Nicole Aloise for Nassau County district attorney

A top-notch district attorney’s office must competently and fairly execute its vital role in the administration of justice. Decisions about prosecuting charges, from shoplifting to murder, are tremendously consequential to a community’s well-being. Prosecutors oversee investigations and decide what charges, if any, should be filed. They negotiate plea bargains or take a case to trial and recommend sentences.

The district attorney oversees an office of hundreds of assistant district attorneys, investigators and support staff who are on the front lines daily in a complex and fraught criminal justice system. It’s essential that the public is confident its district attorney is making independent judgments in the pursuit of justice. In Suffolk County, incumbent Raymond A. Tierney is running unopposed; Newsday Opinion will make no endorsement in that race.

In Nassau County, voters do have a choice. Nicole Aloise, a career prosecutor who has a solid crime fighting record in both Queens and Nassau counties, is the better candidate. A Democrat, Aloise, 42, of Garden City, possesses the energy and drive to fight crime that has gone missing from the office under Republican incumbent Anne T. Donnelly.

There is no more troubling indictment of Donnelly’s tenure than the unprecedented outflow of talent since she took office. More than 90 assistant district attorneys have left for other prosecutorial jobs including ones in Suffolk. Other senior prosecutors with outstanding reputations and credentials were asked by Donnelly to leave. Losing a third of a prosecutorial staff is far beyond the usual rate of attrition. Aloise was one of them. She had moved in 2019 from the DA’s office in Queens where she prosecuted major crimes to a similar job in Nassau, but quit in 2023 after a disagreement with Donnelly. “It was the administration versus everyone,” Aloise told the editorial board.

The dissatisfaction with Donnelly by the police is another charge against her. She got into an unnecessary tiff with Nassau police and criminal court judges over the turnover of police personnel reports that caused the Nassau PBA and detectives’ unions which endorsed Donnelly four years ago to walk away in this race. And the county’s Civil Service Employees Association, which represents the office’s non-attorney staff, is opposing Donnelly for instituting workplace changes without negotiating with the union.

Those attorneys who left and some who are still there say Donnelly is remote, that she manages from a bunker, and that her executive staff’s lack of experience rankles judges. New prosecutors are not getting the mentoring and guidance needed. That inexperience can only undermine crime fighting efforts as charges get dismissed and bungled efforts lead to making weak plea deals; criminal convictions have been lower during Donnelly’s administration. The once highly regarded sex crimes, domestic violence and vehicular crimes units were dismantled, resulting in inconsistent and weaker prosecutions.

All district attorneys have enormous discretion on what investigations to pursue; they show their priorities not only with the cases they bring but those they do not. The lack of public corruption cases brought during Donnelly’s first term has been telling. Her claims that she once investigated former Rep. George Santos — a probe eclipsed by a federal indictment — lacks credibility in the context that Long Island Republicans were united in denouncing Santos and trying desperately to remove the stain his candidacy put on the local party.

Donnelly’s office says it has an “active investigation” of former Nassau University Medical Center officials regarding alleged destruction of documents and computer files, the approval of excessive termination payments, and false entertainment expenses by close friends and donors of Nassau Republicans. If so, there hasn’t been much to show for it.

Four years ago, Newsday Opinion supported Donnelly, 61, of Garden City, who has worked for more than three decades in the office. That election was roiled by the state’s complex 2019 changes to bail and pretrial discovery laws. Donnelly’s opponent, Democrat Todd Kaminsky, then a state senator, was involved in the rushed and flawed effort to make needed changes to reduce overincarceration.

Donnelly was never a standout and had limited trial experience but she initially presented herself as someone who might continue the excellence of the office after Madeline Singas was appointed to the New York Court of Appeals, the state’s top court. Donnelly didn’t deliver.

Aloise has the background to restore the professionalization of the office so it can draw the top talent to ensure that all crimes are competently prosecuted. She is better suited to use the power of the district attorney’s office to embrace a broader view of public safety. Aloise says she will advocate for more resources for the diversion services offered by the county’s Veterans Treatment Court and to combat the rise in sex trafficking on Long Island that is being fueled by opioid addiction.

Nassau residents are more likely to be victims of criminal acts on its roads than being attacked on a street. But a firm and consistent policy of enforcing drunken-driving crimes is no longer the case in Nassau. Nor has Donnelly been front and center demanding that the state deal with the explosion of drugged-driving crimes — due to legalization of the sale of cannabis — by giving prosecutors new tools to pursue those cases.

The GOP can’t make their soft-on-crime charges stick against Aloise, who was out front in criticizing state lawmakers’ change to the bail laws and has a more impressive trial record of convicting violent criminals than Donnelly. She also has the distinction of being criticized by liberal law professors for being too tough on defendants during her time in Queens. This has reduced the GOP into the ridiculous position of photoshopping images of Aloise with Assemb. Zohran Mamdani, the leading candidate in the race for New York City mayor. Donnelly has refused to debate Aloise and she did not meet with the editorial board.

Newsday Opinion endorses Aloise.