Albany County DA David Soares isn’t interested in repairing his relationships with local Democratic leaders

Albany County District Attorney David Soares is mounting a write-in campaign to extend his two decades in office. He lost to Democratic challenger Lee Kindlon in June’s primary election but hasn’t let that faze him, telling reporters this month at his campaign announcement that he’s going to make sure that voters know how to spell and pronounce his last name (soars, like an eagle).

He came into power in 2004 with the backing of the Working Families Party, vowing to fight back against the Rockefeller drug laws that plagued communities of color for decades. Now those same progressive forces are coming after him for his full-throated opposition to bail reform and Raise the Age, criminal justice reform bills that he feels have made New Yorkers and Albany County residents less safe, not to mention some questionable grant management.

The bills provide new guidelines for judges in criminal proceedings but the crux of it is judges cannot issue cash bail for most misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies and 16- and 17-year-olds can not be automatically sent to adult correctional facilities.

Soares sat down with City & State at his campaign headquarters in the shadow of the state Capitol and discussed his campaign, his issues with criminal justice reform bills and how he has learned to operate outside the script of the Democratic Party. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Can you give us your stance on the controversial Raise the Age and bail reform policies?

Two policies where the confluence of both has brought about chaos in the criminal justice system in public safety, all throughout my community, and it’s time that the New York state Legislature, understanding what their intent was, do a more thorough review of impact. I think what they’ll find is extraordinarily troubling and that’s what my campaign has been about. That’s what I’ve been screaming from the hilltop for the last five to six years.

What do you think allowed Lee Kindlon to win the Democratic primary?

I think Kindlon was successful because he rode the coattails of Gabby Romero, who was receiving the full support of the Working Families Party and a tremendous amount of investment.

What was your inspiration for running a write-in campaign?

When you consider that there are 209,000 eligible voters in Albany County and only 22,000 voted in the primary, with almost half of those people voting for me, the people of Albany County simply have not spoken. The write-in campaign is the opportunity for people to actually be heard.

Are you drawing inspiration from Byron Brown’s successful write-in campaign for Buffalo mayor in 2021?

I do, as well as Lisa Murkowski’s write-in campaign in Alaska, and there are others in this community who have successfully had write-in campaigns for legislative seats or for the school board. I think the people, when informed, will participate in a write-in, and I think in this instance, they will do so gladly.

What strategies are you pulling from those successful campaigns?

The strategy of educating the voters as to exactly what must be done as they go to the polls. It’s very similar to my 2004 campaign when in addition to asking for the vote at the door, we also had to educate people as to what the district attorney’s responsibilities were. In this instance, I believe everybody knows what the district attorney does. The education will be in how they can go about voting for me.

It has been pretty well publicized that Albany has had a rough few years as far as public safety goes. Should you win reelection, what are you playing to do to turn that tide?

In 2004, I ran a campaign based upon my opposition to the Rockefeller drug laws, and the absolute primary point to the Rockefeller drug laws that I think people found distasteful was in the mandatory sentencing scheme that existed, which left judges, you know, helpless to do anything other than to follow the sentencing guidelines. Twenty years later, we’re running a campaign where, once again, we have criminal justice policies that do not permit judges to exercise judicial discretion, so whether a criminal justice policy that is favored by the far right or if it’s a criminal justice policy that is favored by the left, when you deprive judges of the ability to exercise their judgment and discretion, it leads to terrible results. It’s not a matter of law enforcement not having responded to the issues, it’s a matter of law enforcement not having the same tools. That has been so debilitating on the morale of law enforcement. New York is the first state in the country where a 16- and 17-year-old who’s apprehended with a loaded firearm, but doesn’t display it, will go to court and be returned right back home to mom and dad, so it’s almost as if we as a government have sanctioned open carry for 16- and 17-year-olds. That’s a problem.

Do you think that progressives are advocating for criminal justice reform with too broad of a brush?

They’ve romanticized criminal justice reform, where it’s painted with such an incredibly broad brush, where I often say, you know, there is virtue in their policy, but they’re not the community that has to endure the results of those policies. It’s the poorest communities, it’s the community that they profess they were working aggressively to help. That’s the Black and brown communities where you have the most dramatic increases in victimization, and without understanding how community and how crime actually works. It’s a bit reckless to believe that what they’ve done over the course of the last five years would have any other effect than the effect that you’re seeing happen now, not only in Albany, in places like Newburgh, places like New York City, Rochester, Syracuse, Buffalo and all the way down. It’s just incorrect. I call it legislative malpractice, and it’s an inconvenient truth that leaders right now have to reckon with.

Do you think there’s a way to make them understand what the ramifications of these policies are from your position?

We believe that in a write-in campaign in Albany County – bringing together Democrats, bringing together independents, Republicans and Conservatives – will have that influence because each member of those parties shares my opinion that the criminal justice system right now is broken, and it was very intentionally broken. Once all of those voices speak as one, it will get the attention of the policymakers and force them to rethink.

Do you find yourself at odds with the local Democratic machine?

Absolutely, the Democratic Party, because these laws were passed by fellow Democrats, the entire Democratic Party has subscribed to the same talking points, even as they’re whistling by the graveyard. At first, they blamed COVID-19 for the massive increase in crime. Now the new thing is let’s wait for money to come down the line and we can create the initiatives that need to be created in order to address the violence among 16- and 17-year-olds. The Democratic Party in my county, they endorsed the same candidates that passed these laws – Pat Fahy, John McDonald, Neil Breslin – all of these individuals were individuals that have continued to stand by the decisions that they previously made, and as an individual who has taken an oath to protect and to serve and as a constitutional officer, I don’t have the luxury of pledging fidelity to the talking points of the Democratic Party. In reality, people are harming themselves with much more frequency.

Have they come out in support of these candidates, like Lee Kindlon, rather than you because of your view of how to make Albany safer differs from the party line or are there interpersonal issues at play?

The Working Families Party and the progressive left have made significant inroads into the Democratic Party, and I’ve been registering my concerns about these laws since they were authored.

When you have Raise the Age, and its purpose is you don’t want young people in prison with adults, well, that’s true. It makes perfect sense. You don’t want the mistakes that a young person makes to follow them for the rest of their lives, that’s true, and it makes sense, and you want young people who make these mistakes to receive services that can deter or put them on a separate path. Those are the three principles that were sold to all of us as the primary features and there is not a district attorney in the state of New York that did not support those. We all stood up and said, “Yes, this is a good thing.” But then the fine print comes when the bill is actually authored.

In Albany County, the vast majority of the kids who are engaging in violent behavior and engaging in these shootings are kids that we've already arrested once, but for the requirements of the Raise the Age statute, we're not able to hold them accountable so they just continue to perpetrate these crimes. Eventually, they kill people and we're supposed to be okay with that, but that's not okay. 

I never came to this position as someone who you handed off the music sheet and could expect me to sing along with the chorus. That was never me. 

What do you make of the Republican support for your write-in campaign? Does it come down to a shared view of where Democrats have gone wrong on policy?

When I ran in 2004, I was too young, I was too progressive, and of course, too Black, right? You fast forward now, 20 years, and it’s the left that has basically created the public safety policies that we have now.

So what am I now? I’m too old, right? I’m not Black enough and I’m no longer progressive, and that’s what they’re saying, except what I’m doing is the same thing I did 20 years ago. I’m opposed to any public safety policy that harms the community. 

I’m not surprised that I’m here. I have earned a primary and the situation politically, as it stands now, I've earned that, but the inconvenient truth that I continue to speak won’t change and I’m not going to be silenced. I will be reelected.

Should you win reelection, how do you see the road forward in terms of repairing relationships with other Democrats in the county?

I’m not interested in repairing relationships, because that’s not my objective. Reelection seems to be the primary focus of current politicians that are in office, which is why they just follow whatever talking point is fed to them. We are in the business of service.

I’m not in the business of ribbon-cuttings. What I do is I have to sit across the table from the families, I have to sit across the table from rape victims, I have to sit across from people who are in the worst moments of their lives, and how do you explain to a mother whose kid is a great kid, who’s volunteering as a lifeguard in a Troy city pool, how do you look at that woman and say I’m so sorry that your child was murdered today by a kid who’s carrying a gun that we’ve already arrested for carrying a gun, but was let go, released from Family Court. How do you explain that?

You want to mend a relationship and be my pal? Go into the Capitol, take a look at the areas that we’ve already discussed that need to be fixed and put that proposal out there. Do your job and gather as many votes as you can in order to repair what you’ve created. Then I’ll be your friend. I’ll send you Christmas cards. I’ll even come mow your lawn.