New Yorkers have heard a lot about the Democratic Primary for mayor coming up in June.
But voters in Manhattan and Brooklyn will also soon be able to select their borough’s top prosecutor.
And they’ll have to choose just one candidate, not their top five. The district attorneys in New York City serve within the state court system — not as elected officials for the city — so their races are done via traditional, one-vote ballots, not by ranked choice voting.
The race in Manhattan pits incumbent DA Alvin Bragg against Patrick Timmins, a former Bronx prosecutor.
In Brooklyn, incumbent DA Eric Gonzalez technically has a re-election this year. But he is uncontested for June’s primary and will automatically appear on November’s ballot.
There is no Republican primary and no Republican third-party candidates are yet registered opposing him in the general election.
Queens, Staten Island and The Bronx won’t hold DA elections until 2027.
In Manhattan, Bragg, 51, a reform-minded prosecutor, has a formidable amount of campaign cash and powerful endorsements — and is the only DA in history to ever successfully prosecute a former president.
In 2021, he became the first Black person elected to that office since the position became an elected office in 1846 after coming out ahead in a field of seven other candidates.
His high-profile May 2024 conviction of former and current President Donald Trump on felony charges of falsifying records skyrocketed his national profile — and made him a target of right-wing hate, including calls to imprison him.
He has raised $1.3 million for his 2025 campaign, including $845,253 between March 2023 and January 2024 after his indictment of Trump, state campaign records show.
None of the money has come from corporations, lobbyists, or lawyers who have cases before his office, according to the Bragg campaign.
He ran promising to support bail reform laws to make it easier for people to stay out of jail before their trials. He also vowed to invest in mental health outreach and to take on corrupt landlords who fail to maintain their properties and do everything to maximize profits.
When he was first elected, the former civil rights attorney instructed staff to seek jail only for serious offenses.
“Data, and my personal experiences, show that reserving incarceration for matters involving significant harm will make us safer,” Bragg wrote in his 10-page “Day One” memo.
Criminal justice reformers welcomed those moves, noting that alternative to incarceration programs have a much better chance of preventing recidivism.
But the memo was slammed by critics who accused him of being soft on crime after a spike started during the pandemic.
In response, Bragg issued a new memo to staff a month later, instructing prosecutors to seek jail for gun, robbery, and assault cases.
The initial memo had been a “source of confusion, rather than clarity,” Bragg said.
Bragg — and the city’s other DAs — have also lobbied Gov. Kathy Hochul and state lawmakers to pare back discovery reform rules passed in Albany in 2019.
The law had required prosecutors to turn over all evidence, including materials many of them argued were redundant or inconsequential, in a timely fashion.
Bragg and other DAs in the state want to let judges decide how much information must be given to defendants before their cases come to trial — and to make it more difficult for cases to be dismissed if prosecutors fail to turn over information in a timely manner.
Public defenders and criminal justice advocates contend that the primary culprit for the delayed handover of mandated discovery materials is police departments including the NYPD failing to share key information in a timely manner.
The proposed state budget has some new, pared back, version of the discovery law, according to Hochul.
On the campaign trail, Timmins, who worked as a prosecutor in the Bronx DA’s office, contends Bragg’s approach isn’t tough enough.
“I love the island, and I just find the last two years have been really, really tense and fearful below the ground, in the subway, and in the city,” Timmins told THE CITY.
He has raised a small fraction of Bragg’s million-dollar haul: around $120,000, Timmins told THE CITY.
But he’s hoping for more after former Police Commissioner Ray Kelly endorsed his campaign, making him the top big-name supporter.
A poll conducted by the Bragg campaign found 58% of voters support the incumbent DA while 18% back Timmons, who has also worked in civil litigation representing retired union workers who became sick from asbestos.
Timmins cited that poll as a reason for optimism.
“We just started getting our name out and getting known, and his poll indicates 18% without even knowing about the Ray Kelly endorsement and all the hard work we’re doing in terms of street operations,” he said. “So we feel good about that and glad he published one of his polls.”
He has worked as a prosecutor in the Bronx DA’s office handling major violent felonies from 1996 to 2000. He has also served as an adjunct professor at John Jay College teaching criminal law and most recently as a civil litigator.
On the Republican side, Maud Maron, who previously worked as a Legal Aid attorney, has announced that she plans to challenge Bragg in the general election. Diana Florence, a former Manhattan DA prosecutor, intends to run on an independent “Safer Manhattan” ballot line.
New York voters have typically re-elected incumbent DAs over the past century, according to election insiders.
The voting setup has led to some prosecutors staying in power for decades such as former Manhattan DA Robert Morgenthau, who held that office for 34 years, and former Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes, who served for 24 years.
District attorneys have a ton of leeway into everything from how certain crimes are charged, when to bring a case, and whether to seek bail and in what manner plea bargains are made.
They oversee all local criminal prosecutions within the borough and appoint huge staffs in the hundreds, including assistant district attorneys who conduct investigations and see trials through.
The DA can also seize property as part of prosecution; in Manhattan, for example, the DA controls a sizable forfeiture fund.
New York City’s district attorneys have been elected since the state constitution allowed New Yorkers to directly vote for the position in the mid-1800s. They serve four-year terms.
Across the country, DAs are not always elected, however; three states, including New Jersey, have DAs who are appointed.
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