Queens district attorney candidate Tiffany Caban speaks to reporters outside her polling place in the Queens borough of New York on June 25, 2019. AP Photo: Seth Wenig

Tiffany Cabán has tapped veteran election attorney Jerry H. Goldfeder to serve as her lead campaign lawyer in the race for Queens district attorney, as she maintains a narrow lead over Borough president Melinda Katz heading into a final vote count Wednesday.

Cabán, a 31-year-old public defender whose candidacy upset the Queens Democratic establishment, saw her advantage in the Democratic primary extended to 1,199 votes Monday following a recanvass of machine vote totals, up from a margin of 1,090 on election night last week, her campaign said.

Some 5,000 paper ballots, however, remain to be counted Wednesday, as dozens of representatives from both camps are set to converge in a process that will be overseen by the city Board of Elections.

Goldfeder, special counsel with the firm Stroock & Stroock & Lavan, will coordinate teams of volunteers and lawyers for Cabán, who will monitor the process in shifts and raise objections as the ballots are opened. The counting could wrap as early as Wednesday night, but could also possibly extend into Friday, he said.

“We want this to move as quickly and smoothly as possible. I'm very confident that whatever the margin is that Tiffany's going to continue to maintain her lead” and win the primary, he said.

Goldfeder, whose election law practice has spanned more than 40 years, has advised candidates for state, city and federal posts, according to his firm biography. Most recently, Goldfeder represented City Councilman Rory Lancman in his own bid for Queens DA, before Lancman dropped out to support Katz in the primary.

Goldfeder said the Cabán campaign contacted him for the lead position June 25, as the initial primary votes were still being counted. He now joins Renée Paradis, a Brooklyn-based attorney and former counsel for the Brennan Center, who has been involved with the campaign throughout the primary.

It was not clear Tuesday what attorneys Katz had hired to oversee her own team's efforts. Despite trailing with only a small pool of votes left to be tallied, Katz has yet to concede the race and has said publicly that she would pursue a recount.

Multiple calls and emails to the Katz campaign have not been returned.

Cabán, meanwhile, has declared victory, as she looks ahead to a general election against Ozone Park attorney Daniel Kogan, who is expected to run against the Democratic nominee in November. However, the GOP has not won a Queens DA race since 1920, and the Democrat would be expected to win easily.

“We are confident that if every valid vote is counted, Ms. Caban's will be the Democratic nominee for district attorney,” her campaign said Monday. “The people of Queens have spoken clearly that they believe that every community deserves justice.”

A political upstart, Cabán ran on a progressive platform of criminal justice reform, pulling high-profile support from U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, who represents part of Queens, as well as Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner. Two leading presidential hopefuls running for the Democratic nomination—Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, and Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts—also endorsed her campaign.

Among her proposals, Cabán said she would eliminate cash bail for any offense and prosecute Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who exceed their authority to detain undocumented immigrants in the borough.

She also advocated closing Rikers Island without constructing new jails, pushing instead for measures to decrease the overall rate of incarceration. Among her other campaign proposals, Cabán said she would not prosecute sex workers and instead focus on traffickers, pimps and those who solicit them.

If elected, Cabán would be the first openly gay, Latina and the first woman to serve as district attorney in the country's 11th-largest county by population.