Good news: New York’s longest-serving — and least effective — district attorney may finally be leaving his job after more than a quarter-century.
Bad news: He’s to be replaced in a squalid deal that lets the political bosses hand-pick his successor with next-to-no voter involvement.
As The Post’s Richard Johnson reported Tuesday, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie has put together a scheme to place Bronx DA Robert Johnson on the state Supreme Court bench and replace him with a political loyalist — Darcel Clark, now an Appellate Division judge.
Rumors of Heastie’s plan go back more than two years — but it’s a hot issue now because Johnson’s up for re-election this year.
The scheme reportedly has Johnson resigning next month, after his name is already on the primary ballot for re-election.
That would let the Bronx Democratic Committee — which Heastie headed until he became speaker — put Clark on the ballot instead. That’s too late for any other would-be candidate to make the ballot, and so gives Clark a near-lock on victory.
This goes beyond a cynical back-room assault on democracy.
Yes, Robert Johnson has been an abysmal district attorney, failing to even prosecute many arrests — in 2012, it was nearly one in four. And when he does prosecute, his office loses at a much higher rate than any other city DA.
Clark — a 10-year veteran of Johnson’s office who was first named to the Criminal Court bench by Rudy Giuliani — would be hard-pressed to do worse. Perhaps the Bronx machine is dreaming of reform here?
Maybe — or maybe not: Johnson, after all, was the machine candidate back when he first won the job.
As it happens, county DAs are supposed to be the public’s first defense against corrupt officeholders. But other prosecutors have been collecting those scalps in The Bronx in the Johnson era.
It seems unlikely a machine-minted DA will be any different.
When he took office as speaker in February, Heastie promised to bring more “sunlight to the Capitol.”
The Bronx could use sunshine, too, Carl.