qns: Top political stories to watch for in Queens in 2023

As the calendar flips to 2023, there are several political stories to follow in Queens.

The borough will see new electeds take office, while the Queens DA race is heating up and several City Council members are up for reelection.

Here are the top political stories to follow in 2023…

Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz will face challenger in June Democratic primary

Retired Judge George Grasso is running against Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz in June’s Democratic primary in his quest to be the borough’s top law official.

In a pre-New Year’s message to her supporters, Katz touted her accomplishments during her first term in office, including the fight against gun violence by holding illegal weapons traffickers accountable by taking down multi-state smuggling rings. She also created the borough’s first-ever Human Trafficking Bureau to fight crime in one of America’s busiest international gateways, as well as her newly created Conviction Integrity Unit that overturned a number of wrongful convictions.

Katz acknowledged that she has an opponent for her re-election in the June primary, but did not name Grasso.

“I don’t keep my eye on the political winds every day. As district attorney, I’m a public servant first,” Katz concluded. “But I do know that to continue our work, we need to organize early to win re-election.”

Katz and Grasso got their degrees at St. John’s Law School just six years apart and pursued careers in public service.

Katz was elected to the state Assembly, City Council and the Queens borough president’s office before she becoming district attorney in 2020.

Grasso took a different path. He was a beat cop in Queens when he pursued his law degree during night school at SJU and rose through the NYPD ranks to the executive level, where he would become first deputy police commissioner during the Giuliani administration. Grasso was the liaison to the FBI at Ground Zero following the 9/11 attacks at the World Trade Center.

During a recent walking tour of downtown Flushing, where he discussed the impact of retail crime with the merchants who have to deal with it on a daily basis, Grasso said the DA’s office had to develop a better plan to combat rising crime rates in precincts like the 109th.

“We need the district attorney, the chief law enforcement officer of the county, to take proactive measures where they’re needed,” Grasso said. “You’ve got to deal with what’s actually happening on the street and is undermining people’s quality of life. You have to get after the people who don’t obey the law and let them know that there are gonna be consequences, there is going to be accountability, then you can start to get crime down again.”

Written by Bill Parry, QNS

https://qns.com/2023/01/political-stories-queens-2023/