Trampled, Trampled!

I feel remiss for not paying enough attention to the race for Manhattan district attorney between 86-year-old longtime DA Robert Morgenthau and 63-year-old “upstart” Leslie Crocker Snyder. Not only do both candidates have connections to Law & Order but according to the Times, the race also involves a healthy dose of small-scale thuggery:

Her latest television ads have tweaked him for refusing invitations from several television channels to debate her. That issue has led to several recent confrontations – including the Tuesday night scuffle.

It occurred after Ms. Snyder and Mr. Morgenthau appeared – separately but sequentially – at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center on West 13th Street. As Mr. Morgenthau left the center and walked slowly east on 13th Street with members of his staff and his police detail, a man in a suit carrying a large Snyder sign on a stick followed the group, asking loudly whether Mr. Morgenthau would debate Ms. Snyder.

What happened next is in dispute, but eventually Eben Bronfman, of Mr. Morgenthau’s staff, confronted the man and ended up pushing him against a fence as Mr. Morgenthau got into a black S.U.V. A Morgenthau volunteer nearby screamed that the Snyder supporter had trampled on her and torn the campaign button from her shirt.

The man with the sign would not give a reporter his name or say whether he was employed by the Snyder campaign, but he was later identified by Ms. Snyder’s camp as Carlos Laracea of White Plains, the campaign’s director of minority outreach. Mr. Laracea said that Mr. Bronfman had choked him. “I never laid a hand on them,” Mr. Laracea said, but “he got physical with me.”