In the race for district attorney of Manhattan it’s a pleasure to endorse the Republican nominee, Maud Maron, over the incumbent Democrat, Alvin Bragg. Though a recent convert to the GOP, Ms. Maron has long been a voice of reason in the city’s political debates. Her campaign vow for a “safe, fair, and vibrant community” offers a superior vision to Mr. Bragg’s soft-on-crime policies, which have too often turned a blind eye to illegality.

For years, Ms. Maron has been warning, she recounts in the Sun’s pages, of what she calls the “creeping extremism within New York City’s Democratic Party.” An activist and leader within  Manhattan’s second-district community education council, she has lamented what she calls “the erosion of meritocracy in our public schools,” the “devastating impacts of Covid lockdowns,” and “the troubling social contagion of ‘trans’ gender ideology.” 

Her clear-eyed views on these issues has put her at odds with New York’s liberal establishment, she relates. “Each time, I was ahead of the curve, met with skepticism and abuse,” yet “proven right as the consequences unfolded.” The experience leads her to conclude that “the Democratic Party in New York City has been hijacked by the far-left ideologues of Democratic Socialists of America,” who have become “the center, not the fringe, of the party.”

For New Yorkers concerned about crime and public disorder,  ousting Mr. Bragg is a priority. Ms. Maron’s campaign site features her pledge to “restore safety to our streets and fairness to our justice system.” That would mark a refreshing change from Mr. Bragg’s tenure, which has seen him ease up on low-level offenses that destroy the city’s quality of life while lavishing resources on dubious, arguably politicized, prosecutorial forays.

Feature, say, the decision by Mr. Bragg to prosecute in 2022 a bodega employee, Jose Alba, for defending himself from a threatening miscreant in his store. Mr. Bragg eventually dropped the case amid a rising furor. Not so with a Marine veteran, Daniel Penny, whom Mr. Bragg prosecuted for protecting in 2023 subway riders from a mentally ill vagrant who was threatening passengers. A jury found Mr. Penny not guilty, in a rebuke to Mr. Bragg. 

As for Mr. Bragg’s prosecution of President Trump, that increasingly looks not only like a matter of legal but political malpractice. Despite Mr. Bragg’s claims to be politically neutral, he campaigned on his eagerness to pursue Mr. Trump in court. Mr. Bragg revived a case against the former president that his predecessor and federal prosecutors had declined to pursue and pushed through a guilty verdict now under review by higher courts. 

All the more reason, then, for new leadership in the Manhattan district attorney’s office — a role for which Ms. Maron, with her years of experience at the Legal Aid Society, is uniquely well positioned to occupy. It’s encouraging, too, to see that she is calling for a revival of New York’s Republican party, which has given us leaders like LaGuardia, Giuliani, and Bloomberg. In her own words: “The time is now, and the city is worth it.”