The race for Manhattan district attorney has all the ingredients for a political food fight.

The three candidates running to be the borough’s top prosecutor have each been at the center of public controversies that have made them political lightning rods. But the race has received almost no attention amid a contentious mayoral contest.

Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg won the Democratic primary in June with nearly three-quarters of the vote, according to election data. While Bragg has faced criticism from law enforcement and tough-on-crime conservatives who say he cares more about defendants than victims he has also earned praise for leading the office through a decline in shootings and the historic conviction of President Donald Trump.

Experts said Bragg’s successes in office, paired with a lack of attention to the race, could help him sail into re-election — especially in a borough where about 70% of registered voters are Democrats.

“This race feels a little bit like: It’s clearly not broken, so let’s not overthink it,” said Christina Greer, associate professor of political science at Fordham University. “Because we actually have, literally, a much more complicated puzzle to solve when it comes to the mayoralty.”

The Manhattan DA oversees the prosecution of state criminal cases, including shoplifting, assault, illegal gun possession and murder. Whoever leads the office can set the tone for law enforcement in the United States’ financial and media capital, which is bustling with residents, tourists and businesses.

Two attorneys are vying to unseat Bragg: Maud Maron, a former public defender and vocal school board member, and Diana Florence, a former prosecutor who now represents athletes in private practice.

Here’s a look at the candidates:

Alvin Bragg, Democratic and Working Families nominee

Bragg first ran for DA on a platform of criminal justice reform, similar to other progressive prosecutors across the country. He took office in 2022 amid a nationwide spike in violent crime and a heated public debate about bail and discovery reform, state legislation that made drastic changes to New York’s court system. Since then, he has invested in programs that aim to prevent youth violence and provide services to people with serious mental illness both inside the courthouse and in different neighborhoods around the borough.

Bragg has also prioritized prosecuting violent crime over less serious offenses. A memo Bragg sent to staff on his first day in office instructed attorneys to avoid prosecuting various low-level crimes, including marijuana misdemeanors, trespassing and prostitution, unless the defendant is also facing more serious charges. Police immediately criticized the memo and accused Bragg of being “soft on crime.” Bragg later updated the memo to address concerns from law enforcement.

“Discretion governs all of this, as it has for me since 2003,” Bragg said in an interview.

Kathryn Wylde, president and CEO of the Partnership for New York City, said as crime has gone down, Bragg’s critics in the business community have given him “some credit.” Wylde also said the district attorney has worked with businesses to address issues that matter to them, including the prosecution of accused shoplifters.

Under Bragg’s leadership, the DA’s office has secured convictions in several high-profile cases, including against Trump, a group of men accused of fatally drugging and robbing customers at gay bars, and police accused of misconduct. His office failed to get a conviction in the trial of Daniel Penny, the former Marine accused of choking a homeless man with schizophrenia to death on the subway. State data shows Manhattan’s conviction rates have dropped for both felonies and misdemeanors between 2022 and 2024, while the office has declined to prosecute a higher share of cases.

Rafael Mangual, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, said it’s difficult to parse how much to attribute lower conviction rates to Bragg’s approach versus to state laws like bail and discovery reform.

Bragg said he would continue to focus on violent crimes, sex crimes, and crimes against tenants and workers if elected to a second term.

“This is all work that is underway that has made Manhattan safer and a better place, but it’s work that needs to continue,” he said.

Maud Maron, Republican and Conservative nominee

Maron is a former public defender who spent years representing low-income criminal defendants and leading trainings at the Legal Aid Society. Her campaign website includes pledges to prosecute all crimes, establish a unit focused on the intersection of mental health and public safety, combat gang crime in public housing, prosecute e-bike riders who injure pedestrians and confront antisemitism. Maron said she’s running for DA because she’s concerned about safety and thinks Bragg isn’t doing enough to protect New Yorkers.

“People associate a lot of the crime that they see in the city, correctly, with him,” she said in an interview.

Maron said Bragg’s guidance not to prosecute certain types of crimes is steeped in an “activist narrative that’s divorced from reality.” But she has also faced her own allegations of political activism getting in the way of her work.

In 2020, the Legal Aid Society publicly denounced an op-ed Maron wrote that criticized the Department of Education’s anti-bias training. Maron wrote that the training “invites discrimination and divides all thought and behavior along a racial axis.” In 2023, the news outlet The74 reported on leaked text messages among Maron, then a member of the Manhattan District 2 Community Education Council, and other parents, in which she said “there is no such thing as ‘trans kids.’”

“No child can consent to the permanent changes being made to their bodies. I am not willfully ignorant,” the message continued, according to The74.

As a member of the education council, Maron sponsored a resolution that asked the school system to review and redraft its gender guidelines for school sports — a proposal that then-Schools Chancellor David Banks called “despicable” and “hateful.” Banks removed her from the council last year after she told the New York Post that whoever wrote an anonymous op-ed in the Stuyvesant High School student newspaper calling the war in Gaza a genocide was a “coward.” A federal judge reinstated Maron, saying her removal was likely unconstitutional.

Maron said she has not changed her opinions on those hot-button issues. But she said her personal convictions would not impact how she treats crime victims or criminal defendants.

“ If a man who has lived telling people he’s a woman and who wears women’s clothes is assaulted, does that human being 100% need to be treated with respect and kindness and dignity when he is being interviewed by police and by district attorneys? Of course. Would you address that person by the name that they say they are? Yes,” she said. “But should you be compelled to run around and pretend that you believe their entire ideology? No.”

Maron said she feels that people sometimes characterize her beliefs unfairly.

“Instead of being fearful or nervous about me based on what other people have said about me, listen to me. Listen to my words and listen to what I have to say,” she said. “I have been characterized as a hateful person. I am not a hateful person.”

Diana Florence, ‘A Safer Manhattan’

Florence is a third-party challenger who is an alum of the Manhattan DA’s office and ran unsuccessfully against Bragg four years ago. She worked as a prosecutor in Manhattan for 25 years and ultimately served as the first leader of the office’s Construction Fraud Task Force. In that role, she oversaw the prosecutions of construction companies accused of failing to protect their workers from harm or stealing their wages. Florence’s campaign website says she drafted state laws that upped the penalties for companies found liable for an employee’s death or serious injury and those convicted of wage theft.

Like Maron, Florence disagrees with Bragg’s approach to law enforcement and has criticized his early guidance not to prosecute certain types of crimes.

“We need to stop with all these blanket policies and go back to basics,” she said in an interview. “What that means is what I learned under [former Manhattan DA] Robert Morgenthau: that you do justice by looking at each case individually.”

Florence said she would work closely with police to track crime statistics and focus on the small number of people who commit the most crimes. She said she would implement “post-mortems” so prosecutors can reflect on cases that get dismissed and also help police officers to learn from mistakes in their investigations. Florence also said she would advocate for further changes to the state’s bail laws, including allowing judges to set bail for people who they think pose a danger to the public — a proposal that Gov. Kathy Hochul has supported but criminal justice reform advocates and many state lawmakers have fiercely opposed.

Florence resigned from the DA’s office in 2020 amid allegations that she didn’t turn over evidence related to a witness cooperating in multiple bribery cases. Florence told Gothamist it was an “unfortunate incident where a mistake was made” and that she took responsibility.

When Florence was running for election in 2021, a spokesperson for outgoing DA Cyrus Vance Jr. told the Wall Street Journal that she had faced complaints of creating a hostile work environment. Florence told Gothamist those accusations were “unproven” and “unfair.”

“I was a hardworking person who wanted the very best from the people that work for me — the same standard I held myself to,” she said.

Madison Square Garden owner James Dolan has donated tens of thousands of dollars to Florence’s campaign, according to campaign finance records.