Melinda Katz/courtesy photo.

Melinda Katz has once again declared victory in the Democratic primary for Queens district attorney, as a manual recount of votes came to a close on Thursday.

The unofficial results showed that Katz, the Queens borough president, had extended her razor-thin lead to 60 votes over Tiffany Cabán, a 31-year-old public defender who had trailed by just 16 votes going into the recount two weeks ago. It was not clear Thursday afternoon when the city Board of Elections would publish the final results of the recount.

“Now that every valid vote has been counted and recounted, the results confirm once again that the people of Queens have chosen Melinda Katz as the Democratic nominee for district attorney,” Andrew Kirtzman, a Katz campaign adviser, said in a statement.

Cabán, meanwhile, vowed to continue the fight in court on Thursday, as her campaign seeks to validate hundreds of ballots that it claims were not included in the tally.

“We have said from day one that we will keep fighting until all the valid votes of eligible Queens Democrats are counted,” Cabán said in a statement.

The focus of the race now shifts to a Queens courtroom, where a hearing is set for Aug. 6, following the official certification of a winner by the Board of Elections at its next commissions meeting July 30.

Cabán's team argues that dozens of votes were erroneously cast aside during the recount, and claims that hundreds more affidavit ballots had been previously invalidated due to other errors, including voters being given the wrong envelopes or not being notified that they had showed up to the wrong polling place.

New York Supreme Court Justice John G. Ingram, who has been brought in from Brooklyn to hear the case, previously denied a request from Cabán's team to actively supervise the manual recount process, saying the court would not involve itself in the dispute until a nominee was certified.

Ingram has full plenary jurisdiction over the ballots and can make determinations as to their validity.

Monica Klein, a spokeswoman for the Cabán campaign, maintained that the race was “still too close to call.”

“We are going into court on Aug. 6 to give disenfranchised voters an opportunity to have their votes counted,” she said. “No eligible voter should have their vote thrown out because the Board of Elections failed to help them fill out a form correctly or did not alert them to the correct polling site.”

Jerry Goldfeder, Cabán's campaign attorney, said Thursday that “the recount is over, but the process in not.” When asked if he expected to prevail in court, Goldfeder responded: “I'm a born optimist.”

Cabán, a political upstart who ran on a progressive platform of reforming the Queen's criminal justice system, had led the race by nearly 1,100 votes when she claimed victory on election night on June 25.

However, a canvass of paper ballots a week later put Katz in the lead by just over a dozen votes. Katz herself declared victory late on July 3, though the margin was well within the range to trigger an automatic recount.

During the campaign, Katz picked up endorsements from most of the city's Democratic establishment, as well as from Gov. Andrew Cuomo and other leaders throughout the state. Cabán, on the other hand, ran with much support from outside the borough, picking up the endorsements of U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner and two Democratic presidential candidates, Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, and Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts.

Among her campaign proposals, Cabán vowed to use her office to attack the root causes of crime, eliminate cash bail and decriminalize sex work, instead focusing on pimps and those who solicit prostitutes.

In a recent podcast interview, Cabán said she was on unpaid leave from work in the public defender's office and was living off of savings. On Thursday, a spokesman for the campaign said Cabán didn't believe it was appropriate to go back to work while the election dispute was still ongoing.

“I am so proud of the volunteer energy and beautiful coalition that propelled this campaign,” Cabán said in a statement. “Our communities are calling for a fair and equitable criminal justice system that ends mass incarceration, uplifts our black and brown communities, and decriminalizes poverty — rather than protecting the powerful.”

 

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