Queens Dems tap five judges to run for Supreme Court

From left to right – Acting Supreme Court Justice Frances Wang, Civil Court Judges Sandra Perez and Soma Syed, Queens County Democratic Party Chairman Gregory Meeks, Queens Civil Court Supervising Judge Ira Greenberg and Acting Supreme Court Justice Gary Miret. Wang, Perez, Syed, Greenberg and Miret were nominated to run for Supreme Court on the Democratic Party line on Thursday at the party’s annual judicial convention.  Photo by Jacob Kaye

By Jacob Kaye

Five judges were nominated to run on the Queens County Democratic party line in the upcoming race for New York State Supreme Court on Thursday during the party’s annual judicial convention.

Queens County Civil Court Supervising Judge Ira Greenberg, Civil Court Judges Soma Syed and Sandra Perez, and acting Supreme Court Justices Frances Wang and Gary Miret will each run for one of five coveted vacancies on the borough’s trial court bench in November.

While there’s a chance one or all of them will face a Republican challenger, the judges are almost guaranteed victory in November, running in a borough where Democrats outnumber Republicans seven to one.

Unlike candidates for the city’s Civil Court, Supreme Court candidates do not run in a primary. Instead, they are selected by a political party’s judicial delegates to run in the general election. And in Queens, no Democratic candidate comes before the judicial convention without first getting the support of the party’s boss, Rep. Gregory Meeks.

The 13-term congressman lauded the picks on Thursday as an antidote to the Trump administration’s attacks on both the independence of the judiciary and on diversity initiatives in schools, businesses and law firms.

“These are extraordinary individuals for the times of which we live, individuals who bring differences to the bench in Queens County, and individuals who have a record of fairness because of what they’ve done in the courts in which they now serve,” Meeks said. “That's what we want, and that's what we try to do, and that's what I think that we want…in all branches of government. We want fairness.”

Queens’ judicial conventions are typically pro forma affairs. Overseen by the party’s attorneys, the conventions are effectively scripted exercises, with the judicial selection process mostly occurring behind closed doors in the days and weeks before the gathering. During the convention, a delegate nominates a candidate pre-determined by party leadership, the nomination is seconded and then a vote is held. Each vote is effectively unanimous.

Thursday’s convention was no different – with one exception.

While Miret, Perez, Wang and Greenberg were the only candidates nominated to the respective vacancies they will now run to fill, Syed was briefly challenged.

After Syed was nominated by both Ali Najmi, an election attorney and judicial delegate, and State Senator Toby Ann Stavisky, Seth Slade, a judicial delegate from Western Queens, nominated his own candidate for the vacancy.

Slade, who also issued protest votes against each of the other judges, nominated Civil Court Michael Goldman for the seat, causing a brief break in the otherwise mechanical proceedings.

Goldman, who had submitted his name for consideration to the party but had not coordinated the nomination with Slade, and Syed have history. Goldman ran for the borough's Civil Court in 2021 as a Queens Dems-endorsed candidate but Syed challenged him in the Democratic primary and defeated him by around 2,500 votes. When an opening arose on the Civil Court bench two years later, Goldman again ran, this time unopposed. Upon his election, Goldman became the first out gay judge to be elected in Queens.

But four years after their face off, it was Syed and not Goldman who had the party’s support.

Slade’s nomination was quickly quashed and Syed was given the ballot line.

The judicial delegate said the nomination had two purposes – to highlight the fact that Queens is currently without an out gay judge in the Supreme Court and to challenge the process by which the Queens County Democrats select their trial court judges.

“It's not a convention, it's just a rubber stamp,” Slade told the Eagle.

Later in the convention, Meeks defended the five judges he selected from the 17 who applied.

“What we try to abide by in this organization is that everyone has an opportunity to see someone that looks like someone from this county,” he said. “That's why I am so proud of the five justices that you have just nominated to lead all the Supreme Court of the 11th District in Queens County, New York.”

Here’s more on the candidates nominated by the Queens County Democratic Party:

Ira Greenberg

Greenberg was first elected to the bench in 2018, winning a race for Civil Court in Queens.

He was almost immediately assigned to work in Brooklyn but was moved back to Queens in February 2020.

At the start of this year, Greenberg was named the supervising judge of Queens County Civil Court.

Prior to his election to the bench, the Bronx-born and Queens-raised judge ran his own general practice and worked for former State Assemblymember Catherine Nolan as a legislative director.

Greenberg’s legal career has centered around elder law, guardianship and civil litigation. Formerly a part of the firm Leavitt & Kerson, Esqs, Greenberg had over 16 years of attorney work before his first judicial appointment.

The judge told the judicial delegates on Thursday that it was his work in government that has most influenced his views from the bench.

“These experiences have reinforced the idea that all people deserve respect, deference within an open ear and mind, and they have a right to be heard and treated fairly,” he said.

Soma Syed

Should Syed be elected, she’ll become the first Muslim judge in the history of Queens’ Supreme Court. Similarly, she was the first Muslim woman elected to the Civil Court in Queens when she won her race in 2021.

Though she initially challenged the Queens Democratic Party four years ago, Meeks said on Thursday that he had been impressed with her work on the bench in the years that followed.

“As a civil court judge, she was excellent,” the party’s chairman said.

Najmi, who nominated Syed at Thursday’s convention, said that the support Syed received from the party “says a lot about the leadership, that they're not holding any grudges.”

“I think that the party recognizes someone who is a good judge and a qualified candidate,” Najmi told the Eagle. “And it's to the benefit of everybody in this county.”

Syed spent nearly two decades working as a private attorney in the borough before being elected to its bench.

Born in Bangladesh and raised in Jamaica, Queens, Syed said on Thursday that she could have “never imagined that one day she would become a Supreme Court justice.”

“I can promise you that I will continue to serve the people fairly, impartially, with dignity and respect and importantly, uphold the rule of law,” she told the delegates on Thursday.

Sandra Perez

Perez was first elected to the Civil Court bench in 2023.

The judge got her start in the legal world by working as a prosecutor in the Brooklyn district attorney’s office. After several years there, she transitioned over to private practice, representing clients in criminal defense, and immigration and deportation cases.

Perez was one of the founding members of the Latino Lawyers Association of Queens County, a local bar association that has helped elevate a number of lawyers to the bench over the years, including both Perez and Miret on Thursday.

She worked as an attorney for nearly 30 years before being elected to the bench.

“Those of you who have been in my courtroom or near me as a practicing lawyer for three decades know that I won't say what you want to hear, and you'll also know that in my courtroom, I am the judge for everyone,” Perez said. “It doesn't matter if you're Latino, if you're a Spanish speaker, if you're South Asian, Indian, if you're bisexual, heterosexual, it does not matter. You're going to get justice.”

Gary Miret

Miret, a Queens native, has served as the presiding judge for the borough’s DWI court since the start of 2022 after being appointed to the New York Court of Claims by Governor Kathy Hochul the year prior.

He’s served as an acting Supreme Court justice for several years.

Miret, a St. John’s University School of Law graduate, got his start in law by working as an assistant district attorney in the Queens DA’s office, before transitioning to work as criminal defense attorney.

Miret’s career in law was a lifelong dream, he said. His father was an attorney in their native Cuba before fleeing the country to pursue a life in the United States.

On Thursday, Miret said that his father died the year he was applying to become a Court of Claims judge, his first job on the bench.

“He never saw me become a judge of the Court of Claims, never saw me sitting as a Supreme Court judge,” he said. “Right now, I know he’s looking down and he's smiling because his dream, my dream, has become a reality this evening.”

Frances Wang

The longest-tenured judge to be nominated to the Supreme Court in Queens on Thursday, Wang has been serving on the bench since 2017, the year she was appointed to work as an interim Civil Court judge.

The St. John’s University graduate was appointed again to the court in 2018 before being named an acting Supreme Court justice in 2021, where she’s served ever since.

“It is truly a privilege to be nominated for justice of the Supreme Court for this beautiful county, the World’s Borough,” Wang said on Thursday. “I will continue to be committed to upholding values of justice and fairness that our community deserves.”