You know you're old when...

Your contemporaries start running for office. Yes, indeed. Imagine my surprise upon finding that Kathleen Rice was running for DA of Nassau County against Dennis Dillon who is now 71 years old and has been in office for as long as I can remember.


Kathleen Rice

Now I remember Kathleen from when she started in the Brooklyn DA's office in 1992. She was very cute and rather feisty and though I never much like prosecutors, she wasn't too bad to have a case with. (At least that's what I think--it's possible too that I absolutely hated her but just don't remember). But as I read about her now, even with the haze of her cuteness and my not too terrible memories clouding my brain, I'm reminded of why the entire enterprise of running for DA is distasteful.

The truth is, almost the only way to gain points in a DA's race seems to be to attack your opponent for not being tough enough. It's the worst sort of feedback loop. "I'm going to punish the criminals even more harshly than you..." "More mandatory jail time!" And while Dillon is making an issue of a a pending perjury lawsuit filed against Kathleen alleging that she and others pressured a witness in a double murder to falsely identify Antoine Butts as the murderer. (Butts spent 2 years in Rikers Island before being acquitted at trial.) This doesn't seem to be working. Indeed, raising the question of overstepping the bounds of prosecutorial propriety, while important seems to be a loosing strategy.