ALBANY, N.Y. — Republican lawmakers are taking aim at Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg with a proposed constitutional change giving voters the power to remove prosecutors from office.
GOP leaders in the Senate and Assembly unveiled a constitutional amendment this week that would make district attorneys subject to recall campaigns. The proposal comes days after San Francisco voters backed the removal of Chesa Boudin, the California city’s progressive district attorney.
Senate Minority Leader Rob Ortt, R-Lockport, made clear the measure is directed at Bragg, who has faced calls for his removal over what critics consider a “soft on crime” stance.
“This disturbing trend of progressive, soft-on-crime district attorneys – including Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg here in New York – refusing to prosecute crime has got to stop,” Ortt said in a statement. “If Gov. Hochul won’t do the right thing and remove him from office, New Yorkers should have the power to do so on their own.”
Bragg has come under fire for instructing prosecutors not to charge certain crimes at all and to downgrade others just days after taking office. He later walked back parts of those policies.
Currently, in New York, only the governor has the power to remove a local prosecutor from office.
Some other states, including California and Wisconsin, have recall mechanisms allowing voters to remove such officials from elected office.
In San Francisco, Boudin was recalled Tuesday after 60% of voters decided they had enough of his decision not to prosecute quality-of-life crimes since taking office in 2020.
All four top GOP gubernatorial candidates in New York, including Rob Astorino, Harry Wilson, Andrew Giuliani and Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y., have said they would boot Bragg from office if elected.
Gov. Hochul met with the embattled prosecutor back in January as Bragg’s policies were met with condemnation from NYPD and police unions who accused him of being soft on crime. The governor said at the time she had a “productive conversation” with Bragg and expressed a reluctance to oust the newly elected official.
Mayor Adams, meanwhile, didn’t mention Bragg by name earlier this week as he continued to call out the courts and prosecutors for failing to more aggressively go after gun offenders.
“I don’t believe there is support if judges are not holding people accountable, if laws are not indicating those who are repeated offenders and violent are not being held accountable and if we have a bottlenecked criminal justice system,” he said as he touted the work of the NYPD in getting guns off the street.
Bragg’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
For the Republican-backed constitutional change to take effect, the Democrat-led state Legislature would have to approve it in back-to-back sessions separated by an election and then voters would then have to sign off on it.
Assembly Minority Leader Will Barclay, R-Oswego, said the measure is needed to ensure district attorneys are held accountable.
“Public prosecutors who turn a blind eye to crime completely undermine the quality of life people are able to experience,” Barclay said. “District attorneys have a duty to uphold the law and protect the community, two very basic responsibilities that are unfortunately being ignored with greater frequency.
“DAs who choose to act as political activists once they take office need to be held accountable,” he added.
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