There’ll be a new top lawman in Brooklyn.
Longtime District Attorney Charles Hynes went down in a stunning defeat Tuesday night as former federal prosecutor Ken Thompson beat the 24-year incumbent by more than 10 percentage points in the Democratic primary.
“I think folks knew the record I had,” Hynes said in his concession speech. “I guess folks came to the conclusion that it was my time.”
Thompson supporters crowed over the results.
“It shows that the people of Brooklyn have had enough of Charles Hynes,” said Baruck Herzfeld, who runs a Web radio business.
Hynes, who will still be listed on the Republican and Conservative party ballots in the general election in November, said he would not campaign.
He also said beginning this fall, he would set aside space in his office for the Thompson transition.
One Brooklyn assistant district attorney welcomed the overthrow.
“Hynes had a long and distinguished career, but Brooklynites have decided to take a new direction. I think it was the right choice,” said the prosecutor. “There are a lot of problems in our office, and the only way to correct them is to have a new hand on the wheel.”
Joining in the raucous Thompson victory party was corrupt former Assemblyman and ex-Brooklyn Democratic Party boss Clarence Norman, whom Hynes prosecuted.
“God said it was finally time that justice should be served in Brooklyn,” said Norman.
The DA race initially included former Manhattan prosecutor Abe George, who dropped out in July and threw his support behind Thompson.
“The percentage shows that my dropping out put us over the top,” said George. “I knew we were going to split the vote.”
The New York City-raised Thompson was part of the team that prosecuted the NYPD cop who beat and sodomized Abner Louima inside a Brooklyn precinct station house in 1997.
He also represents hotel maid Nafissatou Diallo, who claimed she was sexually assaulted by former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn in his Manhattan hotel suite.
Thompson also represents several plaintiffs who have filed libel and discrimination lawsuits against the New York Post.
He went to John Jay College and NYU Law School, according to his Web site.
Thompson’s private law firm was fined $15,000 by a federal judge for concealing that a client in an employment-discrimination case had been hired at a new company for more money.
During the DA race, Thompson criticized Hynes for what his campaign called “a record of wrongful convictions, questions of prosecutorial misconduct, silence on stop-and-frisk and refusal to investigate Vito Lopez.”
Hynes campaigned on the huge drop in crime in Brooklyn since he took office, as well as on and his social programs.
“I have enjoyed the job tremendously. We have done things that are being replicated in other parts of the country and I am proud of that,” Hynes said.
The DA had been criticized for going soft on sexual-abuse prosecutions against Orthodox Jews, a group that has strongly supported him in past years.
But Hynes won two big cases against Orthodox abusers this year, including one that resulted in a 103-year prison sentence for prominent counselor Nechemya Weberman.