If Tiffany Cabán triumphs in her quest to become the next Queens DA, she will first and foremost share her victory with inmates at Rikers—NYC’s main jail complex.
According to the NY Post, early result show that the 31-year-old progressive public defender is the likely winner of the Democratic primary for Queens district attorney. “Our victory belongs to folks who have been locked up on Rikers simply because they could not afford their bails,” she said on Saturday. Speaking at Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, she continued: “Together we are going to make our community safer and stronger and we are going to do it with community-driven solutions that rebuild trust, reduce recidivism and end the war and black and brown low-income and working class communities.”
Of the six democratic candidates who competed in the June 25th primary, Cabán got 39.6 percent of the votes, with Melinda Katz coming in extremely close with 38.3 percent of the votes, with 99 percent of precincts reporting. Katz, who is Queens Borough President and formerly a NYC councilwoman, has not yet conceded to defeat. Although Cabán’s lead stood at 1.3 percentage points, which is above the 0.5-point threshold that would require a recount, there are still absentee ballots that have not yet been accounted for. Roughly 3,400 absentee ballots are still being counted, and as per the Board of Elections they may not be officially tallied until Wednesday. Still, Katz would need to have amassed a hefty percentage of the absentee votes to make up for the 1,090-vote lead Cabán holds over her. The winner of the primary has a good lead to win the November general election to take over for longtime District Attorney Richard Brown, who died last month at the age 86. Queens has not elected a new DA since 1991.
“They said I didn’t look like a district attorney. They said I was too young. They said we could not build a movement from the grassroots. They said we could not win — but we did it, y’all,” Cabán told cheering supporters at La Boom nightclub in Woodside. “We built a campaign to reduce recidivism, decriminalize poverty, end mass incarceration, and to protect our immigrant communities. To keep people rooted in their communities with the access to support and services.”
Cabán has been endorsed by the New York Times, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, and of course her buddy and fellow liberal Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. As part of her campaign, Cabán called to shutter Riker’s down, saying she does not want any new jails in Queens, either. Her top priorities include ending “racist law enforcement” and mass incarceration. Caban, who introduces herself as “a queer Latina from a working-class family”, would not only be a first female to hold the office, but also the first person of color. Caban says she would end prosecutions for ‘ minor’ crimes such as prostitution, recreational drug use, unlicensed driving, and subway fare evasion, and seek shorter sentences for some felonies. She also threatens to prosecute federal immigration agents “who exceed their authority and endanger our communities.”
“I’m proud to say that together we made history,” Cabán said Saturday. “We built a movement that resonated not only in Queens, not only around New York City, but St. Louis and Boston and Philadelphia… all over the country.”
