When Democrat Madeline Singas started her campaign for a full term as Nassau’s district attorney, she said, she was told she didn’t have a chance.
Singas was facing Hempstead Town Supervisor Kate Murray, who had exceptionally high name recognition and solid backing from the Nassau County Republican Committee — proven most recently by $400,000 in campaign contributions.
But despite the odds, the acting DA has closed a 19-point gap since April, with her campaign’s most recent numbers showing her ahead by one point, she said.
“This is serious work that we do. It’s consequential,” Singas said in a sit-down interview with Blank Slate Media. “It affects people’s lives every single day, and people intuitively know that the people who do the job should be trained to do the job.”
Murray has a law degree from Suffolk University in Boston. She worked an assistant state attorney general and was on the codes committee as a state Assemblywoman, but has no criminal courtroom experience.
Singas, who has been a prosecutor for 24 years and took the helm of the DA’s office in January, has repeatedly said Murray is inexperienced and unprepared for the job.
The New York Daily News agreed — the paper endorsed Singas on Monday and blasted Murray’s lack of criminal law knowledge in an Oct. 19 editorial.
In a sit-down interview last week, Murray countered by saying she would be a “visionary” DA, setting priorities and managing the office.
Her top assistants, she said, would handle the legal details of things such as wiretap applications and plea bargains.
While Murray acknowledged her view of the DA’s role is “fundamentally different,” Singas called it “completely not viable, completely not feasible, and … sort of unsophisticated and unknowing of what the job is.”
“How do you manage what you don’t understand?” she asked? “How do you prioritize issues when you don’t know what’s at stake for those issues?”
Singas, a resident of Manhasset, began her career in the Queens DA’s office in 1991 and was later appointed the head of its Domestic Violence Bureau. She was appointed chief of the newly-created Special Victims Bureau in 2006 by then Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice. She was later appointed as chief assistant to Rice and then became acting district attorney in January after her former boss was sworn into Congress.
In a race where political corruption is among most important concerns of voters, Singas also took Murray to task this week over her connections with former state Sen. Dean Skelos (R-Rockville Centre), who was indicted on federal corruption charges earlier this year along with his son, Adam Skelos.
In court filings dated Oct. 23, federal prosecutors allege Adam Skelos tried to get his wife, Ann Marie Skelos, a seat on Hempstead’s zoning board.
Campaign finance records also show financial ties between Skelos, Murray and the Nassau County Republican Committee.
These connections to such a major corruption case raise questions that Murray needs to answer, Singas said, adding that she was concerned Murray had not read the federal indictment against Skelos.
“She says that she will uncover and prosecute corruption, and yet she didn’t even read the Skelos indictment,” she said. “And that doesn’t jive. … She says things, but she doesn’t back them up.”
Murray has criticized Singas for not taking action on what she characterizes as corruption in the DA’s office.
Last week, she raised questions about a $1.3 million malicious prosecution lawsuit that the DA’s office settled earlier this year. Singas said her office admitted no wrongdoing in the lawsuit, in which the plaintiffs alleged former DA Kathleen Rice wrongly charged them with extortion on behalf of a corporate political donor.
Murray also called for Singas to fire her chief administrator Jeffrey Stein following a report in the New York Post that his estranged wife accused him of domestic abuse in their divorce papers, continuing a debate over domestic violence in the race.
Singas said Murray was the only one accusing Stein of domestic abuse based on a single newspaper story. Stein’s wife, she said, had never filed a criminal complaint and Stein has not been charged with a crime.
“I take offense to that as a prosecutor, because I’m like, ‘Okay, this speaks volumes about what kind of prosecutor she (Murray) will be,” Singas said.
The candidates have also sparred over how to tackle the county’s growing heroin problem.
Murray has slammed Singas for letting drug dealers into diversion courts that put them into treatment programs rather than jail.
Singas’ prosecutors remain silent when they could advocate for dealers to go to trial, Murray has said, most recently at a press conference Tuesday.
But Singas said that’s not true.
Her prosecutors object to diversion when cases merit it, she said, but the decision ultimately rests with judges, who sometimes put drug defendants into the programs anyway.
Singas said she has been taking on heroin since before Murray started discussing it. Murray, she said, had never even called her office to express concerns about heroin during her time as supervisor of the Town of Hempstead.
Singas touted her efforts to cut off drug rings, harsher sentencing laws that she brought to the state Legislature last month, and increased treatment resources for addicts.
“These are not new concepts to me,” Singas said.
