BAY RIDGE — Candidates in the special election for a vacant congressional seat sparred during a Tuesday night debate, with the Democratic candidate attacking District Attorney Dan Donovan over his conviction rate for domestic violence cases and Donovan hitting back at him for raising taxes.
Democrat City Councilman Vincent Gentile, Republican Donovan and Green Party candidate James Lane squared off in the second debate in the race to fill disgraced former Rep. Michael Grimm's empty seat.
Audience members asked questions during the nearly 90-minute debate, organized by the Bay Ridge Community Council, on topics ranging from trade agreements, the cost of higher education and whether candidates had a MetroCard. Lane and Gentile had one, Donovan did not.
Throughout the debate, Gentile criticized Donovan for the GOP-backed budget the U.S. House of Representatives released this week — which calls for cuts to social programs like Medicare but boosts defense spending.
"This House budget is bad for middle class families, it's bad for taxpayers, it's bad for college students, it's bad for seniors, it's bad for the economy, it's bad for jobs," Gentile said.
"It is a bad budget and we need to have somebody to go to Washington and join the other members of Congress who say 'enough is enough.'"
At the debate, Donovan said that while the budget had some good points, he would have voted against it if he had been in Congress.
"There are good parts to that budget, there are bad parts to that budget," Donovan said. "If it was an up-and-down vote, I would've voted no."
Donovan later shot back at Gentile for being the only candidate at the debate who had raised taxes in his career.
"I think the best way for someone to determine — when you hear three people speaking about what they're going to do, what they're not going to do — is see what they've done in the past," Donovan said.
"Councilman Gentile has raised your taxes, he just has."
Gentile, a former state senator, said he only raised taxes temporarily once and voted against raising them again two other times.
Perhaps the biggest point of contention of the night came after an audience member asked questions to Donovan about grand juries, and Gentile pulled out data from a Council budget publication that showed the Staten Island DA's office had the city's lowest conviction rate — and highest dismissal rate — for domestic violence cases.
"There is no office in the city of New York that has done more for domestic violence victims than my office," Donovan countered.
"It's the most difficult case that we have in my office, and the reason for that is so many people don't want to follow through and we have to coax them to follow through."
Gentile fired back and said it wasn't about the services they offer for victims, but conviction rates that measure his office's effectiveness.
"It's not about the social services, which are fine," Gentile said. "You want to know about his effectiveness as a DA and what kind of a leader he would be. You see that he is last in the five boroughs."
The special election to replace Grimm — who resigned in January after pleading guilty to tax fraud — is set for May 5.
