If the district attorney of New York County, Robert Morgenthau, has more ardent admirers than the editors of these columns, it would be a surprise to us. If we had, as the Japanese do, a formal designation known as a “living national treasure,” he would be a prime candidate. But he is going to be challenged, for the first time in years, for the nomination on the Democratic line. His challenger, Leslie Crocker Snyder, is an ambitious former prosecutor and judge. While it’s too soon for an endorsement, we tend to favor, at least in theory, the idea of contested elections, even when the incumbent is doing a terrific job.

It strikes us, though, that Ms. Snyder is going to have a hard time getting a toehold on the crime front. The city, and county, have come through a period that has seen a historic plunge in the rates of violent crime in the city. Many people deserve credit for this, from Commissioner Bratton through Commissioner Kelly and Mayors Giuliani and Bloomberg. But it would be silly to try to deny Mr. Morgenthau and his team of assistant district attorneys an important share of the credit, particularly because Manhattan has shown, in some key categories, a disproportionate share of the gains.

When Mr. Morgenthau moved into One Hogan Place, his office points out, Manhattan was the most dangerous of the five boroughs. Today, his office says, it is safer than Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens. His office also points out that the share of all New York City crime that took place in Manhattan has plunged over his tenure to 16% today from 39% in 1975. His office says the murder rate during that period has plunged 85%, robberies 86.2%, burglaries 89.4%, forcible rape 70.6% and felony assault 57%.

Ms. Snyder is undaunted by these statistics, arguing that there are pockets of the county – Washington Heights, say, or other of the poorest neighborhoods – that haven’t felt the full impact of the advances against crime, neighborhoods where residents and visitors still do not feel entirely safe. She has been critical of the way Mr. Morgenthau has allocated his budget, in which something on the order of 47% has gone to so-called white-collar crime, which she has suggested could be handled by the United States attorney or the state attorney general.

Mr. Morgenthau responds that the 47% figure includes investigations into drug gangs, gun trafficking, cold cases, and police corruption. He reckons that after factoring in the recovery of funds in the course of prosecuting white-collar cases, the share of its budget accounted for by white-collar cases plunges to something like 25%. And those cases – a Morgenthau fact sheet says – include, by way of example, a dishonest plumbing contractor who stole millions from the MTA, criminals who took advantage of the 9/11 tragedy, identity theft cases, and insurance fraud cases that drive up the cost of medical and car insurance.

“Which of these cases would Ms. Snyder not pursue?” asks Mr. Morgenthau.

Neither does Mr. Morgenthau give any quarter when challenged by Ms. Snyder in the area of outreach to communities and schools. It is an area where Ms. Snyder often speaks with great passion. The idea is that it is not just the police who should be using community outreach programs to try to pre-empt crime before it starts but also the prosecutors. Mr. Morgenthau scoffs, saying that he “created the very notion of community outreach by prosecutors,” having started the Manhattan District Attorney’s Community Affairs Unit in 1985. Last year alone, he says, Community Affairs staff attended 1,137 meetings. He makes a similar argument in respect of school outreach. His work for the Police Athletic League is legendary.

Ms. Snyder also attacks Mr. Morgenthau on diversity, suggesting that the United States attorney’s office did not, at the time he ran it and she applied for a job there, hire women. He disputes that, saying there were female assistant U.S. attorneys in the office at the time. In the Manhattan district attorney’s office, he points out, 50% of the assistant DA’s are women, up from 10% when he took over and much higher than the 33% of all practicing attorneys in New York County.

On capital punishment, Ms. Snyder tends to brush this question aside, saying it’s not a major issue, though she does support it in certain extreme cases. Mr. Morgenthau says it’s a clear distinction between the two. He opposes it and Ms. Snyder does not. The New York Sun is on the side of Ms. Snyder in this issue. We think it’s an injustice – a plain, old-fashioned injustice – that thugs can shoot two policemen in the back of the head in the city of New York and not face the chair. But outside of a difference over the point of principle, in the practical world, it’s hard to make much of a campaign on the death penalty, given that crime has been falling so fast, without the death penalty, on Mr. Morgenthau’s watch.

Which leaves the argument that Mr. Morgenthau is, at 85 and after 29 years in the job, too old – or, as the D.A. put it to us the other day over the phone, “I ain’t no spring chicken.” It strikes us that to whatever degree Ms. Snyder presses this argument, it’s inappropriate. One could even argue that the DA’s time in grade is one of the great deterrents to crime in the city – and helps hold together the extraordinary staff he has assembled. It is the envy of prosecutors everywhere. So while something can be said in principle for the idea of a contested election, to contest it on the age issue would invite a repeat of President Reagan’s famous jibe about how he wasn’t going to make an issue of Vice President Mondale’s youth and inexperience.