Cyrus R. Vance Jr.
NYLJ Photo/Rick Kopstein

Waiting for Cyrus R. Vance Jr. to arrive in Harlem recently, a young woman with a megaphone rallied voters by invoking the names of local political leaders.

"A man who cares about our community and understands our problems," she boomed. "David Dinkin's choice for district attorney is Cy Vance. Carl McCall's choice for district attorney is Cy Vance."

A relaxed-looking Mr. Vance soon arrived to greet passersby. He listened carefully as one man complained the police had done nothing to curb kids on bicycles who had "clipped" a woman on the shoulder as she exited a store.

In lawyerlike fashion, Mr. Vance asked for details about the incident and promised to call someone at the local precinct, although he stressed "he was just a candidate." Then he segued smoothly into what has become a mantra of his campaign: if elected, he would assign teams of prosecutors to work with specific precincts so the district attorney's office could better address precisely this type of problem.

In the six months since he announced on the steps of City Hall that he was running to succeed the retiring Robert M. Morgenthau, Mr. Vance has become more pointed in formulating his message and more comfortable in delivering it.

Before his announcement, Mr. Vance secured the support of a dozen or so prominent legal figures, including three former U.S. attorneys and two former New York City corporation counsels. Almost immediately, Mr. Morgenthau signaled he regarded Mr. Vance as the candidate best equipped to protect his legacy, although he did not officially endorse his former assistant until June.

But after the initial fanfare, Mr. Vance's campaign against Leslie Crocker Snyder and Richard M. Aborn seemed to falter.

Ms. Snyder, who had a well-publicized career as a judge and had run for district attorney before, was "a known quantity," said political consultant Jerry Skurnik. Ms. Snyder criticized what she called the "very thin resume" of Mr. Vance, who had spent 17 years in Seattle after leaving the Manhattan District Attorney's Office in 1988, only returning to his home town in 2004.

Meanwhile, Richard M. Aborn won a spate of endorsements from political clubs and local elected officials who liked his liberal ideas for reforming the criminal justice system.

Mr. Vance himself often seemed uncomfortable in navigating the political clubs, which he said was "a foreign process" to him.

At times his message seemed less polished than that of Ms. Snyder, and his carefully crafted positions seemed to go over the heads of the rank-and-file political activists who were his audience. Meanwhile, Mr. Vance's soft-spoken manner sometimes seemed to pale in comparison to Mr. Aborn's outspoken, emphatic demeanor.

However, Mr. Vance said in an interview that he resisted calls to make drastic changes to the campaign's original game plan.

Sometime during the summer, "Mr. Vance's campaign righted itself," Mr. Skurnik said.

"He's not a politician," said Mr. Morgenthau, who reportedly became concerned that Mr. Vance was headed for defeat. "He hadn't run for office before. He got off to a slow start, but he's picked up momentum now, and he's doing extremely well."

Vance's Major Initiatives

• Pursue community-based model of justice that would assign teams of prosecutors to specific precincts and neighborhoods in Manhattan; establish an office in Washington Heights.

• Reduce Criminal Court backlog, in part by working with Office of Court Administration and other branches of government to increase trial capacity for misdemeanors.

• Assign prosecutors to handle cases from the complaint room to trial.

• Create a Conviction Integrity Panel to look at allegations of wrongful convictions and ensure procedures in the district attorney's office are in keeping with national "best practices."

• Establish a Family Justice Center in Northern Manhattan to provide integrated services for victims of domestic violence.

• Lobby for creation of mental health court in Manhattan.

• Form specialized units for safe housing, hate crimes, public integrity, counter-terrorism, environment crimes, immigrant affairs unit, computer and vehicular crime.

• Aggressively prosecute white-collar crime, including money-laundering and terrorism.

• Appoint a "re-entry director" to help integrate formerly incarcerated individuals into the community.

• Provide alternatives to incarceration for nonviolent drug offenders.

Mr. Morgenthau said Mr. Vance's broad experience makes him "by far the best qualified candidate" in the race. He said Mr. Vance is "highly regarded and respected, and he has experience on both prosecution and defense, and I think that's a big asset."

Mr. Morgenthau appears prominently in Mr. Vance's TV ads, and the district attorney's campaign committee, "Friends of Morgenthau," has contributed a total of $10,000 to Mr. Vance.

Mr. Vance has achieved a virtual clean sweep of endorsements from the city's newspapers. The opinion of The New York Times' editorial board may be particularly influential. The paper, which endorsed Ms. Snyder in her unsuccessful 2005 primary against Mr. Morgenthau, called Mr. Vance "an accomplished criminal and civil trial lawyer who offers balanced judgment and a commitment to criminal justice reform."

Mr. Vance also has picked up the endorsements of community leaders like former Mayor David Dinkins, former state Comptroller H. Carl McCall and Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer. Moreover, he is being backed by the large and influential teachers' and health-care workers unions.

According to best-selling author Linda Fairstein, a strong Vance supporter who led the sex crimes prosecution unit at the district attorney's office for 26 years, roughly 185 attorneys who are alumni of the agency have backed Mr. Vance.

Courting the Female Vote

Ms. Snyder has sought to position herself as a "trailblazer for women." But Mr. Vance has worked hard to counter her presumed strength among potentially crucial women voters.

Mr. Vance has gained the support of feminist icon Gloria Steinem, Caroline Kennedy, and Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum. He also has played up his role as a young prosecutor trying a double homicide in which a defendant murdered his ex-fiancé and her co-worker on the trading floor of Smith Barney and his role in a class-action gender discrimination suit against the Boeing Company that settled for $72 million.

A robo-call recorded by Ms. Steinem informed would-be voters that Mr. Vance "is one of the few people who really understands" that family violence "normalizes all other violence."

Through it all, the candidate has not strayed far from his message. Rather, he has continued to hone his proposals for "community-based justice" and a wide range of specialized units catering to particular constituencies.

"As district attorney, every question that comes before me will have to address the issue of does it make us safer as a community and is it fair?" he said during a debate last week. He uses as a frequent refrain, "And in order to make those judgment calls as district attorney, I really think this is a job for a lawyer who has been experienced on both sides of the criminal justice system."

The Seattle Factor

Mr. Vance established himself as a defense attorney in Seattle, where he moved in 1988 to make a name for himself out of the shadow of his father, the late Cyrus Vance, a former secretary of state and luminary of the New York bar (NYLJ, May 6).

In the last few weeks of the campaign, Ms. Snyder has moved to make a major issue of Mr. Vance's decision to leave New York, suggesting he was both uninformed about the city's problems and disloyal to its residents.

"Cy Vance Jr. fled to Seattle for 17 years to make millions defending criminals," she says in a recent TV ad.

In the NY1 debate, she accused her rival of moving "as far away" as he could during the height of the crack-cocaine epidemic when the city was "under siege."

A recent mailing shows a map tracing the 2,855 mile route from Manhattan to Seattle.

"When Manhattan was really dangerous what did Cy Vance Jr. do?" she asks. "Cy Vance Jr. moved to Seattle for nearly two decades to make millions defending mobsters, murderers and white-collar criminals."

At the NY1 debate, Mr. Vance said, "Let's have someone who can come to the debate and talk about the policy questions that are in front of us, talk about the future of the office and try to spend less time demeaning the other candidates in the race."

And he declared, "make no mistake, I am a New Yorker."

After Ms. Snyder lashed into Mr. Vance for defending Joseph Meling, an insurance salesman who killed two people with cyanide-laced Sudafed during a botched attempt to murder his wife, Mr. Vance, whom the court appointed to represent Mr. Meling, countered, "[I]t is the job of a defense lawyer to protect people and to make sure the government proves its case. Now if you believe otherwise, you shouldn't be running for this job."

Asked in an interview what he thought about Ms. Snyder's attacks, Mr. Vance, with a slight hint of annoyance, said he had "no comment." However, he added that he believed he had made it clear in the NY1 debate that people want a lawyer to run the district attorney's office, and do not want a candidate who personalizes the issues.

@|Noeleen.Walder@incisivemedia.com