NEXT SHERIFF OF ALBANY

There are at least three reasons why every New Yorker should care who
becomes the next district attorney of Albany County. To begin with,
the front-runner, David Soares, is promising to be lenient with
low-level drug criminals, a decidedly unorthodox platform for someone
seeking a law-enforcement post. Supporters say his upset win in the
Democratic primary, over a traditional tough-on-crime incumbent, will
strengthen the campaign to roll back New York's stringent
Rockefeller-era drug laws.

Secondly, there is the manner in which Mr. Soares defeated the current
D.A., Paul Clyne. The union-backed Working Families Party spent tens
of thousands of dollars in support of Mr. Soares during the Democratic
primary, including $81,500 it received from a group founded by the
billionaire philanthropist George Soros. If these tactics stand up in
court, they will weaken the rules meant to insulate party primaries
from outside influence.

Finally, the Albany County district attorney has jurisdiction over the
seat of state government, enabling him to wield prosecutorial power
over the Legislature, the governor's office, and the headquarters of
almost every state agency.

Previous occupants of the office have taken a hands-off approach to
corruption at the Capitol. But if the voters of Albany County elect
Mr. Soares, they would be installing a maverick as the sheriff of
State Street.

A few well-placed subpoenas would probably do more to change the
status quo at Albany than any of the reform proposals floated by
legislators and good-government groups over the past year.

"The morning after the election, everyone in the permanent government
woke up and said, 'Uh oh, we've got a problem. This guy isn't in on
the deal,'" Senator Eric Schneiderman, a Democrat of Manhattan, said
of Mr. Soares's primary victory. "He's a big threat to the
interlocking directorate of lobbyists, bureaucrats, and elected officials."

The legislative director of the New York Public Interest Research
Group, Blair Horner, said he finds it intriguing that officials of the
Republican, Independence, and Conservative parties are supporting a
lawsuit by the Clyne campaign charging that the Soares campaign
violated election laws.

"It does make me wonder what's really going on," Mr. Horner said. "Has
the prospect of an independent D.A. sent belated shockwaves through
the political establishment?"

Mr. Soares does not shy away from the role of Capitol watchdog. "We
can't expect an 18-yearold on the street corner to respect the law if
the people who make the laws and enforce the laws aren't held
accountable," he said in an interview with The New York Sun. "We're
going to prosecute all offenses occurring in Albany County."

This would be a dramatic departure from the pattern set by the
district attorney from 1975 to 2000, Sol Greenberg, who declared he
was too busy going after violent street crime to worry about political
misdemeanors.

Mr. Clyne has broken with this tradition in at least two cases. He
prosecuted an assemblyman from Brooklyn, Roger Green, for padding his
expense account, and a former Assembly counsel, Michael Boxley, for
sexual misconduct with a legislative aide.

Still, Mr. Clyne has never quite lived down the way he took office
four years ago. The leaders of Albany County's dominant Democratic
Party handpicked him to become district attorney after the abrupt
resignation of Mr. Greenberg in September 2000 - just late enough to
head off a party primary.

Mr. Soares has certainly established his independence from what
remains of Albany's Democratic machine. His credibility as a political
reformer could suffer, however, if the courts uphold the lawsuit
against his campaign.

The suit brought by representatives of the Clyne campaign and the
Republican, Independence, and Conservative parties argues that the
Working Families Party violated a law that prohibits parties from
spending money on primary elections. They also charge that $81,500 in
donations to the campaign from the Drug Policy Alliance Network, a
group founded by Mr. Soros, exceeded the $5,000 cap on corporate
contributions.

"Never before, at least in my experience in New York State, has such a
conscious, orchestrated, two-tiered scheme to evade the contribution
limits of the election law ever been devised, let alone successfully
executed," said an attorney for the Clyne campaign, James
Featherstonhaugh.

Assemblyman Richard Brodsky of Westchester County, who is representing
the Working Families Party in the case, argued that the party was
simply exercising its constitutional right to campaign for the
candidate of its choice.

"For someone to argue that election law does not allow a political
party to support its own candidate in a general election because
there's a primary in another party doesn't make a lot of sense," Mr.
Brodsky said.

He said contributions from the Drug Policy Alliance Network were at
most a technical violation that will be cleared up when the group
files its paperwork to become a political action committee in New York.

The only outrage in this case, Mr. Brodsky said, is that the
anti-Soares forces managed to obtain a court order that shut down his
campaign for four days after the primary. "This was about stopping the
Soares campaign," he said. "It was not about the technicalities of the
election law."

Mr. Featherstonhaugh said more is at stake than technicalities. He
said the Working Families Party targeted its mailings and phone calls
to Democratic voters, included the date of the primary in its
literature, and criticized Mr. Clyne without ever mentioning the
Republican candidate, Roger Cusick.

"You can make an argument that there shouldn't be any elections laws
if you want to," Mr. Featherstonhaugh said. "That would be the
ultimate in free speech. But in fact that's not the way we do it.
There are rules, and there are penalties for violating the rules."