Madeline Singas. (Photo: Rick Kopstein/ALM)

Democrats won two contested races for district attorney in the New York metropolitan area Tuesday, with incumbent Madeline Singas winning a second term in Nassau County and Melinda Katz taking over an open seat in Queens County.

Singas, a career prosecutor, was the county's acting district attorney before she was elected to the office in 2015. She previously led the special victims bureau in the DA's office.

She prioritized fighting the opioid crisis through treatment and focused on gang violence in her first term, and she has said the state's landmark crime reform bill, which will take effect in 2020, may have been written too quickly.

In 2018, Gov. Andrew Cuomo appointed her to investigate former attorney general Eric Schneiderman, who was accused of assaulting four women. Six months later, Singas announced that Schneiderman would not be charged. She said she believed the women's stories but could not prosecute for legal reasons.

Singas defeated Republican Frank McQuade, who cited his work as a police officer along with his decades in private practice in his pitch as a common-sense candidate.

With more than 98% of precincts reporting, the Nassau County Board of Election website showed Singas with 145,054 votes, or 59.9% of the vote; to McQuade's 97,112 votes, or 40.01%. Singas, a Democrat, also ran on the Conservative and Working Families party lines. McQuade, a Republican, also ran on the Libertarian line.

In Queens, borough president Katz coasted to victory, defeating former New York City police officer Joe Murray, who ran as a Republican.

New York City Board of Elections official results showed Katz with 137,632 votes, or 74.6%, far ahead of Murray, with 44,905 votes, or 24.3%.

Katz, who has promised to end cash bail, speed up trials and refuse to prosecute low-level marijuana offenses, served in the State Assembly and on New York City Council and worked in private practice at Greenberg Traurig before taking office as borough president in 2014.

Katz had a much tighter victory in the Democratic primary this summer, when she was not officially declared the winner for more than a month. Only a handful of votes separated Katz from public defender Tiffany Cabán, who gained national attention with a series of proposals to the left of the field. Katz appeared to shift certain stances in response to Cabán's popularity.

District attorney contests in the Bronx and Staten Island were uncontested. Darcel Clark was re-elected Bronx DA and Michael McMahon was returned to office as Staten Island DA. Clark and McMahon are both Democrats.