Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance Jr.'s 2017 re-election campaign has proceeded without challenge. He faced no primary challenger in September. Next month's general election he will share the ballot with candidates for mayor, comptroller, public advocate and other offices.

But voters in Manhattan will have only one option—outside of a write-in campaign by Marc Fliedner—listed on the ballot for district attorney: Vance.

Up until a few weeks ago, there was little reason for the public to be concerned with who was donating to Vance. That was before news broke in two separate cases where the involvement of top donors to Vance raised questions about the disposition of potential cases against Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr. and Harvey Weinstein.

These questions have raised the larger issue of fundraising by elected district attorneys that so often comes directly from the defense bar.

Source: New York State Board of Elections

Despite running entirely unopposed, Vance has raised $344,732 in contributions this year, according to the most recent filings released by the state's board of elections. The donations range from multiple individual $10,000 donations, to a $10 donation from Upper East Side resident Matthew McEnerney.

The list is also chock-full of attorneys.

Former federal prosecutor and current Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan partner Faith Gay gave Vance $5,000. Flemming Zulack Williamson Zauderer name attorney Mark Zauderer gave $1,000. Daniel Horwitz, former co-defense counsel to Bernie Madoff and now a partner at McLaughlin & Stern, gave $500. Criminal defense trial attorney Isabelle Kirshner, a former assistant DA in Manhattan and now a partner a Clayman & Rosenberg, had defended clients accused of sexual assault and other criminals against charges by the DA's office. She also gave $500.

During a three-day span in May, nearly 40 people employed at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison made contributions to Vance's campaign ranging from $500 to $2,500. All told, Paul Weiss employees gave $39,950 to Vance's re-election campaign so far in 2017.

While members of Paul Weiss made the most individual contributions from any firm in 2017, they're not the only members of law firms to line Vance's campaign coffers. Attorneys employed by Dechert made at least $4,000 in campaign contributions to Vance. Greenberg Traurig made a $1,500 contribution to Vance and the law firm's co-chairman of the New York City office, Edward Wallace, made a $1,000 donation, campaign records show.

Attorneys at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher; Morvillo Abramowitz Grand Iason Anello; Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz; Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom; Cushman & Wakefield; and Holwell Shuster & Goldberg also made contributions to Vance's campaign, records reviewed by the New York Law Journal show.

Many candidates for office raise substantial funds from members of the bar. But few, especially at the local level, have quite the same level of interaction and potential conflict—considering the issues of justice that hang in the balance—as local prosecutors

Since he began fundraising for his first election as district attorney in 2008, Vance has raised roughly $6.24 million in monetary and in-kind contributions, including two $100,000 contributions he made to his own campaign, disclosures show. More than $1.946 million of that amount has been in contributions over $5,000. MAFCO Consolidated Group, a cigar company with major Vance donors on its board, donated $65,000 between August 2008 and December 2014.

Herbert A. Allen, the former president of investment firm Allen & Co., is Vance's largest donor, giving his campaign $60,000 between 2009 and May 2017. Among Vance's top fundraisers since he ran for DA is Marc Kasowitz, partner of the New York City firm Kasowitz Benson Torres, who donated a combined $56,993 in 2012 and 2013. Vance's campaign subsequently refunded Kasowitz $31,993 in September after it became public the DA met with Kasowitz, a longtime President Donald Trump family attorney, in the midst of an investigation into potential fraud by Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr. Charges were never brought.

David Boies, chairman of Boies Schiller Flexner and the longtime lawyer for Harvey Weinstein and The Weinstein Co., is also among Vance's top contributors, donating a combined $55,000 between July 2008 and January 2013. Vance's office has been under fire for deciding not to bring charges against Weinstein, after he was caught on tape during an NYPD sting seeming to admit he forcibly groped an Italian model in 2015. Elkan Abramowitz, Vance's former law partner who was hired by Weinstein in 2015 to fend off the harassment allegations, donated nearly $26,000 to Vance between March 2008 and May of this year.

While attorneys are heavily represented, they are by no means Vance's—or any other candidate's—only category of contributor.

For example, in 2017 Vance's single largest contribution so far this year came from Ronald O. Perelman, the chairman and chief executive officer of MacAndrews & Forbes, a holding company whose portfolio includes Revlon, military vehicle manufacturer AM General and Scantron. Perelman made a $15,000 contribution in mid-May to Vance's campaign and his company made a separate $10,000 donation. Supermarket magnate John Catsimatidis and his wife, Margo, made a combined $20,000 donation to Vance this year.

Even as they donate, defense attorneys said their donations have never once led to anything inappropriate or even questionable with Vance's office.

In a phone conversation, Zauderer said his contributions “had nothing to do with trying to influence anything because I don't have cases” before Vance.

“I have contributed from time to time even though I do not practice criminal defense law, and I've done so because I've always felt he is a high-minded person who adheres to strong principles and in my view has acted independently in making prosecutorial decisions, even when they may not be popular,” he said. “District attorneys are elected, and all elected officials welcome contributions from all sources with certain limitations.”

In 2016, Clayman & Rosenberg's Kirshner was able to secure time served for her client, Dr. Robert Hadden, a gynecologist, who was charged by Vance's office with sexual assault charges.

Reached by phone Wednesday, Kirshner said the results in that case came from Hadden having picked hard-working, highly qualified attorneys to represent him–not because she's donated at least $6,025 to Vance over the years, according to campaign finance filings.

“Never in my time there, regardless of what my donations were, have I gotten any special consideration or access to the district attorney's office”,” Kirshner said. “It doesn't work like that.”

Kirshner said she believed Vance was a man of integrity, and found the notion that a donation had led to any special considerations by Vance hard to believe.

“If you're going to elect officials, people are going to seek donations, and that's kind of, unfortunately, the way it works,” she said. “It's the nature of our system. It's not him.”

Like Kirshner, Zauderer said, in his experience, many lawyers contribute to district attorneys or attorneys general not because of the expectation of particular treatment but because they tend to travel in the same professional circles and know people who run for elected office.

However, he said he believes some lawyers who have regular matters in any district attorney's office, including the Manhattan DA's office, “may feel that if they are contributors that they will have more easy access to high-level staff or the district attorney.”

“I don't know whether that's true,” he added. “I have no way of knowing whether that's true in Cy Vance's case because I've never sought access on behalf of a client.”

In a statement, Vance's campaign spokesman, Steve Sigmund, said that contributions “never have and never will influence the work of the DA or the DA's office.”

“Every contribution is vetted by both the DA's office and an outside vetting committee, accepted where appropriate and flagged and returned or declined where appropriate,” Sigmund said.

On Monday, Vance announced in a New York Daily News op-ed that, in response to concerns over the potential influence of campaign donations, he had asked the Center for the Advancement of Public Integrity at Columbia Law School to conduct a 90-day audit of his donation policy and to make recommendations.

Vance also said he would halt fundraising for this cycle, which won't make much of a difference considering he's heading into an unopposed race with $925,000 in his campaign coffers, according to the most recently available financial disclosure filed 32 days before the election.

“I think this has been a practice where district attorneys have received funding from lawyers in their communities who, by the way are the most interested in having a well-functioning justice system and the best district attorney possible,” Vance said during an appearance on NY1 Monday. “That said, I also now see better how that can be flipped on its head and could make people question whether there is an access to me that is different. There is not, and should not be.”

According to Vance's campaign, there are self-imposed limits on donations from people with matters before, or recently disposed of with, the DA's office. There is currently no prohibition against donations from attorneys representing such clients.