Bragg Holds Lead in Manhattan District Attorney Primary

[NYC Liberal]

Alvin Bragg was leading in the Democratic primary for Manhattan district attorney as returns came in Tuesday night, maintaining a steady margin of about four percentage points over Tali Farhadian Weinstein in a race likely to determine who heads the most prominent local prosecutor’s office in the country.

The winner of the primary will be heavily favored to win the general election in November and would lead an office that prosecutes tens of thousands of cases a year and is running a high-profile inquiry into former President Donald J. Trump and his family business.

Mr. Bragg and Ms. Farhadian Weinstein had long been seen as front-runners in the race, and they proved it on Primary Day, beating six other candidates by double-digit margins with nearly all of the in-person returns in on Tuesday night.

A sizable number of absentee ballots — as many as 59,000, according to The Associated Press — had not yet been counted. As of midnight, Mr. Bragg’s lead stood at about 7,000 votes in the only major race on the ballot that did not make use of ranked-choice voting.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/22/nyregion/manhattan-district-attorney.html

The winner is going to take over the Trump investigation.

Alvin Bragg, widely seen as a leading contender in the race, has boasted of having sued the Trump administration more than 100 times while he was in the state attorney general's office, where he was chief deputy. He has also noted that he led the team that sued the Donald J. Trump Foundation, which resulted in Trump personally paying $2 million to an array of charities.

"I've seen him up front and have seen the lawlessness that he can do," Bragg said on the radio show "Ebro in the Morning," in January. "I believe we have to hold him accountable. I haven't seen all the facts beyond the public but I've litigated with him and so I'm prepared to go where the facts take me once I see them, and hold him accountable."

https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/21/politics/manhattan-district-attorney-election-trump/index.html

[elleng]

1. Wall Street Is Donating to This D.A. Candidate. Is That a Problem?

Tali Farhadian Weinstein built up a $2.2 million war chest with help from hedge fund managers, far more than her rivals in the Manhattan district attorney race.

Even had she not raised more money than her rivals, Tali Farhadian Weinstein would be a formidable candidate in the nine-way race to become the Manhattan district attorney, perhaps the most high-profile local prosecutor’s office in the country.

She was a Rhodes scholar, has an elite legal résumé and is the only candidate who has worked for both the Justice Department and a city prosecutor’s office. And while most of the candidates are campaigning as reformers intent on reducing incarceration, Ms. Farhadian Weinstein, 45, has staked out a slightly more conservative position, expressing concerns about guns and gangs.

But what most sets Ms. Farhadian Weinstein apart from the field is her fund-raising. As of January, she had raised $2.2 million, far more than her competitors, hundreds of thousands of it from Wall Street, where her husband is a major hedge fund manager.

Her opponents, legal ethicists and good government advocates have raised questions about that support, pointing out that the Manhattan district attorney, by virtue of geography, has jurisdiction over a large number of financial crimes.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/nyregion/tali-farhadian-weinstein-wall-street-da-race.html