With Zohran Mamdani the mayoral frontrunner, Alvin – Latest News
The New York City Campaign Finance Board simply introduced the general-election debates: Mayoral candidates will slug it out Oct. 16 and 22, comptroller candidates Oct. 14 and 23 and public-advocate candidates Oct. 21.
Yet there’s radio silence on a debate for the Manhattan district-attorney race.
Why the cowardice, Alvin?
Back in 2021, incumbent Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg duked it out with different “Defund the Police” radicals in Democratic major debates hosted by heavyweights like New York Law School and Citizens Union.
But he chickened out of a direct face-off with GOP candidate Tom Kenniff, solely agreeing to a pathetic 30-minute Zoom call the place they by no means shared the screen whereas talking. Talk about gutless!
The contest issues more this 12 months with Democratic Socialist and wannabe police-defunder Zohran Mamdani main the mayor’s race.
Bragg is ducking a debate towards opponent Maron. Steven Hirsch
Why ought to Bragg serve 4 more years when subway murders skyrocketed from zero in 2017 to 11 in 2024 during his time period, when his refusal to prosecute fare evasion is bleeding the Metropolitan Transportation Authority dry to the tune of $700 million a 12 months and when he dismisses 14% of all arrests and downgrades a whopping 60% of all felonies?
I call on Bragg to comply with a public debate and defend his disastrous file.
As a battle-tested public defender with over 20 years in the trenches, an schooling advocate combating for equity and justice in our metropolis and a mother of 4 children who take the subway to public faculty, I’m not afraid to defend my file of combating for our metropolis or my imaginative and prescient for a safer New York.
Why is Alvin Bragg ducking a debate?
Maybe Bragg doesn’t wish to reply questions on whether or not or not he agrees together with his celebration’s mayoral nominee, frontrunner Mamdani, about not prosecuting misdemeanors, legalizing prostitution, sending social staff to answer domestic-violence calls and decommissioning the NYPD Strategic Response Group.
Mamdani and Bragg are each supporters of extremist insurance policies like “de-carceration” — a actual mouthful simply to say “Keep as many people out of jail as possible.”
Mamdani’s frontrunner standing makes the Manhattan DA race more momentous this 12 months. LP Media
For a lifelong Democrat like me, somebody who switched events to carry on to my progressive values, to not reject them, I don’t acknowledge this model of so-called liberalism as a result of it places people who can’t afford personal security — like Mamdani and Bragg use — at risk.
As a public defender at the Legal Aid Society I represented many mentally in poor health people who had been actually dying in the streets earlier than they obtained arrested.
Sometimes I used to be in a position to get my shoppers into remedy packages as half of a plea discount. Arresting the drug-addicted, mentally in poor health avenue homeless who commit crimes to get them the help they desperately need is just not a excellent system, but it surely presents some of the most hard-to-treat people a true likelihood at restoration.
Unlike Mamdani and Bragg, I by no means checked out a man mendacity in his own filth on a park bench with a needle protruding of his arm and thought, “Good thing no one has the authority or responsibility to help this man.”
A heroin consumer shoots up in The Bronx’s St. Mary’s Park amid needles and the toothpaste he stole from CVS to feed his behavior. Richard Harbus for New York Post
The blinkered insurance policies and radical ideologies that Mamdani and Bragg promote and impose on all of us tie the palms of the police to make arrests and block one of the solely actual paths to serving to determined people who can’t help themselves.
They additionally make our streets, parks and subways unusable, unsafe and unclean.
It’s a lose-lose to faux the police and the criminal-justice system are all the time the unhealthy guys, however that’s what Mamdani and Bragg imagine, and that’s what they wish to impose on all of us.
They call it hurt discount, however it’s actually hurt amplification.
The wretched souls who’re dying in the streets and people of us who must navigate round their psychoses as we stroll our youngsters to high school or attempt to get home from work all endure.
A lifelong liberal like me believes we have now an obligation to help these which are struggling the twin affliction of mental sickness and drug dependancy whereas additionally acknowledging that on a regular basis New Yorkers who pay taxes, go to work and stroll our streets deserve higher than the Mamdani-Bragg dystopia their DSA crime agenda creates.
Author and Manhattan DA candidate Maud Maron has on-the-ground work expertise at the Legal Aid Society. Stephen Yang
Sixty-seven p.c of Manhattan voters imagine that the metropolis is headed in the fallacious direction.
And if Gotham elects Mamdani — a frighteningly actual risk — getting rid of Bragg in Manhattan is even more important.
A Bragg-Mamdani Big Apple will increase the chaos on our streets, close down more companies, keep the toothpaste locked up and the criminals free, whereas driving New York state’s record-breaking outward migration — decimating our tax base and communities.
Mamdani and Bragg need us to pay for the items that others steal, and so they need us to pay the prices of their failed concepts, however that price is just too high.
It robs us of true security, usable public transportation, clean parks and streets and the metropolis we all know and love.
Alvin Bragg has had 4 years to do the job of Manhattan’s prime prosecutor.
He ought to defend his file, in public, by agreeing to a debate.
Maud Maron is a former Legal Aid lawyer and the GOP candidate for Manhattan district lawyer.
