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    Here Are the Democrats Running for Manhattan D.A.

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    Eight candidates are vying to take over the country’s largest local prosecutor’s office. The winner will inherit a potential Trump investigation.Eight Democrats are running to replace Cyrus Vance Jr. as Manhattan district attorney, jockeying to lead one of the most well-known and influential local prosecutor’s offices in the country at a time when views of the criminal justice system have shifted. The office is home to many high-profile investigations, including the ongoing inquiry into former President Donald J. Trump and his family business.The contenders — five of whom have been prosecutors before and three of whom have not — mostly agree on a basic tenet: The office needs to change. But they are divided over just how far they would push reform efforts. Polling in the race has been sparse, but a recent survey found that the fund-raising leaders, Tali Farhadian Weinstein and Alvin Bragg, are tied with the most support. Because the district attorney is a state election rather than a municipal one, voting will not be ranked choice, as it is in the citywide elections, and voters will select only one candidate.Here’s a list of the candidates with details on their vision for the office.Tahanie Aboushi, 35HarlemKisha BariMs. Aboushi’s candidacy is informed by her experience as a young teenager seeing her father convicted on federal conspiracy charges and sentenced to prison for more than two decades. As a result of that ordeal and its effect on her family, Ms. Aboushi says she has insight into the perspective of those who are and will be prosecuted by the office she hopes to lead, a striking approach in a prosecutorial race. In a race filled with calls for reform, Ms. Aboushi is the candidate most consistently focused on the system itself and on making it less punitive. She has pledged to cut the office by at least half, and she has stressed the need for alternatives to incarceration wherever possible. Alvin Bragg, 47HarlemMr. Bragg, a lifelong resident of Harlem, has called for a balanced approach between civil rights and public safety. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he peppers his public appearances with stories about his personal life, frequently focusing on his and his family’s fraught encounters with the criminal justice system.He said he first thought about being a prosecutor while clerking for a federal judge and seeing the way prosecutors could protect the public through major investigations. After serving as a civil rights lawyer, Mr. Bragg became a federal prosecutor, focusing on issues like police misconduct and public corruption. He led a unit in the New York attorney general’s office that investigated police killings of unarmed civilians, and later became a chief deputy state attorney general.Liz Crotty, 50Union SquareLiz Crotty for Manhattan District Attorney“I bring a breath of reality to the race,” Ms. Crotty said in an interview. The longtime resident of Lower Manhattan is the most traditional candidate in the race, more focused on public safety than on reform. That puts her out of step with most of her colleagues, who have campaigned in large part on the racial biases in the criminal justice system. While she acknowledges that such biases exist, Ms. Crotty has said that rather than directing the office to stop prosecuting entire categories of crime, she would assess matters on a case-by-case basis. She has been endorsed by multiple police unions.Ms. Crotty, who worked in the Manhattan district attorney’s office under Mr. Vance’s predecessor, Robert M. Morgenthau, has also pledged to strengthen the office’s investigations of white-collar crime.Tali Farhadian Weinstein, 45Upper East SideTali Farhadian Weinstein for Manhattan District AttorneyA Rhodes scholar, Ms. Farhadian Weinstein has a sterling résumé, having clerked for Merrick B. Garland (now the U.S. attorney general) and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. She was also a lawyer for Eric Holder, when he was U.S. attorney general, and she later worked as a federal prosecutor.Ms. Farhadian Weinstein has raised more money than any of her competitors, including $8.2 million she gave to her own campaign. Early in the race, she frequently spoke about reform. But in recent months, she has been more direct in describing her plans for prosecution and has placed more emphasis on public safety. She said in an interview that there was one question that prosecutors should always ask themselves: “Is my intervention as an actor in the criminal justice system increasing public safety or not?”Diana Florence, 50Kips BayDiana Florence for Manhattan DAMs. Florence, a veteran of the Manhattan district attorney’s office, where she worked for 25 years, has spent much of her career prosecuting fraud and corruption cases. As the head of Mr. Vance’s Construction Fraud Task Force, she led cases involving worker deaths and wage theft. She has significant labor backing, with the endorsement of 20 unions.There is a shadow over Ms. Florence’s campaign. In 2020, she resigned from the office after a judge found that she had withheld evidence from defense lawyers in a major bribery case, which constitutes an ethics violation. A spokeswoman for Ms. Florence’s campaign has said the candidate has taken “full responsibility” for the mistake.Lucy Lang, 40HarlemNate BurdineMs. Lang, another veteran of Mr. Vance’s office, is the most policy-forward candidate in the race. She has released the outlines of her approach to dozens of issues, including hate crimes, police accountability and tenants’ rights. She has also emphasized her prosecutorial experience, including her investigation of a drug ring in East Harlem.A granddaughter of the philanthropist Eugene Lang, Ms. Lang became the director of the Institute for Innovation in Prosecution at John Jay College in 2018. In her view, prosecution should take a holistic view of the communities affected by crime: In East Harlem, for instance, she worked with a coalition of different groups — including the police and tenants — to revitalize the area and make it more welcoming to children.Eliza Orlins, 38ChelseaJuan Patino PhotographyThe views of Ms. Orlins (a two-time contestant on “Survivor”) were shaped by her decade working as a public defender. She sees the criminal justice system as racist, cruel and unjust, with outcomes that favor the rich and powerful, and has said she would work to “dismantle” it. She has pledged to cut the office in half, and to re-interview everyone working as a prosecutor there to ensure that their views align with her own.Ms. Orlins has said she would stop the prosecution of all but a handful of misdemeanors and redirect the office’s attention toward white-collar crime. She has also been politically outspoken on Twitter, speaking publicly against powerful figures like Mr. Trump and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.Dan Quart, 49Upper East SideDan Quart for Manhattan DAMr. Quart, a longtime state assemblyman, is the only candidate in the race with political experience. He has cited his record pushing for police accountability in the Legislature as evidence that he will be an effective reformer. “There’s no guesswork with me,” he said in an interview. “My 10 years in the Legislature should demonstrate to anyone who really wants reform in this office that I’ll be committed to it.”Though his progressive views are similar to those of Ms. Aboushi and Ms. Orlins, he has billed himself as the most pragmatic candidate on the race’s reformist wing. For instance, he has not pledged to cut the size of the office in half because, he said, it would be an unrealistic promise given the realities of the budget process. More

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      In the Manhattan D.A. Race, Arguing for a Fresh Point of View

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      [Want to get New York Today by email? Here’s the sign-up.]It’s Tuesday. Weather: Clearing as the day goes on, but periods of showers or storms. High around 80. Alternate-side parking: In effect until Saturday (Juneteenth). Sarah Blesener for The New York TimesOne of the candidates for Manhattan district attorney, Eliza Orlins, has been a public defender for at least a decade. Another candidate, Tahanie Aboushi (above, center), has been a civil rights lawyer. A third candidate, Dan Quart, is a state assemblyman.None of the three has any experience being a prosecutor. And that, they say, is a good thing.Ms. Orlins, Ms. Aboushi and Mr. Quart have argued that true change in the criminal justice system — making it less punitive, for example, or less racist — can only come from someone who hasn’t been tainted by the establishment.But they are having trouble raising money, and distinguishing themselves from one another and even other candidates with prosecutorial backgrounds.[Over the past 45 years, the two men who have led the Manhattan district attorney’s office have come from the establishment. Some candidates say such experience is a bad thing.]The raceThere are eight Democratic candidates vying to replace Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the district attorney, who is not running for re-election. Aside from Ms. Orlins, Ms. Aboushi and Mr. Quart, they are all former prosecutors.Among the leading candidates, Alvin Bragg has been a prosecutor in the state attorney general’s office, and Tali Farhadian Weinstein has been a federal prosecutor and general counsel for the Brooklyn district attorney’s office.Mr. Bragg has pledged to reform the Manhattan district attorney’s office, saying he will work on reducing the number of people behind bars, create a unit to investigate police misconduct and overhaul the sex crimes unit. While Ms. Weinstein has staked out more moderate positions than other candidates, she has championed changes including forming a specialized unit to address gender-based violence.The outsider candidatesMs. Orlins and Ms. Aboushi have both said they will cut the size of the district attorney’s office in half and decline to prosecute many low-level crimes.Ms. Orlins has also spoken in favor of decriminalizing the buying and selling of sex. (Mr. Vance stopped prosecuting prostitution this spring.)Mr. Quart has taken a more moderate position and recently emphasized his commitment to public safety.From The TimesIs Bill de Blasio Secretly Backing Eric Adams for Mayor?Adams Attacks Garcia as Poll Shows They Lead Mayoral FieldYou Can’t Find a Cab. Uber Prices Are Soaring. Here’s Why.A Brooklyn Landmark Holds Its Head High Again‘C Is for Code Switching’ and Other LessonsWant more news? Check out our full coverage.The Mini Crossword: Here is today’s puzzle.What we’re readingA dead black bear with a large open wound was found in a parking lot on Staten Island, which has no known population of wild bears. [ABC 7]People who had been moved from homeless shelters into hotels during the pandemic are protesting a return to the status quo. [Gothamist]Eight years after Maya Wiley was tapped by Mayor Bill de Blasio to bring broadband to low-income neighborhoods, the program is still struggling. [The City]And finally: A trove of art in a humble apartmentThe Times’s Sandra E. Garcia reports:Observers of the art market have referred to the rising demand for work by contemporary African American artists in recent years as, among other things, a “furor” or “surging,” and the work itself as “a hot commodity.” Ten years ago, it was relatively rare to see a Black artist’s work set a record at auction.Now, such sales are routine, boosted by numerous high-profile lots, perhaps most famously Kerry James Marshall’s 1997 painting “Past Times” (purchased by the rapper and music producer Sean Combs for $21.1 million at a Sotheby’s sale in 2018) and, more recently, Jean Michel-Basquiat’s “In This Case” (1983), which sold at Christie’s in May for $93.1 million — an astronomical price, but still only the second-highest ever paid for a Basquiat.Given the hype surrounding such figures, it’s surprising that one of the more interesting collections of contemporary African American art is housed inside a fairly humble Manhattan two-bedroom apartment on Madison Avenue.It belongs to Alvin Hall, 68, a broadcaster, financial educator and author who, through good timing, taste and a bit of luck began collecting in the 1980s and has been able to buy masterpieces by artists whose work is now worth much more. At a time when art — and Black art in particular — has been inflated and commodified to the point of a quasi bank transaction, Hall is a model of best practices for non-billionaires hoping to amass a world-class collection. His apartment also illustrates some of the realities of how to live with art when you only have a minimal amount of space: He owns 377 works, 342 of which are in storage.It’s Tuesday — stop and look.Metropolitan Diary: Hardware Dear Diary:Walking up University Place toward Union Square, I saw a man coming out of a hardware store.As I walked by, a gray-haired woman holding a dog approached the man and asked whether he worked there.He tapped a cigarette out of a pack and nodded.“If I brought in a machete,” she said, “Could you sharpen it?”— Cindy AugustineNew 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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      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