Queens DA race begins take shape
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George Grasso, the former administrative judge in Queens County Supreme Court, Criminal Term, is challenging incumbent Melinda Katz in the race for Queens district attorney. Photo via Grasso/Jacob Kaye
By Jacob Kaye
With around six months before the primary election in New York City, the race for Queens district attorney is beginning to take shape.
At the moment, it’s a race of two. Incumbent District Attorney Melinda Katz is taking a shot at a second term as the borough’s top cop and facing a challenge from George Grasso, who most recently served as the top judge in Queens’ Criminal Court.
During Grasso’s approximately one-year tenure on the Queens bench, the pair – whose primary offices were in the same building – often worked together as the courts maneuvered the pandemic. The DA and former judge also collaborated on a number of specialized court programs.
Now, the two are set to square off in a Democratic primary race that came down to only around 50 votes four years ago.
This week, campaigns hit their first financial disclosure deadline of the year, giving Queens residents a peek into the candidates’ bank accounts.
In the last filing period, which covers the past six months, Katz, who previously served as a member of the State Assembly, City Council and as Queens borough president, raised around $600,300.
Grasso, a Queens native who spent a bulk of his career with the NYPD, raised around $314,500 since first launching his campaign in October.
On top of winning out the most recent fundraising race, Katz also has far more cash on hand in the campaign account she’s been growing for years. The incumbent currently has around $1,175,000 to spend, according to a spokesperson for her campaign.
“My entire career led me to this position and the support I've received for re-election is a strong signal that the office is heading in the right direction,” Katz said in a statement.
"This filing is just the start of our campaign where I will highlight the work that the office is doing – to take illegal guns off the streets, to hold human traffickers and domestic abusers accountable, and to build a criminal justice system that prioritizes public safety, justice, and fairness for all – because our office shows that you can have safety in the streets and fairness in the courtroom,” the district attorney added.
Grasso’s campaign account is currently about a fifth as large as his opponent’s account. After spending over $70,000 of the cash he’s raised, the former judge has around $230,200 on hand.
One of the biggest differences in the candidates’ filings came in the number of individual contributions.
According to the campaign finance board, around 600 individuals contributed to Grasso’s campaign over the past four months, which the candidate says shows a grassroots effort, supported more by Queens residents than institutions. Around 280 individual contributions were made to Katz in the filing period.
“I think we did an outstanding job,” Grasso told the Eagle this week. “I walked out of the courthouse by myself, waving goodbye, and then in a matter of three months, I've got almost triple the number of individual contributors.”
“I have to do this with my own base of people who know me and not with the typical unions and clubs – none of that,” he added.
Around half of the contributions that Katz received came from Queens residents, but the district attorney also received sizable contributions from a number of labor unions and business interests.
Katz received $10,000 contributions from both 1199 SEIU and 32BJ. She also received $10,000 contributions from Gary Barnett and Douglas Eisenberg, two real estate developers.
One of Grasso’s largest individual donations came from Michael Ricatto, a Kew Gardens real estate investor who made headlines in 2016 when he got into a fight with the city over pro-Donald Trump posters he had hired local teens to staple to trees and poles throughout the neighborhood.
An ardent supporter of the first president from Queens, Ricatto adorned his house in Trump gear, including an American flag with the words “I Told You So! Trump Trump Trump Trump” following the former president’s 2016 victory.
Ricatto and Grasso have known each other professionally for years.
When asked about the support from Ricatto, Grasso, a registered Democrat, said that he was less concerned with party affiliation than he was with the issues.
“I'm not looking to appeal to people and say, ‘You’re a Democrat, I'm a Democrat, all of us Democrats have to stick together’ – no,” he said. “I think we have too much of that hyper partisanism, not only in Queens and in New York City, but throughout the country.”
“Sometimes I vote for Democrats in local elections, sometimes I voted for Republicans in local elections – I vote for people and I think in terms of…public safety,” he added. “Republicans are entitled to public safety as much as Democrats or Independents and I'm running to provide public safety to all the people in Queens regardless of their political affiliation. If Republicans and Independents want to support my campaign, as opposed to all the big institutions that support Melinda Katz, the party apparatus, I say come on in and help me out, I’d be happy to have the donation and I’d be happy to post it publicly.”
Born in Queens, Grasso began his career in criminal justice as an NYPD officer in 1979, working out of the 113th Precinct in Southeast Queens. The next year, as he worked his beat during the day, he attended St. John’s School of Law at night. He retired from the NYPD as first deputy police commissioner in 2010, but his retirement was short-lived. Grasso said he walked across the street from One Police Plaza to City Hall and took his oath to become a judge.
Grasso was first appointed to serve as a Criminal Court judge in Brooklyn by then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg. In 2012, he was named an acting Supreme Court justice and then later named a supervising judge for Citywide Arraignments in New York City Criminal Court. Just prior to his move over to Queens Supreme Court, Grasso served as the supervising judge of New York City Criminal Court, Bronx County.
While in Queens, Grasso headed the city’s top count gun initiative program, which was designed to speed up cases and work into the backlog of cases where the top count against a defendant was a gun charge. He also partnered with Katz’s office earlier this year to roll out a gun diversion part in Queens Criminal Court. The part, which shares similarities with drug treatment courts, mental health parts and other specialized court models, aims to offer young people charged for possessing a gun a chance to clear their name and access services that the part’s creators say will lead defendants away from committing crimes in the future.
Katz narrowly won the Democratic primary for the district attorney’s office in 2019, beating out now-City Councilmember Tiffany Cabán by a little more than 50 votes.
Katz’s tenure followed that of Richard Brown’s, who sat in the office for nearly 30 years.
The office has expanded under Katz, who has added a handful of new divisions and bureaus. Of the two dozen bureaus and units operating in the Queens district attorney's office, half have been created under Katz. For the most part, the new units are aimed at strengthening the office’s work in restorative justice approaches and community engagement.
Of the five divisions within the office, the Community Partnerships Division has seen the largest expansion. When Katz began, the division’s only unit was the Office of Immigrant Affairs. It’s since grown to include the Civic Awareness Unit, the Community Engagement Unit, Youth Empowerment Unit and Community Advisory Councils.
She’s also created the Rehabilitation Programs and Restorative Services Bureau, and bureaus to deal with fraud, human trafficking and housing and worker protection cases. This week, she announced the creation of the Special Prosecutions Division.
