She was narrowly supported by the Working Families Party chapter in Manhattan. But Ms. Aboushi won the group’s overall endorsement, which carries significant weight in New York, although arguably less in Manhattan than other boroughs.A Life TransformedTahanie Aboushi has said she would stop prosecuting certain low-level crimes.Sarah Blesener for The New York TimesMs. Aboushi grew up in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, the sixth of ten siblings. When she was 13, her father was found guilty on federal conspiracy charges. Two years later, he was sentenced to 22 years in prison. Ms. Aboushi said that his conviction grants her an understanding of the justice system that other candidates do not share.“You try not to be defined by that, but it’s literally the center of your world,” she said.She sped through high school and college, and was 20 when she started law school at Syracuse University. She graduated in 2009 and a year later, started her own law firm.Through her firm, Ms. Aboushi has taken on more than two dozen civil rights cases. In 2012, she sued the New York Police Department for making a teenage girl take her hijab off after she was arrested. The suit eventually compelled a shift in the Police Department’s patrol guide. She also successfully sued the Fire Department on behalf of Black firefighters in 2018.Like Ms. Orlins, Ms. Aboushi has said she would cut the district attorney’s office in half and decline to prosecute a number of low-level crimes. Along with the Working Families Party, she has been endorsed by well-known local progressives including Cynthia Nixon and Jumaane Williams, as well as Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.Former prosecutors have expressed frustration with Ms. Aboushi, who has never tried a criminal case, for the way she has characterized her father’s prosecution. They say that because he was convicted on multiple counts related to leading a violent truck hijacking ring and never claimed the conviction had been wrongful, it was misleading for Ms. Aboushi to suggest he was a victim of injustice.“If you look at the evidence presented in the trial and the charges of which he was convicted, it was a very serious case,” said Daniel R. Alonso, who worked in the prosecutors’ office that charged Mr. Aboushi but was not involved in the case.Ms. Aboushi said recently that she had never asked her father whether he was involved in a conspiracy but that she knew him to be innocent.“It’s not a conversation that we have to have,” she said.The AssemblymanDan Quart has emphasized his commitment to public safety in recent weeks.Sarah Blesener for The New York TimesMr. Quart, 49, is the only white man running as a Democrat to lead an office that has only ever been led by white men. He is also the only candidate who has been charged with a crime, for smoking weed at a Phish concert in 1995.He grew up in Washington Heights and graduated from the law school at St. John’s University in 1997. In 2000, he caught the politics bug after helping a friend with an unsuccessful State Senate campaign. Eleven years later, he won a seat in the State Assembly that he has held since.Shortly after taking office, he was told by a constituent that young people were being arrested by the thousands for possessing small blades known as gravity knives. Mr. Quart took the issue on, and after seven years of fighting for it, the bill that criminalized the possession of such knives was repealed.Mr. Quart has not picked up many flashy endorsements like Ms. Aboushi, nor does he have the visible online support of Ms. Orlins. But he has been endorsed by a number of elected officials from Manhattan, as well as several Democratic clubs. He argues that his name recognition and proven support on the Upper East Side is a greater asset than Ms. Orlins’s Twitter army or Ms. Aboushi’s political allies.The most moderate of the trio, he has emphasized his commitment to public safety in recent weeks. Mr. Quart has limited experience in the criminal courtroom, something that his opponents have used against him.“There is no world in which he is qualified to be D.A.” Ms. Orlins said. “He shows such a deep misunderstanding of the law.”A campaign spokeswoman, Kate Smart, disagreed, making reference to Mr. Quart’s work in the Assembly.His “deep knowledge of the law helped him write and pass the only two changes to New York’s penal code in the past two decades,” she said. More

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      Lucy Lang Sought Change at the Manhattan D.A.’s Office. Now She Wants to Lead It.

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      Lucy Lang has spent most of her career as a criminal-justice reformer. But is she too close to the system to bring about real change?Lucy Lang is a squeaky wheel, a meddler, a self-described noodge.A granddaughter of the philanthropist Eugene Lang, she is bent on the constant improvement of her surroundings. In the dozen years she spent working at the Manhattan district attorney’s office, she developed a reputation for pushing reforms that created new opportunities for those charged by prosecutors — but she was also stymied by a leadership team that did not always want things to change as fast as she did.Now Ms. Lang, 40, wants to be in charge of that change, running against seven other Democrats to replace her old boss, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., as the Manhattan district attorney. In April, she gave her own campaign half a million dollars, according to campaign finance reports, in hopes of staying competitive with two leading candidates, Tali Farhadian Weinstein and Alvin Bragg. While little quality polling has come out in the race, the few available surveys have shown her trailing only Ms. Weinstein in popularity.But as a longtime employee in the district attorney’s office, she is also the candidate who has worked most closely with Mr. Vance, who has been something of a punching bag for the other contenders. They have criticized what they say is his relative slowness in making the criminal justice system less punitive for lower-income New Yorkers, while being too lenient on the wealthy and powerful.All of this sets up an apparent contradiction for Ms. Lang’s campaign: She cites her experience working in the office led by Mr. Vance, even as she insists that she is the right person to reform that office.Veterans of the office characterized Ms. Lang as someone skilled at bringing about meaningful reform from inside the system. Karen Friedman Agnifilo, a former deputy to Mr. Vance, said that while her old boss was more progressive than his critics say, Ms. Lang deserved praise for her sustained commitment to change, especially in seeking ways to reduce the reliance on jails and prisons.“She and a couple of other junior people took it upon themselves — and this is a highly unusual thing to do — they took it upon themselves to come to me and give me their ideas and thoughts and suggestions about how the office could be better,” Ms. Agnifilo said.But Ms. Lang’s opponents remain skeptical.“It’s not like she was an A.D.A. in this bureau or that bureau,” said Dan Quart, another candidate and a longtime state assemblyman who has been critical of Mr. Vance. “She was in the room when they made policy decisions.”Asked about her time at Mr. Vance’s office, Ms. Lang was diplomatic.“I could see that the world was changing and that the office wasn’t quite keeping pace,” she said. “Although there were respects in which there were great advances being made.”Ms. Lang, seen here greeting a voter in an apartment building, started at the district attorney’s office working under Robert Morgenthau.Hilary Swift for The New York TimesAn unusual curiosityThe oldest child of the actor Stephen Lang — perhaps best known for playing the vicious Col. Miles Quaritch in “Avatar” — and Kristina Watson, a painter, Ms. Lang was born in Manhattan and raised in the West Village and in Westchester.Early on she showed an unusual curiosity about other people. At her family’s annual Memorial Day picnic, she would go from blanket to blanket, asking strangers to share their food, then joining them to chat — an openness that friends say helps explain her later success at climbing the ladder at the Manhattan district attorney’s office.Like her grandfather and her father, she went to Swarthmore, where she studied political and legal philosophy and served as captain of the lacrosse team. (“I’m not a good athlete,” she said, “but I just like being on a team.”) Then, inspired in part by her aunt, the lawyer and philanthropist Jane Lang, she enrolled at Columbia Law School.Two experiences during her student years drove Ms. Lang to become a prosecutor: In 2004 she worked for Judge Jed S. Rakoff as he presided over a death penalty case, and the following winter, a childhood friend of Ms. Lang’s was killed by the friend’s own brother. She said that seeing her friend’s family take on dual roles — relatives of both the victim and the defendant — gave her a sense of how both groups can be harmed by prosecutors.“I just saw it as a real opportunity for public servants to do things differently, to support people better,” she said.After graduating in 2006, she went to work for Robert Morgenthau, the venerable Manhattan district attorney, starting in the appeals division. Along the way she built a friendly relationship with Mr. Morgenthau; she later co-wrote one of his final opinion articles.By 2010, when Mr. Vance took over the office, she was working in the trial division. It was there that she first noticed a small problem: Doctors were reluctant to testify in criminal court, concerned that doing so could make them subject to civil liability. It was the sort of specific, concrete issue she loved to tackle. Working with an emergency room doctor at Weill Cornell Medicine, Ms. Lang created a curriculum to teach doctors about criminal trials.Even as her cases became more intense — she started working murder trials in 2013 — Ms. Lang’s ambitions for improving the office became grander. After she won a wiretap case against 35 people for selling angel dust, heroin and cocaine, she successfully pitched the office’s leadership team on a program promoting alternatives to incarceration for young offenders. (It later became a unit that provides some defendants the chance to participate in community-based programs in lieu of prison.)By that time, Ms. Lang said, she was not nervous presenting to the office’s leaders; she knew them all.In January 2017, Ms. Agnifilo promoted Ms. Lang, giving her a special position leading policy at the office. That fall, Ms. Lang piloted the first version of what would become the Inside Criminal Justice initiative, a series of seminars that brought prosecutors and incarcerated people together to talk about the justice system and how to improve it.Jarrell Daniels, a participant in the initiative who had recently been released from prison, was so intrigued by the program that he asked to return to the facility to continue with it. He remembered sitting around a table in a cramped conference room, watching as the participants grilled Ms. Lang.“She’s either brave or she’s crazy, or she might be both,” he remembered thinking.“She sat there kind of poised as they gave it to her about the district attorney’s office and vented about their personal experiences with the justice system,” he said. “Although that wasn’t what she was there for, she kind of allowed them to share their piece.”‘What are we waiting for?’Ideas about the criminal justice system changed rapidly during Mr. Vance’s time in office.In 2010, he was seen as one of the more liberal district attorneys in the country. When he leaves office, at the end of this year, he will do so as a seeming moderate — not because he has necessarily changed, but because a wave of more recently elected prosecutors have moved aggressively to take on what they consider fundamental injustices in the system. (Mr. Vance’s defenders respond that he has cut prosecutions by nearly 60 percent and established one of the nation’s first conviction integrity programs, among other accomplishments.)More than a dozen of those recently elected prosecutors have endorsed Ms. Lang’s candidacy, including Marilyn Mosby, the state’s attorney in Baltimore. She said that Ms. Lang was one of the more prominent people behind the scenes in the progressive prosecutor movement, particularly through her work at the Institute for Innovation in Prosecution, a role she took on in 2018 and left last year.Ms. Mosby said that Ms. Lang’s ideas tended to scramble the power dynamics of the system, bringing together prosecutors — those with the most power — and incarcerated people, who have the least.“Her having an understanding and appreciation for that was something I found rather compelling,” Ms. Mosby said. “Not a lot of prosecutors have that.”Ms. Lang insists that despite her years working within the legal establishment, she is no incrementalist — she argues that she has made “systemic” change. But opponents to her left, like Mr. Quart and another candidate, Tahanie Aboushi, have raised questions about whether she, or any experienced prosecutor, can be relied upon to uproot a system in which they thrived.“While I appreciate that Lucy is leaning into reform as much as a career prosecutor can, an entire career of inside-the-box thinking is going to get us minor refinements to what we already have,” said Ms. Aboushi’s campaign manager, Jamarah Hayner. “And that’s just not good enough.”Even Ms. Lang’s fans acknowledge that she was sometimes hampered by the inertia of the office bureaucracy. She is particularly closemouthed about her relationship with Mr. Vance — she declines to criticize him, but insists that had he decided to run for re-election, she would have run against him.Ms. Agnifilo said that while she knows Ms. Lang “respects” Mr. Vance, she understood why it was tricky for her, as a candidate, to be too associated with him, given some of the criticism he has faced. She added that when she and Ms. Lang would argue at work, it wasn’t about the direction that the office should head in, but the speed at which it should do it.“I appreciated the fact that some of these things were so important that she was like, ‘What are we waiting for? Let’s just do it,’” Ms. Agnifilo said. More

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      2 Leading Manhattan D.A. Candidates Face the Trump Question

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      Alvin Bragg and Tali Farhadian Weinstein both had dealings with President Donald J. Trump’s administration that Mr. Trump could try to use against them.Whoever wins the race to become the next Manhattan district attorney will take over one of the most contentious, highest-profile criminal investigations in the office’s history: the inquiry into former President Donald J. Trump and his business.Two of the leading candidates in the Democratic primary field, Alvin Bragg and Tali Farhadian Weinstein, have had past contacts with Mr. Trump’s administration — dealings that could become an issue if one of them becomes district attorney.Mr. Bragg, a former official with the New York attorney general’s office, reminds voters frequently that in his former job, he sued Mr. Trump’s administration “more than a hundred times.”Ms. Farhadian Weinstein, who once served as general counsel to the Brooklyn district attorney, has been less vocal about Mr. Trump. She only occasionally notes her involvement in a successful lawsuit against the Trump administration. And she has not spoken publicly about once interviewing with Trump administration officials for a federal judgeship early in his term.Mr. Bragg and Ms. Farhadian Weinstein are among eight Democratic candidates vying to replace Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the district attorney, who is not running for re-election. With the primary less than one month away, Mr. Trump continues to loom over the race.Mr. Vance’s office recently convened a grand jury that will hear evidence about Mr. Trump and his company, according to a person with knowledge of the matter — a sign that the investigation could soon intensify.Tali Farhadian Weinstein attended a meeting on White House grounds to discuss a federal judgeship.Sara Naomi Lewkowicz for The New York TimesMr. Bragg and Ms. Farhadian Weinstein have raised more money than any of their opponents, and both say they have the prosecutorial experience to take over the office.But each would also bring particular experiences to the Trump investigation that the former president, based on his past actions, seems likely to weaponize against them: Mr. Bragg’s history of legal conflict with Mr. Trump and Ms. Farhadian Weinstein’s previously undisclosed discussion of a judicial post with Trump administration lawyers.Andrew Weissmann, a former senior prosecutor under Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel who investigated Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, said he expected Mr. Trump to target the next district attorney just as he had attacked Mr. Mueller, whom the former president had called a “true Never Trumper” and “totally conflicted.”“No matter who gets elected, he’s going to do opposition research, and assuming an indictment’s brought or anything close to that, he’s going to do what he did with the special counsel,” Mr. Weissmann said.The impaneling of a new grand jury, first reported by The Washington Post, follows years of investigation by Mr. Vance, who has focused on possible financial crimes at the Trump Organization, including tax and bank-related fraud.Prosecutors were already using grand juries to issue subpoenas, obtain documents and hear some testimony, but the new grand jury is expected to hear from a range of witnesses in the coming months. There is no indication that the investigation has reached an advanced stage or that prosecutors have decided to seek charges against Mr. Trump or his company.Mr. Trump’s advisers have said that he will try to impugn the motives of the prosecutors investigating him. After The Post’s report came out, Mr. Trump called the inquiry “purely political” and said that “our prosecutors are politicized.”That is an attack that he might wield against Mr. Bragg, who has repeatedly brought up his many lawsuits against Mr. Trump and his administration, referring to a period in 2017 to 2018 when he served as a senior official under successive New York attorneys general, Eric Schneiderman and Barbara D. Underwood.One of the most prominent of the office’s lawsuits, filed in June 2018, accused the Donald J. Trump Foundation and the Trump family of what Ms. Underwood called “a shocking pattern of illegality,” and ultimately led to the foundation’s dissolution.Alvin Bragg worked in the New York State attorney general’s office when suits against President Donald J. Trump were filed.Andrew Seng for The New York TimesMr. Bragg, at a Democratic candidate forum in December, cited that lawsuit as one reason he was qualified to oversee the district attorney’s Trump investigation.“I have investigated Trump and his children and held them accountable for their misconduct with the Trump Foundation,” Mr. Bragg said. “I know how to follow the facts and hold people in power accountable.”Mr. Bragg acknowledged that Mr. Trump could seek to make an issue of his history if he wins. Asked how he would contend with accusations of bias from the former president, Mr. Bragg said he had been attentive to what he had said publicly — and what he had not said.“It is a fact that I have sued Trump more than a hundred times,” Mr. Bragg said. “I can’t change that fact, nor would I. That was important work. That’s separate from anything that the D.A.’s office may be looking at now.”A spokeswoman for Ms. Farhadian Weinstein, Jennifer Blatus, accused Mr. Bragg of attacking Mr. Trump “for political advantage every chance he gets,” in contrast to what Ms. Blatus characterized as her candidate’s “judicious approach.”In an emailed statement, Ms. Farhadian Weinstein explained her reluctance to speak about a potential attack on her by Mr. Trump.“I have repeatedly declined requests to discuss a hypothetical argument that a current subject of an investigation in the Manhattan D.A.’s office might make — that’s the only proper approach for open matters the next D.A. will inherit,” she said.She also criticized Mr. Bragg for hosting a fund-raiser with Daniel S. Goldman, a former House lawyer who worked on Mr. Trump’s first impeachment.Ms. Farhadian Weinstein’s meeting with Trump administration lawyers over the judgeship occurred in 2017, early in the Trump administration.A friend of Ms. Farhadian Weinstein, the Harvard Law School professor Noah Feldman, suggested her as a candidate for a district court judgeship to Avi Berkowitz, then a special assistant to Jared Kushner, Mr. Feldman said. He did so on his own initiative, he said. (Two years later, in 2019, Mr. Feldman testified against Mr. Trump at his first impeachment hearing.)Ms. Farhadian Weinstein, who had previously applied for a judgeship during the administration of President Barack Obama, received a phone call from the Trump administration out of the blue, she told an associate. It is not unusual for lawyers with judicial aspirations to seek judgeships regardless of political party — Ms. Farhadian Weinstein has been registered as both an independent and a Democrat in recent years — and she took the meeting at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House grounds.But the meeting, which included lawyers John Bash and Gregory G. Katsas from the White House Counsel’s Office, became heated during a disagreement over constitutional law, the associate said, and the conversation never went further.A former administration official who was familiar with the meeting did not remember its being characterized as heated and called it a “perfunctory” interview set up to appease the former president’s son-in-law.A person close to Mr. Kushner said that while Mr. Kushner would periodically pass along to the White House Counsel’s Office recommendations people would make for judges, he has no memory of Ms. Farhadian Weinstein being discussed. There is no evidence Mr. Trump personally knew of Ms. Farhadian Weinstein’s interest in a judgeship or of her trip to meet with the White House lawyers.While Ms. Farhadian Weinstein’s interview for a judgeship in 2017 could become fodder for the former president’s political attacks should she become district attorney, legal experts said it raised no ethical concerns, nor would it require that she recuse herself from the office’s investigation into Mr. Trump and his organization.Susan Lerner, the executive director of Common Cause New York, a good government advocacy group, said in an interview that while Ms. Farhadian Weinstein would not have been required to disclose the meeting publicly in the district attorney’s race, the information was “certainly relevant to the job she’s applying for.”“It’s information that voters will want to consider, and it’s up to them to decide how this factors into their ultimate choice,” Ms. Lerner said.William K. Rashbaum More

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      A Trump Case Awaits the Next Manhattan DA. Who Is the Best Prosecutor for the Job?

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      Some candidates for Manhattan’s district attorney are agents of change who want to cut the police budget. Others are very comfortable with long-established established power networks.During its 20 year run, “Law & Order” cast five different actors in the role of Manhattan district attorney, a rate of turnover that feels like science fiction given that, in reality, four people have been elected to the office in 83 years. For the past 46 of them, the position, one of the most important prosecutorial posts in the country, has been held by two people, each an aristocrat born to a political dynasty: First, Robert M. Morgenthau, son of Henry Morgenthau Jr., who served as treasury secretary under two presidents (and who was himself the son of the United States ambassador to the Ottoman Empire); and since 2010, Cy Vance, son of the former secretary of state for whom he is named.In three weeks, Manhattanites will have the opportunity to vote for someone new at a pivotal moment in the history of race and social reform, during a period when leading prosecutors around the country — in Philadelphia, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston — have been on the vanguard of the movement to reduce incarceration. The stakes would suggest a certain amount of heat, but engagement with the election has been strikingly low. In a recent poll of likely Democratic voters living in Manhattan, 44 percent said that they did not know whom they would vote for among the eight available D.A. candidates.The contender who has received the most attention is the one who has spent the most money to get it. Tali Farhadian Weinstein, a highly qualified prosecutor, leads the field in two areas: financing, having raised close to $4.5 million, an astonishing sum for a race of this kind, and the elite credentials that often make that possible. A graduate of Yale and Yale Law School, a Rhodes scholar who clerked for Merrick B. Garland and Sandra Day O’Connor, Ms. Farhadian Weinstein has been, among other things, a chief adviser to Eric Gonzalez, the Brooklyn district attorney known for his reform work around bail, juvenile justice and diverting low-level drug offenders from the prison system.With the exception of Elizabeth Crotty, who is running a campaign so traditionally focused on public safety that police unions can’t stop endorsing her, everyone else has produced a platform that lands somewhere along the spectrum of a contemporary progressive mandate. (There is a single Republican candidate, Thomas Kenniff, but Manhattan has not elected a Republican D.A. since Thomas E. Dewey in 1937.)The issue with Ms. Farhadian Weinstein is not that she lacks the sensitivities this particular moment is calling for; rather, she offers no break in the long and dubious tradition of handing the office over to those who live at the top of an intricately knit network of wealth and power, far from the ordinary realities.The wife of hedge-fund manager Boaz Weinstein, with whom she bought a $25.5 million Fifth Avenue apartment formerly belonging to the copper heiress Huguette Clark, Ms. Farhadian Weinstein has raised tens of thousands of dollars from her husband’s friends and colleagues on Wall Street. (Among them is the billionaire Ken Griffin, who built his own stunning relationship to New York real estate when he bought a condominium on Central Park South for $238 million, at the time the most expensive home ever sold in the United States.)Throughout her campaign, Ms. Farhadian Weinstein has argued that none of these connections would impede her judgment, that she would prosecute financial crime fearlessly. When asked in a debate earlier this month about whether she would recuse herself from prosecuting cases involving donors to her campaign, she said that she would not. But what about all the other potential conflicts — and appearances of conflict — that could arise from her position as the spouse of a famous and hugely successful investor? When you elect a gifted lawyer to run an influential office, the hope is that she’ll be available, game in hand, to advise on the biggest and most sensational cases.The chief criticism of the Vance era is that his office kowtowed to the moneyed class over and over. It laid bare the danger that comes from intimacy with the opposition and revealed the high costs of recusal. A decade ago, for instance, when Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former managing director of the International Monetary Fund, was arrested on charges of sexually assaulting a housekeeper in a Midtown hotel, he retained the counsel of Marc Agnifilo. As it happened, the lawyer was married to someone high up in Mr. Vance’s office — the chief of the trial division, who ordinarily would have supervised the case.Given that Karen Friedman Agnifilo had a lot of experience in sex crimes, her involvement would have been invaluable. Instead she was forced to tuck herself away. Eventually the charges against Mr. Strauss-Kahn were dismissed under a case that famously collapsed. During the preceding 18 months, the Agnifilos had found themselves in similarly entangled situations two dozen times.In his acclaimed 2017 book, “The Chickenshit Club,” the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Jesse Eisinger begins with the question of how it came to pass that virtually no one was prosecuted in regard to the 2008 financial crisis. He determines that a growing sense of coziness and collusion between the business and legal professions, emergent since the beginning of the current century, have limited both the ability and commitment of prosecutors to tackle corporations and the people who run them. Several years ago, Eric Holder, who has endorsed Ms. Farhadian Weinstein (she worked for him in the Obama Justice Department), briefly embraced the idea that certain banks are “too big to jail.”Tahanie Aboushi, a civil rights lawyer who is essentially a dismantlist, sits at a very different end of the continuum. She is in favor of cutting the budget of the police department by 50 percent, and her antipathy to incarceration extends to a refusal to prosecute a long list of offenses, including harassment in the second degree, which, as Ms. Farhadian Weinstein astutely pointed out in the most recent debate, would include shoving a person on a subway platform out of bias.Even the Five Boro Defenders, a group of lawyers and social justice advocates deeply sympathetic to Ms. Aboushi’s worldview, pointed out in their voting guide that they found it “concerning” that “she frequently lacked a clear understanding or vision” for accomplishing her objectives. Some opposed to Ms. Aboushi’s approach resent her inclusion in a race that they worry could detract from the other leading progressive, Alvin Bragg, the only Black candidate in the field. Nonetheless, Ms. Aboushi has the support of the influential Working Families Party.A native of Harlem, the son of a math teacher and a father who worked in social welfare, Mr. Bragg has a long and impressive résumé, having served as a federal prosecutor under Preet Bharara (who has endorsed him) and in various top positions in the state attorney general’s office. There he oversaw an investigation into the Police Department’s stop-and-frisk program and found that only one-tenth of 1 percent of stops, over a period of three years, resulted in convictions for a violent crime. He also worked to repeal 50-a, the law that shielded the misbehaviors of the police from the public for so long.“The thing about Alvin is that you don’t have to worry about his sincerity as a reformer,” Zephyr Teachout, the legal scholar who challenged Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo from the left in the Democratic primary six years ago. “He has done the work.”Whoever becomes the next D.A. will inherit the case against the Trump Organization and all the major legacy potential that comes along with it. In the eyes of many New Yorkers, Manhattan’s next district attorney will either be the one to finally bring Donald Trump to account — or be remembered as the one who failed to do so. For the moment at least, there is no evidence that anyone running would need to back away from the challenge of that. More

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      Final Day to Register to Vote in N.Y.C. Primary Elections

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      [Want to get New York Today by email? Here’s the sign-up.]It’s Friday. Weather: Upper 60s today, bright early but rainy by afternoon. Mid-50s, gusty and rainy on Saturday; 60 with some showers on Sunday. It’ll be a nice Memorial Day, mostly sunny and near 70. Alternate-side parking: In effect today and Saturday. Suspended Monday for Memorial Day. Andrew Seng for The New York TimesIt’s the final day, New Yorkers.The primary election in the mayoral race is less than four weeks away — and today is the last chance to register to vote in the contest.Here are a few things to know from my colleague Mihir Zaveri about registration and the June 22 primary:[And if you would like to learn more, here’s our full guide.]I’m not registered! What should I do?There are a few ways to sign up.If you have state-issued identification and a Social Security number, you can register online here. If you don’t have an I.D., you can print this voter registration form, fill it out and mail it to the city Board of Elections, as long as it’s postmarked by the end of today. You can also deliver the form in person to an elections office.(If you’re not sure whether you’re already registered, you can check here).Am I even eligible?If you’re a United States citizen who has been a New York City resident for at least 30 days and are not currently incarcerated for a felony — yes. (People who are not citizens cannot vote in municipal elections.)People serving time in jail for misdemeanors can cast ballots, along with those who have been released from prison in New York City.Who is on the ballot?There are, of course, the mayoral candidates. But there are several other major races, from comptroller and public advocate to all five borough president spots and several City Council seats.The competitive race among Democratic candidates for Manhattan district attorney will also be decided.OK, I’m signed up. Can I vote early?Yes. The early voting period will last from June 12 to June 20.If interested, you should look up your early voting polling site (it may be different from your Primary Day polling site) and determine the hours it will be open, which can vary from day to day.You can request an absentee ballot online here by June 15. Or you can fill out this ballot request form and email it to AbsenteeHelp@boe.nyc, or mail it to the local election office by that date.You must mail and postmark the completed ballot by June 22, and elections officials need to receive it by June 29 for it to be counted. You can also drop the ballot off at an elections office by June 22 or in ballot boxes at polling sites on Primary Day.From The TimesN.Y.C. Lawmakers Take Dramatic Step to Stem HomelessnessDianne Morales Tries to Calm a Sudden Crisis in Her CampaignAs Yang’s New York Ties Are Questioned, He Cites Anti-Asian BiasProsecutors Investigating Whether Ukrainians Meddled in 2020 ElectionBroker Fees Are Here to Stay. Why Do They Even Exist?Want more news? Check out our full coverage.The Mini Crossword: Here is today’s puzzle.What we’re readingSome areas of southern Brooklyn are still suffering from the virus and low vaccinations. [The City]A mother and her three daughters were in critical condition after a fire broke out in a Queens apartment building. [Daily News]What we’re watching: The Times’s Metro editor James Dao discusses how the desk is covering New York City’s reopening, the pivotal Democratic mayoral race and a host of other issues affecting residents on “The New York Times Close Up With Sam Roberts.” The show airs on Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 1:30 p.m. and Sunday at 12:30 p.m. [CUNY TV].css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-1jiwgt1{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;margin-bottom:1.25rem;}.css-8o2i8v{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-8o2i8v p{margin-bottom:0;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}And finally: Your virtual social weekend Although many performance spaces, museums and community centers are closed, people are finding creative ways to connect through virtual events and programs. Here are suggestions for maintaining a New York social life this weekend while keeping a safe distance from other people.Friday on the Hudson: Musical HourOn Friday at 7 p.m., watch a performance by the artist Rasha Jay, part of a monthly musical series by Summer on the Hudson, the parks department’s annual outdoor arts and culture festival.Catch the livestream on Summer on the Hudson’s social pages. Links are available on the event page.Screenings: Chaplin, Costello & HardyOn Sunday at 7 p.m., watch 16-millimeter short films in a Comedy Secret Speakeasy film festival by the Museum of Interesting Things.For more information, visit the event page.Screening: ‘Two Gods’From this weekend until June 3, watch “Two Gods,” a documentary about life and death through the story of a Muslim coffin maker and ritual body washer in Newark named Hanif.Purchase a ticket ($10) on the event page.It’s Friday — enjoy the long weekend.Metropolitan Diary: Laces and canesDear Diary:I was walking to work one day when I noticed an elegantly dressed older woman who was walking with a cane. Her shoelace was untied.I stopped her and began to tie it for her.“I am a mess today, and I detest these thin shoelaces,” she said in lovely British accent.I said that she was stunning, and she thanked me profusely.Arriving at that elevator bank at my office, I saw an older man who also had a cane and an untied shoelace.Do I? Yes!“Have I got a gal for you,” I said to him.— Nancy HafterNew York Today is published weekdays around 6 a.m. Sign up here to get it by email. You can also find it at nytoday.com.What would you like to see more (or less) of? Email us: nytoday@nytimes.com. More

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      A Trump Case Awaits. Who Is the Best Prosecutor for the Job?

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      Some candidates for Manhattan’s district attorney are agents of change who want to cut the police budget. Others are very comfortable with long-established established power networks.During its 20 year run, “Law & Order” cast five different actors in the role of Manhattan district attorney, a rate of turnover that feels like science fiction given that, in reality, four people have been elected to the office in 83 years. For the past 46 of them, the position, one of the most important prosecutorial posts in the country, has been held by two people, each an aristocrat born to a political dynasty: First, Robert M. Morgenthau, son of Henry Morgenthau Jr., who served as treasury secretary under two presidents (and who was himself the son of the United States ambassador to the Ottoman Empire); and since 2010, Cy Vance, son of the former secretary of state for whom he is named.In three weeks, Manhattanites will have the opportunity to vote for someone new at a pivotal moment in the history of race and social reform, during a period when leading prosecutors around the country — in Philadelphia, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston — have been on the vanguard of the movement to reduce incarceration. The stakes would suggest a certain amount of heat, but engagement with the election has been strikingly low. In a recent poll of likely Democratic voters living in Manhattan, 44 percent said that they did not know whom they would vote for among the eight available D.A. candidates.The contender who has received the most attention is the one who has spent the most money to get it. Tali Farhadian Weinstein, a highly qualified prosecutor, leads the field in two areas: financing, having raised close to $4.5 million, an astonishing sum for a race of this kind, and the elite credentials that often make that possible. A graduate of Yale and Yale Law School, a Rhodes scholar who clerked for Merrick B. Garland and Sandra Day O’Connor, Ms. Farhadian Weinstein has been, among other things, a chief adviser to Eric Gonzalez, the Brooklyn district attorney known for his reform work around bail, juvenile justice and diverting low-level drug offenders from the prison system.With the exception of Elizabeth Crotty, who is running a campaign so traditionally focused on public safety that police unions can’t stop endorsing her, everyone else has produced a platform that lands somewhere along the spectrum of a contemporary progressive mandate. (There is a single Republican candidate, Thomas Kenniff, but Manhattan has not elected a Republican D.A. since Thomas E. Dewey in 1937.)The issue with Ms. Farhadian Weinstein is not that she lacks the sensitivities this particular moment is calling for; rather, she offers no break in the long and dubious tradition of handing the office over to those who live at the top of an intricately knit network of wealth and power, far from the ordinary realities.The wife of hedge-fund manager Boaz Weinstein, with whom she bought a $25.5 million Fifth Avenue apartment formerly belonging to the copper heiress Huguette Clark, Ms. Farhadian Weinstein has raised tens of thousands of dollars from her husband’s friends and colleagues on Wall Street. (Among them is the billionaire Ken Griffin, who built his own stunning relationship to New York real estate when he bought a condominium on Central Park South for $238 million, at the time the most expensive home ever sold in the United States.)Throughout her campaign, Ms. Farhadian Weinstein has argued that none of these connections would impede her judgment, that she would prosecute financial crime fearlessly. When asked in a debate earlier this month about potential conflict of interest, she said that she would recuse herself in any instance where she had ties to the accused. But that is a solution to a problem that shouldn’t exist in the first place. When you elect a gifted lawyer to run a hugely influential office, the hope is that she’ll be available, game in hand, to advise on the biggest and most sensational cases.The chief criticism of the Vance era is that his office kowtowed to the moneyed class over and over. It laid bare the danger that comes from intimacy with the opposition and revealed the high costs of recusal. A decade ago, for instance, when Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former managing director of the International Monetary Fund, was arrested on charges of sexually assaulting a housekeeper in a Midtown hotel, he retained the counsel of Marc Agnifilo. As it happened, the lawyer was married to someone high up in Mr. Vance’s office — the chief of the trial division, who ordinarily would have supervised the case.Given that Karen Friedman Agnifilo had a lot of experience in sex crimes, her involvement would have been invaluable. Instead she was forced to tuck herself away. Eventually the charges against Mr. Strauss-Kahn were dismissed under a case that famously collapsed. During the preceding 18 months, the Agnifilos had found themselves in similarly entangled situations two dozen times.In his acclaimed 2017 book, “The Chickenshit Club,” the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Jesse Eisinger begins with the question of how it came to pass that virtually no one was prosecuted in regard to the 2008 financial crisis. He determines that a growing sense of coziness and collusion between the business and legal professions, emergent since the beginning of the current century, have limited both the ability and commitment of prosecutors to tackle corporations and the people who run them. Several years ago, Eric Holder, who has endorsed Ms. Farhadian Weinstein (she worked for him in the Obama Justice Department), briefly embraced the idea that certain banks are “too big to jail.”Tahanie Aboushi, a civil rights lawyer who is essentially a dismantlist, sits at a very different end of the continuum. She is in favor of cutting the budget of the police department by 50 percent, and her antipathy to incarceration extends to a refusal to prosecute a long list of offenses, including harassment in the second degree, which, as Ms. Farhadian Weinstein astutely pointed out in the most recent debate, would include shoving a person on a subway platform out of bias.Even the Five Boro Defenders, a group of lawyers and social justice advocates deeply sympathetic to Ms. Aboushi’s worldview, pointed out in their voting guide that they found it “concerning” that “she frequently lacked a clear understanding or vision” for accomplishing her objectives. Some opposed to Ms. Aboushi’s approach resent her inclusion in a race that they worry could detract from the other leading progressive, Alvin Bragg, the only Black candidate in the field. Nonetheless, Ms. Aboushi has the support of the influential Working Families Party.A native of Harlem, the son of a math teacher and a father who worked in social welfare, Mr. Bragg has a long and impressive résumé, having served as a federal prosecutor under Preet Bharara (who has endorsed him) and in various top positions in the state attorney general’s office. There he oversaw an investigation into the Police Department’s stop-and-frisk program and found that only one-tenth of 1 percent of stops, over a period of three years, resulted in convictions for a violent crime. He also worked to repeal 50-a, the law that shielded the misbehaviors of the police from the public for so long.“The thing about Alvin is that you don’t have to worry about his sincerity as a reformer,” Zephyr Teachout, the legal scholar who challenged Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo from the left in the Democratic primary six years ago. “He has done the work.”Whoever becomes the next D.A. will inherit the case against the Trump Organization and all the major legacy potential that comes along with it. In the eyes of many New Yorkers, Manhattan’s next district attorney will either be the one to finally bring Donald Trump to account — or be remembered as the one who failed to do so. For the moment at least, there is no evidence that anyone running would need to back away from the challenge of that. More

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      Alvin Bragg for Manhattan D.A.: The Times Endorsement

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      There are few bigger jobs on the New York ballot this year than that of Manhattan district attorney. Cyrus Vance Jr., one of only two men who have held the office since 1975, isn’t seeking re-election. In a borough where Democrats vastly outnumber Republicans, the winner of the June 22 primary contest is very likely to cruise to victory in November, and there is a crowded field of talented lawyers who are vying to replace him.Whoever wins the job will face a rise in shootings, homicides and other violent crimes to thwart. While warmer days are bringing back block parties and crowded parks in other boroughs, much of Midtown is still eerily empty and dotted with vacant storefronts. And as the pandemic wanes in New York, right now there are few guarantees that the rhythms of normal life will return in a manner that ensures all its residents feel protected and served by the criminal justice system.Then, of course, there is the reality that the system was not serving many New Yorkers well long before coronavirus ever arrived in the city.Manhattan will need a distinctive kind of district attorney: one who knows how to use the levers of the office to drive down the current spike in violence while moving forward with the hard and overdue work of criminal justice reform. The best person for the job is Alvin Bragg.Mr. Bragg is a talented prosecutor with the endorsement of former colleagues across a wide swath of the legal system. He served as first chief deputy at the state attorney general’s office, where he oversaw some 1,200 people and successfully sued the Trump Foundation for illegally using campaign funds — experience that could be invaluable because the next Manhattan district attorney will be left with finishing Mr. Vance’s investigation into the former president’s business dealings.Mr. Bragg also served as a federal prosecutor under Preet Bharara, a former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, prosecuting public corruption, wage theft and, at one point, a violent money-laundering scheme linked to the Sinaloa cartel of Mexico. Mr. Bharara has endorsed him.Mr. Bragg has worked closely with the police to prosecute complex gun cases and also sued officers over excessive force. He is currently representing Eric Garner’s mother, Gwen Carr, in a case against Mayor Bill de Blasio over her son’s 2014 death at the hands of police.The Manhattan district attorney’s office is home to some of the most talented prosecutors in the country and Mr. Bragg has demonstrated he understands what can be accomplished without going to some of the political extremes we’ve heard in this election. Finding common ground among prosecutors, police leadership and the public will be crucial.Even after reforms by Mr. Vance cut the office’s caseload by more than half, nearly 80 percent of the cases prosecuted there in 2019 were misdemeanors, according to data from the office. Mr. Bragg plans to restructure the office to stop using it to criminalize poverty and focus more intensely on prosecuting violent gun crimes, sexual assault cases and corruption. He wants to dissolve the current sex-crimes unit and build a modern unit that centers the experience of survivors. He has promised to expand programs that offer alternatives to incarceration and establish a robust police integrity unit that will report directly to him. He has the management experience to get these reforms done.Mr. Bragg grew up in Harlem and came of age during the crack cocaine epidemic. He would also be Manhattan’s first Black district attorney, a remarkable fact, considering the disproportionate toll that both criminal violence and overcriminalization have taken on Black New Yorkers. The trauma that gun violence continues to inflict on people living in poverty, even as the city remains largely safe, is personal for Mr. Bragg. He says he was just 10 years old when he first had a gun pointed at him — something he experienced several more times, at the hands of police officers and others, while walking through the neighborhood in which he lived.Today, Mr. Bragg is committed to reasonable reforms to improve both policing and prosecutions and will put the work in to see them through to a safer New York. That’s why he went home to Harlem after graduating from Harvard Law School, first as a civil rights attorney, then as a prosecutor.The city’s rise in gun violence may end with the pandemic, or it may not. Either way, Manhattan needs a leader dedicated to keeping the public safe without returning to the overly punitive practices deployed for so many years.Mr. Bragg brings the experience, the nimbleness and the moral compass Manhattan needs. He deserves your vote.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Philadelphia’s Progressive District Attorney Fends Off Democratic Challenger

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      Larry Krasner, part of a new breed of prosecutors, easily defeated Carlos Vega in Tuesday’s primary in spite of a rise in gun crime.Philadelphia’s district attorney, Larry Krasner, won the Democratic nomination in his re-election campaign on Tuesday, easily fending off a challenge from a former prosecutor who had argued that Mr. Krasner was making the city less safe.Voters were unconvinced by that argument. When The Associated Press called the race late Tuesday night, Mr. Krasner was ahead of his rival, Carlos Vega, by almost 40,000 votes.Throughout his campaign, Mr. Krasner argued that a 40 percent increase in homicides in Philadelphia last year had nothing to do with his progressive policies, pointing to cities with more traditional prosecutors that had experienced similar trends during the coronavirus pandemic.Mr. Krasner does not prosecute some low-level offenses, such as drug possession and prostitution, and has sought more lenient sentences than his predecessors.In a speech to supporters on Tuesday night at a hotel in downtown Philadelphia, Mr. Krasner said he had been re-elected because he had kept his promises, and he claimed a mandate from the voters most affected by serious crime.“We in this movement for criminal justice reform just won a big one,” he said.Mr. Krasner’s convincing victory, achieved in spite of a sharp increase in gun crime in Philadelphia over the past two years, may indicate that the appeal of progressive prosecutors will hold steady for voters even as public safety becomes a more pressing issue.Mr. Krasner acknowledged that in his victory remarks.“We hear all this talk about how somehow progressive prosecution can’t survive,” he said. “That’s not what I see. What I see is that traditional prosecution can’t survive.”Mr. Vega acknowledged his loss in a tweet shortly before midnight on Tuesday, saying, “It looks like tonight we did not get the result we wanted, but even in defeat we have grace & we smile.”He thanked his supporters and expressed his own support for the victims of crimes. A spokesman for his campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment.As in his first campaign, in which he ran against six other candidates, Mr. Krasner, 60, won significant support from Black voters in the northern and western parts of the city. Those neighborhoods have been the most affected by gun violence, and were places where Mr. Vega, 64, had hoped to make inroads.“Black voters — and not just Black voters — believe that change is necessary and that the direction that Larry Krasner is taking is the right direction,” said State Senator Vincent J. Hughes, who represents several of those neighborhoods. “This is not a close victory. It is an affirmation that we have to go in a different direction in the pursuit of justice.”Enthusiasm for what used to be a low-turnout race remained high. When all the votes are counted, including mail-in ballots, turnout will almost certainly be higher than it was four years ago, when 155,000 people voted in the Democratic primary.Mr. Vega, a longtime homicide prosecutor, was among the first employees whom Mr. Krasner fired after taking over the district attorney’s office in 2018. Mr. Vega argued that the leniency of Mr. Krasner’s policies had led to the increase in crime.Criminologists said there would be no way to prove Mr. Vega’s assertions. David S. Abrams, a professor of law and economics at the University of Pennsylvania who has tracked crime statistics across the country over the past year, said any theory would have to take into account both the rise in homicides and shootings and the overall decline in crime, at least through 2020.“It’s a mystery,” he said. “There are a ton of theories, almost none of which fit all the facts.”Mr. Vega received ample support from the police, whose powerful union poured tens of thousands of dollars into his campaign and tarred Mr. Krasner as soft on crime at every opportunity.Mr. Krasner won office four years ago as part of a new breed of progressive prosecutors. In addition to upholding his campaign pledge not to prosecute low-level crimes, he lowered the number of people in the city’s jail by more than 30 percent.That approach won him approval from voters but also a significant amount of criticism, particularly from former prosecutors and even some of his own employees. Thomas Mandracchia, who worked for Mr. Krasner for about two years, said the district attorney’s insistence on firing so many experienced lawyers had contributed to an office plagued by disorganization. But none of those criticisms appeared to put a dent in Mr. Krasner’s support on Tuesday.In November’s general election, Mr. Krasner will face Charles Peruto Jr., a Republican defense lawyer who has campaigned on a strong message of public safety, saying that it is more important than civil rights. Mr. Peruto has called Mr. Krasner’s tenure “a disgrace” and said he would drop out of the race if Mr. Vega won. More