UES Lawmaker Dan Quart Enters Manhattan DA Race

NEW YORK, NY — State Assemblyman Dan Quart announced his bid this week to unseat Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, becoming the latest challenger pressuring the longtime incumbent from the left.

Quart's platform includes a host of progressive reforms including the decriminalization of sex work, abolishing cash bail and ending surveillance-based gang indictments. During his tenure on the State Assembly — where he represents the Upper East Side and parts of Midtown and Murray Hill — has often clashed with Vance on issues such as legalizing gravity knives and has been a vocal critic of Vance.

"We need a DA in Manhattan who will apply the law fairly, charge with restraint, and look out for New Yorkers – all New Yorkers, not just the wealthy and well-connected," Quart said in a statement.

Quart's background includes stints volunteering as a pro bono lawyer with the Legal Aid Society, representing low-income clients as a criminal defense attorney and eight years at the Community Board level before his election to the State Assembly in 2011.

In the lawmaker's campaign announcement he compared his past work helping the disadvantaged to recent reports of Vance's preferential treatment to well-connected people such as Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein and the Trump family.

News reports in 2017 said that Vance got big campaign contributions from lawyers for the Trump family and Weinstein around the time that he closed probes into their clients. The revelations sparked a write-in challenge from the civil rights attorney Marc Fliedner, which Vance easily survived.

This year it was reported that Vance's office argued in 2011 that Epstein's sex offender status in New York should have been reduced to the lowest level. Vance since said the request was made mistakenly.

"Manhattan should be more than a playground for the rich. Coddled by their District Attorney, those with money and power have been afforded a different kind of justice than the rest of us," Quart said. "That's not the Manhattan I grew up in, and that's not the Manhattan I'll lead as District Attorney."

Vance is now facing a three-headed challenge from his left. New York Law School Professor and former prosecutor Alvin Bragg was the first to launch a challenge against the incumbent DA and civil rights attorney Janos Marton is also in the running. Manhattan's top prosecutor succeeded longtime DA Robert Morgenthau in the 2009 election and hasn't faced much of a challenge in retaining the seat since. Morgenthau first won the seat in 1975, which means that Manhattan has only had two district attorneys in the past 44 years.