Longtime Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance will be forever attached to a handful of bold-faced names—Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein, Ivanka Trump, and Donald Trump, Jr.—not because he took them on in tough prosecutions, but because when he had the chance, he didn’t.



In the case of Epstein—the registered sex offender who died last week of an apparent suicide while in federal custody—a group of New York lawmakers have now asked State Attorney General Leticia James to investigate Vance’s role in what looked like preferential treatment in the years between Epstein’s 2008 guilty plea and his July arrest on sex trafficking charges. A.G. James had previously been asked to investigate Vance’s conduct in the Harvey Weinstein case. Weinstein has been accused by a number of women of harassment and sexual assault in recent years, but the Manhattan D.A.’s sex-crimes unit dropped its probe in 2015. Vance perhaps survived the Weinstein scandal because it broke during a reelection bid in 2017 when he was running unopposed. But in two years, he will run again, facing multiple progressive challengers.

Excitement over the possibility of getting a progressive reformer to replace Vance has ramped up after the 2019 Queens Democratic primary for district attorney. That race made national headlines when Tiffany Cabán, running as a decarceral prosecutor, appeared to have won. (A contested recount ultimately ruled Cabán lost to a more establishment-linked candidate by a razor-thin margin of 55 votes.) Cabán spent six months campaigning in Queens; Vance’s challengers in Manhattan have two years of runway. Vance could be feeling change is in the air—when local politics web site The City asked Vance in July if he planned to run again, he would not confirm it, saying “It’s too early for me to make any decision.”

We may have scared Cy Vance out of even running again. And trust me—we terrified the Democratic establishment. — Tiffany Cabán (@CabanForQueens) August 7, 2019

Maybe. New York’s Democratic primary election in June 2021 is still a long way off, but given the political makeup of the electorate, it will likely choose the next Manhattan D.A. And with a contested mayor’s race on the same ballot, voter turnout is expected to be high. Two progressive challengers to Vance have already declared: former New York State Chief Deputy Attorney General and New York Law School Professor Alvin Bragg, and Janos Marton of the ACLU Campaign for Smart Justice. (Marton is also a veteran of the anti-mass-incarceration organization JustLeadership USA’s efforts to close the jail at Rikers Island, a major issue in New York City politics.) At least six others are said to be considering a run.



Vance is a well-known quantity in city politics, but he’s also a national figure—and not only because of the high-profile cases (and the attendant controversy) his office handles. Vance has positioned himself as a leader in fighting violence against women, from sending money to other states to spur the testing of rape kits detectives had let languish, to crusading against human trafficking by targeting men who allegedly buy sex and the web sites sex workers once relied on for advertising. This image fits well with his office’s long-established reputation: According to former Manhattan sex-crimes prosecutor Linda Fairstein, the Manhattan D.A.’s sex crimes unit was the real-life inspiration for Law and Order: SVU.