NEW YORK (AP/ 1010 WINS) -- Politically pedigreed trial lawyer Cy Vance was elected Tuesday as Manhattan's first new district attorney in 35 years, promising to bring both continuity and changes to one of the nation's most prominent prosecutor's jobs.
New York Results
The Democrat handily won an expected victory over Working Families Party candidate Richard Aborn, who stopped campaigning actively after losing the three-way Democratic primary to Vance. Vance had about 91 percent of Tuesday's vote with 100 percent of precincts reporting.
Vance will take over an office with about 500 lawyers, a caseload that can range from mob corruption to celebrity misdeeds and an image burnished by television's ``Law & Order'' franchise.
The first-time candidate had built-in name recognition -- his late father was former Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance -- and the backing of incumbent Robert Morgenthau. Morgenthau, retiring at 90, is an institution in the city's legal and political scenes.
Vance has stressed his intention to preserve much of Morgenthau's approach while introducing some new initiatives, such as assigning teams of prosecutors to individual police precincts to zoom in on crime patterns and prevention.
``I will make changes as district attorney, but they will be careful, and they will be studied,'' he said after voting Tuesday.
Vance, 55, worked for Morgenthau in the 1980s. He then spent much of his career as a defense lawyer and litigator in Washington state, where his clients included thousands of women who reached a $72.5 million settlement with the Boeing Corp. in a gender discrimination suit.
Vance returned to his native New York in 2004 and has served on sentencing policy panels in both states.
E-Mail Story
Print Story
