Nassau County District Attorney Madeline Singas declared victory Tuesday in her race for re-election to a second four-year term.
The Democratic top prosecutor had a more than 40,000-vote margin over Republican challenger Frank McQuade, an attorney in private practice from Long Beach, with about 80 percent of precincts reporting, according to unofficial results tallied by the Nassau Board of Elections.
“It’s my honor to serve the people of Nassau County as district attorney and I thank the voters for the confidence they’ve shown in me,” she tweeted. “With justice as our guide, we will continue our important work to keep Nassau safe.”
Singas won her first term in 2015 after a year of serving as acting district attorney following her predecessor, Kathleen Rice, getting elected to Congress. In that race, Singas beat then-Hempstead Town Supervisor Kate Murray, who spent the last four years working at Nassau Community College before mounting a political comeback in a run for town clerk. Murray appears to have won that race in early returns.
High-profile cases that Singas has handled include multiple Hempstead police commanders nabbed for alleged corruption, an MS-13 bust that netted the gang’s leader for the Northeast, having former Oyster Bay Town Supervisor John Venditto plead guilty to corruption, and being tapped special prosecutor to probe disgraced ex-New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who was not charged following domestic abuse allegations that ended his career.
The election was the first on Long Island since the Empire State legalized early voting. Voter turnout is believed to have been up, but the margins were not immediately clear.
