Harlem (Manhattan, NY)

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      Harlem City Council Election Tests Limits of Progressive Politics

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      Three moderate Democrats are running to replace Kristin Richardson Jordan, one of the city’s most left-leaning politicians, who is not seeking re-election.Two years ago, when a democratic socialist narrowly won a crowded Democratic primary for a City Council seat in Harlem, some saw it as a sign that the historically Black neighborhood was becoming more politically progressive.But roughly a month before this year’s primary on June 27, the first-term councilwoman, Kristin Richardson Jordan, unexpectedly dropped out of the race. Her decision has recast the hotly contested Democratic primary, which now comprises three candidates — none particularly progressive. Two are sitting State Assembly members: Al Taylor, 65, a reverend in his sixth year in the Legislature; and Inez Dickens, 73, who held the Harlem Council seat for 12 years before joining the Assembly. The third candidate is Yusef Salaam, 49, one of five men convicted and later exonerated in the rape and assault of a female jogger in Central Park in 1989.All are moderate Democrats who, before Ms. Jordan’s withdrawal, had tried to distance themselves from Ms. Jordan and her political stances, which include redistributing wealth and abolishing the police.But with the incumbent out of the race, the candidates have turned on each other. Mr. Salaam questioned Ms. Dickens’s behavior as a landlord, asking her during a debate how many people she had evicted in the last two decades. Ms. Dickens initially replied one, but The Daily News found that approximately 17 eviction proceedings had been initiated.Ms. Dickens said her family-owned management companies rent units below market rate, and that some of the tenants involved in eviction proceedings were in arrears for four years or more. “I have done more to preserve and protect affordable housing in Harlem than any other candidate in this race,” Ms. Dickens said.Her campaign, in turn, has questioned Mr. Salaam’s experience after his campaign appeared to be in deficit and over the $207,000 spending cap, before he filed amended paperwork.The race then took a bizarre turn this week at a women’s rally for Ms. Dickens when the former Representative Charles B. Rangel, in recounting how Mr. Salaam had called him before entering the race, remarked that Mr. Salaam had a “foreign name.” Mr. Salaam responded on social media that “we all belong in New York City.” Mr. Rangel, through a spokeswoman for Ms. Dickens, said he intended no offense and meant foreign as being unknown to him.The two men spoke on Friday afternoon and resolved the issue, representatives for both campaigns confirmed.Mr. Salaam, left, often seeks to tie his candidacy to his wrongful conviction in the Central Park rape case, drawing the frustration of Ms. Dickens, seated in the background.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesUltimately, the race might be decided on issues more germane to the district, including the loss of Black residents, a lack of affordable housing and concerns about an oversaturation of drug treatment centers. The three candidates hold stances that underscore how the district will soon be represented by a moderate. Ms. Dickens opposed the so-called good cause eviction measure, which would have limited a landlord’s ability to increase rents and evict tenants, had it passed the State Legislature. Mr. Taylor has in the past voted against abortion rights based on religious objections, but recently voted to support a measure that would let voters add an equal rights amendment to the State Constitution. Mr. Salaam supported congestion pricing, but said he still had reservations about how it would affect Harlem.All three have garnered endorsements from mainstream Democratic groups and leaders: Ms. Dickens from the United Federation of Teachers and Representative Adriano Espaillat; Mr. Taylor from the New York City District Council of Carpenters; and Mr. Salaam was recruited to run for the seat by Keith L.T. Wright, the former assemblyman and chair of the Manhattan Democratic Party.The Greater Harlem Coalition voted to endorse Ms. Dickens before Ms. Jordan dropped out of the race. The carpenters’ union said their sole objective was to defeat Ms. Jordan.Ms. Dickens, center, was endorsed by Mayor Eric Adams at a rally last week at the Harriet Tubman Memorial triangle in Manhattan.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesMr. Taylor said that not all of Ms. Jordan’s supporters necessarily supported her most left-leaning stances like defunding the police. “I don’t think that she had cornered the market on this community,” he said in an interview.Ms. Jordan’s victory in 2021 over the incumbent, Bill Perkins, was less a districtwide endorsement of far-left views, and more the culmination of “galvanized anti-establishment” sentiment that has been building against Harlem’s once powerful but now fading political machine, said Basil Smikle, director of the Public Policy Program at Hunter College.“There is an interest in finding an alternative and setting a new course,” Mr. Smikle said.Ms. Jordan, whose name will still be on the ballot, may have been her own worst enemy. She was criticized for using Council funds to promote her campaign. Her far-left stances on policing, housing development and the war in Ukraine drew backlash from colleagues and voters. She missed nearly half of her committee meetings, city records show.Syderia Asberry-Chresfield, a co-founder of the Greater Harlem Coalition, a group that organizes against the oversaturation of social services in the neighborhood, felt that Ms. Jordan was too far to the left.“We did understand that changes needed to be made,” Ms. Asberry-Chresfield said. “But some of her changes were so radical and she wasn’t willing to bend.”Ms. Jordan declined to comment. But Charles Barron, a left-leaning councilman who represents East New York and is one of Ms. Jordan’s few allies on the City Council, said her leftist positions irritated mainstream Democratic leadership and their financial backers who “prefer establishment-type elected officials as opposed to independent, strong, Black radicals like she was.”The remaining three candidates did not greatly differentiate themselves during a forum at the National Action Network in Harlem earlier this month and at a debate Tuesday night on NY1.They are all in favor of the development of housing at 145th Street and Lenox Avenue, a proposal that Ms. Jordan initially rejected because it was not affordable enough. The candidates said they were not in favor of the city’s use of stop-and-frisk tactics, which a federal monitor recently said was being utilized in a discriminatory manner.When it comes to the influx of migrants seeking asylum, Ms. Dickens, Mr. Taylor and Mr. Salaam said they support New York City’s status as a sanctuary city but questioned whether the billions of dollars being spent to house and feed migrants should also be available to New Yorkers experiencing homelessness.None want Ms. Jordan’s endorsement.Of the three, Mr. Salaam has gone most aggressively after Ms. Jordan’s likely supporters by using his conviction, exoneration and persecution by former President Donald J. Trump as the focus of his campaign. Speaking at a community center for older adults in East Harlem last week, Mr. Salaam drew the loudest applause when criticizing Mr. Trump, who in the 1989 bought full-page advertisements in four city newspapers, including The New York Times, to call for the death penalty to be reinstated because of the Central Park case.“Who better to be a participant in leading the people than one who has been close to the pain?” Mr. Salaam said.Mr. Salaam and Mr. Taylor sought to weaken Ms. Dickens’s chances by cross-endorsing one another on Tuesday. Voters can rank their choices in the three-way primary, and the men encouraged supporters to make the other their second choice. Two days later, Ms. Dickens responded by hosting the women’s rally where she said the two men in the race were plotting against her, and unveiling a more prestigious endorsement: Mayor Eric Adams.Mr. Taylor said that the Harlem district did not necessarily share the far-left views of Kristin Richardson Jordan, the incumbent who is not seeking re-election. Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesSpeaking at the Harriet Tubman Memorial in Harlem, the mayor highlighted Ms. Dickens’s moderate stances, saying that she understands the “balance between public safety and justice,” and that “it’s all right to have a city that’s friendly to businesses.”At the recent National Action Network forum there was not an issue, from affordable housing to whether he supported closing the Rikers Island jail complex, that Mr. Salaam did not link to his conviction or the nearly seven years he spent in prison — to the visible annoyance of Ms. Dickens, who has emphasized her experience.Mr. Salaam supports closing the Rikers Island jail complex and opening borough-based jails, while Ms. Dickens and Mr. Taylor have raised concerns about opening local jails.That still has not helped Mr. Salaam gain the support of local progressives. A political action committee associated with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez endorsed Ms. Jordan when she first ran, but is unlikely to make a new endorsement. National progressive figures such as Cornel West, the professor and activist who recently announced a run for president, and Keith Ellison, Minnesota’s progressive attorney general, have endorsed Mr. Salaam. .“Donald Trump said he ought to have the death penalty,” Mr. Ellison said. “Who can talk about how the system needs to be better and more effective than Yusef Salaam?” More

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      How Harlem Shaped Warnock’s Faith and Politics

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      Senator Raphael Warnock’s time in New York City as a seminary student and pastor helped set him on a path to politics, forging how he operates in the Senate and on the campaign trail.Four days before the November midterm elections, Senator Raphael Warnock slipped away from the campaign trail in Georgia to deliver a eulogy in Harlem.His mentor — the Rev. Dr. Calvin O. Butts III, a powerful and politically astute preacher who led Harlem’s storied Abyssinian Baptist Church — had died at the age of 73. At the memorial service, Mr. Warnock told the crowd of mourners about the intersections of faith and public life that had shaped Mr. Butts’s work, and his own.“Calvin Butts taught me how to take my ministry to the streets,” Mr. Warnock said at a service that drew former President Bill Clinton, Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. “He understood that the church’s work doesn’t end at the church door. That’s where it starts.”Mr. Warnock now finds himself locked in one of the last and most closely watched elections of the 2022 midterms — a Georgia runoff on Tuesday against a Trump-backed Republican rival, Herschel Walker.The hallmark of Mr. Warnock’s political persona has been firmly rooted in the present, through his position as senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had preached. But a lesser-known chapter from Mr. Warnock’s past — his time spent in New York City starting in the 1990s, as a student at the Union Theological Seminary and as a pastor at Mr. Butts’s church — in many ways set him on a path to politics, shaping how he operates in the Senate and on the campaign trail as he runs for re-election.According to nearly a dozen seminary classmates and elected officials who knew him at the time, Mr. Warnock’s New York experience helped cement his instincts to channel the teachings of his faith into social justice activism. It’s an approach that propelled him to Washington, where he was one of seven ordained ministers when he arrived in Congress last year.“In the beginning it was really watching him straddling the church and the academy,” said the Rev. Cathlin Baker, a friend who attended Union Theological Seminary with Mr. Warnock. “Expressing his faith in the public square emerged through his time in New York.”One of the young men Mr. Warnock worked with as a youth pastor at Abyssinian went on to become the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg.Mr. Bragg got to know Mr. Warnock during visits home from college and described a “remarkable consistency” in his dual emphasis on pastoral duties and “what that means for greater Harlem, and the social issues, and the things we see him advocating for in Congress now.”“There’s an indelible imprint of the church and Rev. Butts on him,” Mr. Bragg said, “and certainly of him on the church.”Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, pictured here in 1965, has long been associated with Black civic engagement.The New York TimesMr. Warnock was 22 when he arrived in New York in the fall of 1991, and he stayed for about a decade. The city was in the throes of a social and civic upheaval that would mold the next generation of Black political power, locally and nationally, serving as a proving ground for activists, pastors and elected officials.There was Mayor David N. Dinkins, New York’s first Black mayor who confronted the Crown Heights riots the year Mr. Warnock came to town. And there was Eric Adams, a police officer who challenged police brutality and would become the city’s second Black mayor. The Rev. Al Sharpton made waves with his civil rights activism, while against that backdrop Hakeem Jeffries, a Brooklynite and future Democratic House leader, was beginning his career.What to Know About the Georgia Senate RunoffCard 1 of 6Another runoff in Georgia. More

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      Brian Benjamin’s Bribery Defense: He Got ‘No Personal Benefits’

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      The case against Brian Benjamin, who resigned as New York’s second-in-command last week, may hinge on whether political contributions in this case constituted a bribe.A federal prosecutor said on Monday that the government had issued more than 160 subpoenas for financial, phone and other records as part of its investigation into New York’s former lieutenant governor, Brian A. Benjamin, who resigned last week after being charged with bribery and fraud.At a hearing in Federal District Court in Manhattan, the prosecutor, Jarrod L. Schaeffer, suggested a trove of potential evidence of broad scope and complexity.On Monday morning alone, Mr. Schaeffer said, the government turned over about 160,000 pages of materials to Mr. Benjamin’s lawyers. The government had also executed about seven search warrants for email accounts and seized and searched cellphones, including one belonging to Mr. Benjamin, he said.The hearing was the first court appearance for Mr. Benjamin, 45, since his arrest a week ago in what the authorities have depicted as a brazen scheme to funnel illegal contributions to his previous political campaigns and to cover up the criminal activity.The arrest and Mr. Benjamin’s quick resignation sent tremors through Albany and created a political headache for Gov. Kathy Hochul, a fellow Democrat who handpicked him to be her second-in-command less than a year ago. Though no trial date was set on Monday, it now appears Mr. Benjamin’s legal saga could easily stretch beyond June’s Democratic primary and this fall’s general election.In a statement before Monday’s proceeding, lawyers for Mr. Benjamin said they were “shocked and dismayed that the prosecution would bring such flimsy and unwarranted charges against a sitting lieutenant governor, a mere 67 days before voting begins in the primary election.”Nicholas Biase, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office, declined to comment.In the courtroom, Mr. Benjamin’s lawyer, Barry H. Berke, signaled that he would argue that the government had overreached in a case that offers “lively legal issues.”Most recent political corruption cases, Mr. Berke told the judge, involved a government official receiving personal benefits like watches, cash and no-show jobs in exchange for an official action.“This case is different, because it’s based solely on political contributions — and no personal benefits,” Mr. Berke said.Mr. Benjamin, who has pleaded not guilty, has reshuffled his legal team since his arrest, bringing in Mr. Berke and Dani R. James of Kramer Levin as his new lawyers. Mr. Berke represented Bill de Blasio in several inquiries into the former mayor’s fund-raising practices and later served as a lead counsel for both impeachments of former President Donald J. Trump.Prosecutors have said that Mr. Benjamin used his power, while he was a member of the State Senate, to direct $50,000 in state funds to a charity run by a Harlem real estate developer, Gerald Migdol. In return, Mr. Migdol orchestrated thousands of dollars in illegal campaign contributions to Mr. Benjamin’s failed campaign in 2021 for New York City comptroller and his State Senate campaign, the authorities said.What to Know About Lt. Gov. Brian BenjaminCard 1 of 3Who is Brian Benjamin? More

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      Brian Benjamin Is Kathy Hochul's Pick for N.Y. Lieutenant Governor

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      Gov. Kathy Hochul chose Mr. Benjamin, a state senator from Harlem, to fill the second highest-ranking role in New York’s government.ALBANY, N.Y. — Gov. Kathy C. Hochul has chosen Brian A. Benjamin, a Democratic state senator from Harlem, to be her lieutenant governor, the second highest-ranking position in New York State, according to two people familiar with the decision.Ms. Hochul, a Democrat from Western New York who was sworn in as the state’s first female governor on Tuesday, is expected to announce the appointment at an event in Harlem on Thursday.The selection of Mr. Benjamin, who is Black, underscored Ms. Hochul’s attempt to diversify her ticket as she mounts her first campaign for governor next year, choosing a potential running mate who could help broaden her appeal in the voter-heavy New York City region.Mr. Benjamin is the senior assistant majority leader in the State Senate, where he has been a vocal proponent of criminal justice reforms. He ran unsuccessfully for city comptroller earlier this year, placing fourth in a crowded Democratic primary. Ms. Hochul’s office declined to comment. Mr. Benjamin, 44, who represents a large swath of Upper Manhattan, did not respond to requests for comment.A lieutenant governor becomes governor when the governor dies, resigns or is impeached. He or she also serves as acting governor when the governor is absent or disabled.But the position, which became vacant as a result of Ms. Hochul’s ascension after former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s resignation, has traditionally served a mostly ceremonial role, entrusted with few statutory duties besides the formality of serving as president of the State Senate.Ms. Hochul, who was recruited by Mr. Cuomo as his running mate in 2014, did not have a close relationship with her predecessor during her nearly seven years as lieutenant governor; for example, she was not a part of Mr. Cuomo’s coronavirus briefings.Pointing to the work dynamic between President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, Ms. Hochul has said recently that she wanted to avoid sidelining whoever she picked as lieutenant governor, and entrust them with a policy portfolio.Ms. Hochul had indicated that she intended to select someone from New York City. Ms. Hochul, who is white, approached a handful of city politicians who are people of color, including State Senator Jamaal Bailey, a rising star in Bronx politics; Assemblywoman Rodneyse Bichotte, the leader of Brooklyn’s Democratic Party; and Rubén Díaz Jr., the outgoing Bronx borough president.She settled on Mr. Benjamin, a graduate of Brown University and Harvard University who worked at Morgan Stanley and was a managing partner at Genesis Companies, a real estate firm with a focus on affordable housing, before entering politics.In 2017, he ran for the State Senate seat vacated by Bill Perkins, who had won a seat in the City Council. He emerged as the Democratic Party’s pick for the seat after a convention vote in March and went on to easily defeat his Republican opponent in the overwhelmingly blue district, assuming office that June.As a senator, Mr. Benjamin has backed efforts to close Rikers Island and supported legislation on a range of criminal justice issues, from ending cash bail and reforming discovery to ending solitary confinement and reforming parole laws.He has also sponsored bills to get banks to divest from private for-profit prisons and create a so-called “rainy day fund” that New York City could tap into during fiscal emergencies. Mr. Benjamin said earlier this year that he supported the defund the police movement.Michael Blake, a former assemblyman from the Bronx who endorsed Mr. Benjamin in the comptroller primary, stressed that he should be recognized for his skills and experience, not just how his race and standing among Black voters could aid Ms. Hochul politically.“I think it’s important to realize that Brian is talented, and he is also Black,” Mr. Blake said.“People are always paying attention to talent even when there is no success,” Mr. Blake added. “He ran for city comptroller — I think he was the most qualified — and lost, but at the end of the day, God had bigger plans for him.”The competitive Democratic primary for comptroller included Corey Johnson, the speaker of the City Council, and Councilman Brad Lander, who emerged victorious as the standard-bearer of the party’s left flank. Mr. Benjamin finished fourth, behind Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, a former CNBC anchor.During the primary, Mr. Benjamin’s campaign relinquished nearly two dozen donations after The City raised questions about their authenticity.Mr. Benjamin’s poor showing in the primary could raise questions about how many votes from New York City he could help Ms. Hochul attract as a running mate, especially if the governor faces a primary challenge from a person of color.Jumaane Williams, the city’s public advocate, has said he is actively exploring a run for governor and Letitia James, the state attorney general, is considered a strong candidate, although she has given no indication that she intends to run.“Brian did not have a successful run citywide, but that doesn’t mean he won’t have a successful run statewide,” said Christina Greer, an associate professor of political science at Fordham University. “He has a financial background and could galvanize Black voters. He would translate well upstate.”Mr. Benjamin is a close friend of Keith L.T. Wright, the chairman of the Democratic Party in Manhattan, who backed Mr. Benjamin’s Senate candidacy. On Wednesday, Mr. Wright praised Ms. Hochul’s choice.“He’s bright, he’s intelligent and I think he’ll be a great pick,” Mr. Wright said. “I think he would be someone who would roll up his sleeves and get to work.”Charles B. Rangel, the former congressman and New York political icon, described the selection of Mr. Benjamin as “a tremendous opportunity for the governor to broaden her base now and make her case for re-election.”Some wondered whether Mr. Benjamin’s ascension could signal a resurgence of Black political power in Harlem, which has ceded ground to Brooklyn.David N. Dinkins, the city’s first Black mayor, hailed from Harlem and was a part of the “Gang of Four,” a group of African-American elected officials who had an outsize influence on state politics. David A. Paterson, who served as the state’s first Black governor and lieutenant governor, was connected to that history through his father, Basil Paterson, a former state senator. Mr. Rangel and Percy E. Sutton, the former Manhattan borough president and a civil rights leader, were the other members of the group.“It’s nice to see that younger generation of Harlem politicians come into their own,” said Lupé Todd-Medina, a Brooklyn-based Democratic communications strategist who counts Mr. Benjamin as a former client.Even so, many of the leading elected officials in the city and the state are Black and hail from Brooklyn.“The public advocate is from Brooklyn, the state attorney general is from Brooklyn, the incoming mayor is from Brooklyn and the possible first Black speaker of the House is from Brooklyn,” Ms. Todd-Medina added, “so I think that speaks for itself.” More

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      Why Police Accountability Is Personal for This Manhattan D.A. Candidate

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      Alvin Bragg has had encounters with the police both in the streets and in the courts. He wants to change the system from within.The first time Alvin Bragg began thinking about police accountability was not long after an officer put a gun to his head, when he was a 15-year-old in Harlem in the 1980s.Nearly 30 years later, as a prosecutor at the state attorney general’s office in 2017, Mr. Bragg found himself confronting the same issue, overseeing the case against Officer Wayne Isaacs, who was off duty when he killed Delrawn Small in the early morning in Cypress Hills, Brooklyn.The officer was charged with murder and manslaughter. Video of the shooting, prosecutors argued, appeared to contradict the officer’s account. The jury acquitted him anyway.“I felt dejected, demoralized, really upset for the family,” Mr. Bragg recalled. “I felt like our system had not worked.”Now, the issues of police accountability and public integrity that Mr. Bragg confronted as a prosecutor are at the center of his campaign to lead one of the most important district attorney’s offices in the country. Mr. Bragg, 47, a Democrat, is one of nine candidates vying for the office, and is among those seeking to balance concerns about public safety against a progressive push to make the criminal justice system less punitive.In seeking to position himself as the candidate most capable of changing the system from the inside, Mr. Bragg has leaned on his personal history — including both his street-corner and courtroom encounters with the police. And Mr. Bragg, who is the only Black candidate running, would be the first Black person to lead an office where, researchers have found, race continues to be a critical factor in nearly every part of the process.But his history leading the unit that tried Officer Isaacs — a unit charged with investigating police killings of unarmed civilians — undermines a record that sounds better than it looks, his opponents and their supporters charge. Under Mr. Bragg, the unit, then called the Special Investigations and Prosecutions Unit, investigated 24 cases and brought back zero convictions. (It has not fared any better since he left, three years ago.)Officer Wayne Isaacs, center, was found not guilty after a 2017 trial; Mr. Bragg said the verdict still troubles him.  Dave Sanders for The New York Times“The Manhattan district attorney needs to be able to manage the most complicated and difficult cases, and that includes holding police accountable,” said Lucy Lang, another candidate in the race, who at a debate last week attacked Mr. Bragg’s record on police accountability. “Unfortunately, in the 24 cases of police killings that came before him, Alvin wasn’t able to hold a single officer accountable.”Mr. Bragg said that his record leading the unit, now called the Office of Special Investigation, showed only that the law makes it extremely difficult to successfully prosecute police officers.Experts agree. Though there are exceptions, including the recent conviction of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd, Mr. Bragg’s record with the unit at the attorney general’s office is not unusual. It remains extremely difficult to charge, let alone convict, police officers.Peter Neufeld, head of the Innocence Project, which works to overturn wrongful convictions, said that Mr. Bragg was fighting within a system that was heavily weighted against him. (Mr. Neufeld endorsed Mr. Bragg last month.)“It doesn’t make sense when looking at somebody who is taking on an adversary with both hands tied behind his back to measure his win-loss record,” he said.Close to homeMr. Bragg grew up on 139th Street in the heart of Harlem. Born in 1973, on the cusp of the city’s fiscal crisis, he said he learned at an early age which blocks were safe and which were not, the places he could go and the places that were best avoided.His mother, a math teacher, kept a close eye on him and made sure he focused on school, drilling him on his multiplication tables on the M10 bus and asking him to stay within the confines of their block. His father, who worked for the New York Urban League, regaled him with stories about the Willis Reed-era New York Knicks and encouraged him to get outside.There could be trouble, even close to home. When Mr. Bragg was 10 years old, he had a knife put to his neck by some teenagers in the middle of the day, in what he described as a “hazing,” but a very scary one.And then there were the police. About five years later, he was walking with a friend when an unmarked police car began driving the wrong way on Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard, he said. Three officers emerged from the car. One put a gun to Mr. Bragg’s head. They asked if he was dealing drugs and started going through his pockets.“You didn’t need to go to law school to know this was unlawful,” Mr. Bragg said. His interest in criminal justice started there.He went to Harvard and Harvard Law School and clerked for the federal judge Robert Patterson Jr., where he first began to see the way that prosecutors could work on behalf of public safety. After several years working as a criminal defense and civil rights lawyer, he became a prosecutor at the New York attorney general’s office, looking at public corruption and white- collar crime. He later worked under Preet Bharara, then U.S. attorney for the Southern District, as a federal prosecutor in Manhattan, before returning to the attorney general’s office, where he focused on police misconduct.Mr. Bharara, who has endorsed Mr. Bragg, said that he had been set apart while a federal prosecutor by his concerns about police accountability and public corruption.“He’s not jumping on the bandwagon in connection with the race for office,” Mr. Bharara said. “He’s cared about these things for a long time.”Mr. Bragg, who met volunteers in Union Square this month, has sought to balance progressive ideas about the criminal justice system with public safety concerns.Andrew Seng for The New York TimesCivil Rights and Public SafetyMr. Bragg is one of nine candidates, eight Democrats and one Republican, running to replace Cyrus R. Vance Jr. as the chief prosecutor in Manhattan, a position that carries immense power to affect the criminal justice system in New York City.He has said that his overall focus will be on decreasing the number of people behind bars, that he will create a new unit to investigate police misconduct, move resources toward prosecutors investigating economic crime and overhaul the sex crimes unit. He has proposed a plan that would work to stem the flow of guns into New York from out of state.Many of Mr. Bragg’s ideas reflect the move to the left in prosecutorial elections in cities around the country in recent years — a shift that has ushered in a new breed of progressive prosecutor.Initially the race in Manhattan seemed to follow that pattern, as the majority of the Democratic candidates promoted lenient approaches to certain low-level crimes.But in recent months, as gun violence has continued to rise in New York City and another leading Democratic candidate, Tali Farhadian Weinstein, has stressed the importance of prosecuting crime, tension has grown between those pushing for leniency and those emphasizing public safety. (As of January, Mr. Bragg had raised more money than anyone other than Ms. Farhadian Weinstein and on Saturday, a racial justice organization, Color of Change, said it would spend $1 million promoting his candidacy.)Mr. Bragg has found a synthesis, based on his biography, that he hopes will persuade voters.“People care about both,” he said. “They want civil rights and public safety. Being safe is your first civil right, and we can’t have safety without community trust, which is based on civil rights.”And so he relies on his record — even when his opponents say it is unflattering. Under pressure from Ms. Lang during last week’s debate, he called the unit that has garnered zero convictions “the most transformative, transparent unit in this space in the history of this country.”Mr. Bragg has argued that the way his office worked with the victims’ families marked the beginning of a productive alliance between prosecutors and protesters, both pushing for justice. The unit was created after Eric Garner’s death in police custody in 2014; Mr. Bragg has been endorsed by Mr. Garner’s mother, Gwen Carr.Mr. Small’s brother, Victor Dempsey, said that Mr. Bragg had consulted him throughout the case against Officer Isaacs. He has endorsed Mr. Bragg’s candidacy.“Alvin has been a tremendous part in my advocacy work and my family’s advocacy work because he kind of gave us the impetus to keep fighting,” he said.But not all of Mr. Small’s family has backed Mr. Bragg. Victoria Davis, his sister, has endorsed Ms. Lang, who worked as a prosecutor under Mr. Vance.In a recent conversation, Ms. Davis said that she did not feel Mr. Bragg had done everything he could for her brother, who she said was demonized during the officer’s trial because of a tattoo. “I think he wasn’t humanized,” she said of her brother.Mr. Bragg still dwells on the acquittal of Officer Isaacs. He agreed with Ms. Davis that the defense team had successfully dehumanized Mr. Small, transforming him into what Mr. Bragg called a “Black boogeyman,” a tactic that predated the modern criminal justice system.“The part that is sad is that it works,” he said. “That racial imagery is a tie that binds throughout our history. Ultimately that’s the original sin, and we’ve got to address that.” More