The criminal justice reform group that helped elect Larry Krasner, Wesley Bell, and Rachael Rollins is weighing in on the first competitive district attorney election in Queens, New York, in 28 years.

Real Justice PAC, which works to elect “reform-minded prosecutors” and has helped to reshape the criminal justice landscape through the ballot box, announced over the weekend that they’re backing Tiffany Cabán, a Queens native and former public defender, for Queens district attorney. The group cited her plans to decriminalize sex work and end cash bail for all crimes, as well as her support for the city’s “No New Jails” initiative.

On Tuesday, the Working Families Party, an increasingly influential political force in New York City politics, also threw its weight behind Cabán. Color of Change PAC is considering endorsing in the race, but has yet to do so. Our Revolution, an offshoot of the 2016 Bernie Sanders campaign, is also following the race, but has not made a decision on whether they’ll endorse any candidate.

The support of Real Justice and the Working Families Party comes after an endorsement from the Queens chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, and Cabán is also being boosted by staff and volunteers from the congressional campaign of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, all of which suggests the left is finally coalescing around a candidate in the crowded primary, which is set for June 25. Ocasio-Cortez told The Intercept she hadn’t made an endorsement in the race and didn’t think she would “unless something really changes.”

With three months to go, however, Cabán is far behind in fundraising, meaning she’ll need to rely on a grassroots surge to lift her over the top.

The race is part of a generation reshaping New York City politics, long dominated by borough machines and now in flux after the election of Ocasio-Cortez in the Bronx and Queens and Jumaane Williams as public advocate. That followed a prior upset win, when Bill de Blasio beat back an establishment opponent in 2013 to become mayor, even as he’s since disappointed some on the left since then. On Monday, Bronx Rep. José Serrano announced his retirement, opening a new seat that could be claimed by the progressive wave. In 2018, insurgent challengers in Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx unseated longtime state senators, producing the most progressive Albany legislature in generations and upending power dynamics in the city. Electing a progressive prosecutor would put an exclamation mark on that shift.

Critics of outgoing DA Dick Brown say his office was behind the curve on implementing reforms that his colleagues across the country were quicker to adopt, like declining to prosecute low-level, nonviolent offenses like marijuana use or fare evasion, or establishing units to review and overturn wrongful convictions. Those are among the issues that the seven candidates in the crowded field have been most vocal about.

But unlike last year’s DA races, the Queens election is not so much a referendum on Brown’s tough-on-crime doctrine as it is a test of who can “out-Krasner Krasner,” as one strategist close to the race put it.

There’s a fear that the potential for truly radical change in the DA’s office will be lost in a field of candidates who may sound the same, but whose visions of reform are vastly different, those involved with the race told The Intercept. In the running, alongside Cabán, to make it onto the ballot for the June primary are Queens Borough President Melinda Katz; New York City Council Member Rory Lancman; former prosecutor and retired New York Supreme Court Justice Greg Lasak; former Washington, D.C., Deputy Attorney General Mina Malik; New York City attorney Betty Lugo; and Jose Nieves, former deputy chief for special investigations in the New York state attorney general’s office.

Tiffany Cabán

The various candidates largely echo one another when it comes to ending mass incarceration, decriminalizing offenses related to poverty and mental illness, and implementing a restorative approach to justice. They all want to establish a conviction review unit, pointing out that the Queens DA office is the last in the city without one. But they differ on specifics, like which crimes they would decline to prosecute, what to do about Rikers, and whether or not to construct new jails. And not all pledges to end cash bail are equal, candidates and organizers point out.

“Everybody sort of has these progressive ideas and the buzzwords and all that,” Ingrid Gomez, interim co-chair for the Queens United Independent Progressive caucus, or QUIP, told The Intercept in an interview. The group hosted a forum with six of the candidates in late February. “But when it gets down to detail, to the granular part of it,” Gomez said, “I think then you’ll see the different shades of progressivism.”

“There are people who don’t have the courtroom experience, prosecutorial experience,” Gomez explained. “And they are in this race because they’re getting term-limited. Or they want it to be the stepping stone to the next office. I want to see someone there who has the experience. I really think that we need to see the person’s experience before all else.”

While she has yet to raise a substantial amount of money, Cabán’s campaign scored big with the backing of the Real Justice PAC, Queens Democratic Socialists of America, the Working Families Party, the New Queens Democrats, Citizen Action, and New York Progressive Action Network. At 31, she’s the youngest candidate vying for a spot on the ballot. And she’s bringing a community-focused energy to the race that feels and sounds different than that of all her opponents.

Candidates need 4,000 signatures to get on the ballot, plus an extra couple thousand in case they have to fight a party challenge, strategists say. The petitioning period ends April 4. All in all, that costs around $50,000, strategists said, though it can be done with far less given enough volunteer power.

With the help of the Queens DSA and organizers who volunteered for Ocasio-Cortez, Cabán’s campaign is running a vigorous volunteer field effort to educate voters around the election. Seth Pollack, spokesperson for the Cabán campaign, told The Intercept that the campaign is “very confident” she’ll make it onto the ballot, “thanks in large part to the campaign’s enthusiastic volunteers and the incredible hard work of DSA.”

Local DSA activists see Cabán’s candidacy as a step toward a longer-term prison abolition project in collaboration with her support for the city’s No New Jails initiative, Sasha Weinstein told The Intercept. He’s part of the Queens DSA Electoral Working Group Committee and serves as the group’s liaison to the Cabán campaign. “De Blasio wants to spend $10.5 billion on 6,000 new [jail] beds across New York City,” Weinstein said, “and that’s because the word ‘progressive’ doesn’t mean anything.”

Working Families Party Executive Director Bill Lipton said in a statement that Cabán represented the best chance at a new path. “As a public defender, a queer Latina, and a progressive champion, Tiffany Cabán is the leader we need as Queens District Attorney. For too long, the criminal justice system in our city has held people of color to one standard—and wealthy, white New Yorkers to another. Cabán has charted a new path during her campaign, pledging to use the District Attorney’s office to fight for racial, social and economic justice,” he said.

What sets Cabán apart, in addition to her pledge not to take any corporate political action committee money, is her holistic approach to addressing community and generational trauma as the root cause of crime. She’s the only candidate who talks about trying to eliminate crime in that way, which she says is a function of her experience representing over 1,000 clients as a public defender. For her, the decision to run “felt like just the next thing that I’m doing for my clients,” she told The Intercept in an interview. “Very much so the natural progression in my advocacy for my clients.”

Her background as a queer, Latina public defender from a low-income community is inextricable from her platform, she told the QUIP forum in February, because “my experiences matter,” she said. “That is not identity politics; that is me speaking to my understanding around intersectionality and the effects of individual and generational trauma on our communities,” Cabán told the audience, describing domestic violence, substance abuse, and mental illness in both her personal and family life.

Cabán also supports closing Rikers. And her office would decline to prosecute low-level marijuana offenses, fare evasion, airport taxis, welfare fraud, sex work, massage parlors, or unlicensed driving in any case.

She also wants to end cash bail for all crimes and thinks that only ending cash bail for nonviolent felonies ultimately causes more harm than good. “Then nothing is changing for anything that’s considered serious,” she told The Intercept. “There are a host of crimes on the books that are technically violent felonies, but there isn’t any violence involved,” she explained. “Burglary in the second degree is a violent felony. But also, under the law, if I go into a building and steal Amazon packages from the lobby, that’s a burglary in the second degree, and it’s a violent felony,” she said. “And it’s not the thing that people think about when you talk about violent crime.”

In addition to assigning assistant district attorneys to each community — a proposal that Lasak’s campaign has also adopted — Cabán plans to hold regular town halls and meetings with Queens residents. She would reinvest profits that the DA’s office typically receives from asset forfeitures into organizations and services selected by the community. “The idea that we can stop these things from happening in the first place by allowing our communities to decide how to reinvest in their families, in their schools, things that community members might suggest,” she told the QUIP forum.

Cabán thinks the size of the field is a good thing. “I think it’s great that there are so many people in the mix in this race,” she told The Intercept. But she echoed Gomez’s concerns. “I think it’s great that people are talking about criminal justice reform,” Cabán said. “I also see some of the dangers that come along with it. There are certainly folks that are getting in the mix that know the progressive playbook at this point.”

“They know the things to say, they’re out there,” Cabán explained. “And there seems to be a disconnect between knowing the policies and what you’re supposed to say, ’cause they’re right — and having that tie to our communities and that investment in making sure that these policies have the intended impacts. And that our communities are the ones that are at the forefront of forming the policies.”

