Katz all she wrote!
Queens Borough President Melinda Katz said Tuesday she will not seek the Republican Party line to challenge Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s soft-on-crime district attorney nominee in the November election.
The decision makes Tiffany Cabán — a public defender who’s drawn fire for supporting decriminalizing prostitution and closing all city jails — the prohibitive favorite in November’s general election.
“All votes must be counted in the Democratic Primary for Queens District Attorney, but regardless of [the] outcome, I have declined the Republican Party nomination for Queens District Attorney,” Katz said in a statement. “I believe in Democratic principles and they have led my career.”
That leaves just one other prominent Democrat potentially in the running for the slot: Greg Lasak, a retired judge and prosecutor. A spokesman for Lasak was not immediately available to comment.
Political experts have said that Cabán’s left-leaning politics could open the door for the moribund Queens Republican Party to mount a challenge for the office this November — if it could find a better candidate.
The party’s current contender, Daniel Kogan, 61, a private attorney in Ozone Park, told The Post after Cabán’s shocking win that he wasn’t even sure he would actively campaign this fall, had no platform or plans to raise any money.
“I don’t have much of … I don’t expect it will be much of a campaign on my behalf,” he said on June 26. “I haven’t decided to make an active campaign yet. It was an honor to be nominated, but I haven’t started an active campaign.”
Katz narrowly lost the Democratic primary to Cabán by just 1,100 votes in another shocking defeat for the now-visibly sclerotic Queens machine at the hands of liberal activists, led by freshman congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez.
There are nearly 3,600 absentee ballots and 2,800 provisional ballots that still need counting, the Board of Elections said Tuesday, though experts expect Cabán’s victory will hold.
Cabán’s campaign filed a placeholder lawsuit in Queens Supreme Court on Tuesday, which it said was to preserve its legal options as the Board of Elections begins to count the outstanding ballots on Wednesday.
“We fully expect that once every valid vote is counted, Tiffany Caban’s insurgent campaign will remain victorious,” said Cabán spokeswoman Monica Klein.
