NEW YORK — It was billed as a contest of criminal justice reformers, a Democratic primary for district attorney in Queens that would serve as an adjustment to the tough-on-crime policies that have long typified this working-class borough of New York.
All six candidates in Tuesday’s race had backed proposals to get rid of bail for low-level offenses, move away from prosecuting sex workers and form a conviction-integrity unit.
But as the polls closed at 9 p.m., it remained to be seen just how far voters in Queens were willing to entertain major changes to the borough’s criminal justice system.
Most of the attention in the race has gone to three candidates: Tiffany Cabán, a 31-year-old public defender; Melinda Katz, the Queens borough president, who has captured the institutional support of the Queens County Democratic machine; and Greg Lasak, a former judge who worked as a senior prosecutor in the borough.
Cabán has captured the endorsements of U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Democratic presidential candidates Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.
Her campaign was seen as an extension of other criminal justice reformers who have won top prosecutor jobs in places like Boston and Philadelphia; those prosecutors, Larry Krasner, in Philadelphia, and Rachael Rollins, in Boston, both endorsed her.
Katz’s candidacy was seen by some as a test for the traditional power bases that typically dictate election results in Queens; traditionally, party leaders back the Democratic incumbent or an anointed successor. The last contested Democratic primary was in 1955. No Republican has been elected to the office since Dana Wallace’s win in November 1920.
Last year, the local party suffered what was seen then as an unimaginable defeat, with its leader, Joseph Crowley, losing his House primary to Ocasio-Cortez. In Tuesday’s contest, the party, along with several powerful unions, heavily backed Katz — even criticizing Sens. Sanders and Warren for endorsing Cabán.
Lasak stuck most closely to the formula of Richard A. Brown, the prosecutor who held the office for 27 years until his death last month, saying his experience gave him the best shot of keeping residents safe while instituting some common-sense changes.
“If Cabán wins, Queens wants revolutionary change,” said Bruce Gyory, an adjunct professor of political science at the University at Albany. “If Katz wins, they want evolutionary change and are not completely ready to break with the past. If they go with Lasak, they wanted Richard Brown 2.0.”
Queens, one of the most diverse counties in the country, is 25% white, home to a number of police officers and firefighters, older whites and upper-middle class blacks.
In recent years, the national conversation around criminal justice has shifted from the hard-nosed approach of the 1990s to avoiding wrongful convictions and creating alternatives to prosecution.
In Boston and Philadelphia, voters sided with reform-minded candidates who promised to discontinue policies that focused on minor offenses as a way to combat major crime which, critics say, led to the prosecution and incarceration of a disproportionate number of black and Hispanic men.
Even as violent crime dropped to historic lows not seen since the 1950s, Brown had continued to prosecute minor crimes like marijuana offenses and fare evasion, at the same time as Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx limited its prosecution of those crimes. Brown had also declined to create a conviction review unit.
The other candidates in the primary were Mina Malik, a former prosecutor in Queens and Brooklyn and a deputy attorney general in Washington D.C.; Betty Lugo, a former prosecutor in Nassau County now in private practice; and Jose Nieves, who worked in the New York attorney general’s office as a deputy chief in the special investigations and prosecutions unit.
A seventh candidate, Rory Lancman, a councilman for Queens, bowed out of the race last week and announced his support for Katz.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.