Snyder To Announce Intention To Become City's First Female District Attorney

At an early-morning fund-raising event tomorrow, a former Supreme Court judge, Leslie Crocker Snyder, plans a formal announcement of her candidacy for Manhattan district attorney.

The first female prosecutor to try homicide cases in New York, Ms. Snyder, who has worked in private practice and as a legal analyst on television since she left the bench in 2003, would become the first female district attorney in the city's history. To win election, she will have to defeat her former boss, Robert Morgenthau, perhaps the most revered prosecutor in the country.

While the district attorney's race typically receives less press attention than campaigns for citywide offices or borough president, the contrast between the brassy rookie candidate and the venerable incumbent has generated considerable interest. Today, both the New Yorker and New York magazines devote significant ink, introducing Ms. Snyder as a gutsy political newcomer and Mr. Morgenthau's most serious challenger in a storied career that spans more than three decades.

In the 5,000-word New Yorker feature, a staff writer and lawyer, Jeffrey Toobin, followed the candidates through the maze of New York's political clubs. He captures Mr. Morgenthau's sense of humor but notes Ms. Snyder's subtle emphasis on the district attorney's age.

Ms. Snyder attempts "to accentuate the age difference ... without ever saying directly that Morgenthau is too old for the job," Mr. Toobin wrote.

"When Morgenthau indicated that he couldn't hear several questions," he continued, "Snyder rolled her eyes." When Ms. Snyder, who is 63, responded to questions from audience members, Mr. Toobin noted, she stood up. Mr. Morgenthau, 85, remained seated and, instead of a walk, displayed "a painfully slow shuffle."

Mr. Morgenthau insists that he is in strong physical health. Should he be reelected, he has suggested, he might seek another term.

"I'm too old to retire," Mr. Morgenthau has joked, saying he exercises regularly. Over the winter campaign, staff members were aghast upon learning Mr. Morgenthau had been skiing, and skiing double-black-diamond trails - the most difficult ones.

In the 3,500-word New York magazine feature, a contributor and former staff editor, Phoebe Eaton, also followed Ms. Snyder through the city's political-club circuit. The candidate, Ms. Eaton wrote, is hard to miss: "spray misted with diamonds and done up in satin-collar suits and tweedy trumpet skirts, a buckle of cleavage occasionally visible under a lacy camisole as she drags the man off the porch by his Brooks Brothers lapels."

Still, despite some of Ms. Snyder's well-tailored criticisms of Mr. Morgenthau, her support among Manhattan's Democratic Party activists appears to be virtually nonexistent. All of the political clubs have unanimously endorsed Mr. Morgenthau.

"This isn't that much better than Tammany Hall," Ms. Snyder is quoted as saying of the county's politics. "Several times, I've thought I was in Brooklyn."

Ms. Eaton also quoted Ms. Snyder as saying Mr. Morgenthau was intimidating potential campaign contributors. A spokesman for the Morgenthau campaign, Robert Liff, denied that Mr. Morgenthau intimidated contributors. "Leslie's temperament," he said, "has always been one of the recurring issues in this campaign."

Ms. Eaton also reported that the Morgenthau campaign hired mentally-ill homeless people to picket one of Ms. Snyder's campaign events at an Upper East Side restaurant, Elaine's. Mr. Liff called the story "inaccurate." He denied that the Morgenthau campaign had paid anyone to picket the Snyder event.

Mr. Liff said he did not know specifically who the protesters were, or who paid them.

Correction from May 10, 2005: New York County is the jurisdiction in which Leslie Crocker Snyder would be, if elected, the first female district attorney, Kings County being the first jurisdiction in the city to have elevated a woman, Elizabeth Holtzman, to be district attorney. An incorrect characterization about a first female district attorney was included in a story on page 3 of yesterday's New York Sun.