Cacace to step down from county bench as run for Westchester District Attorney expected
Westchester County Judge Susan Cacace has submitted retirement papers to step down from the bench, paving the way for her to run for Westchester District Attorney.
Cacace has not formally announced her candidacy and her resignation is not effective until Dec. 7.
But she has widely been expected to enter the race. Because judges cannot remain on the bench while running for another public office, Cacace has been mum on her plans since DA Mimi Rocah announced in late October that she would not be seeking a second term.
Cacace would be the fourth Democrat to enter the race. Former Westchester prosecutor Adeel Mirza of New Rochelle and civil rights lawyer William Wagstaff III of Mount Vernon registered campaign committees with the state Board of Elections in recent months and Yorktown resident Sheralyn Pulver Goodman, a longtime public defender who now runs the county's Independent Office of Assigned Counsel, has also said she is running.
David Szuchman of Mamaroneck, a former Manhattan prosecutor now an executive at PayPal, is also said to be considering a run for DA.
Suzanne Berger, the Democratic party chairwoman, said she was aware that Cacace intended to step down from the bench but did not expect any announcement about the DA's race until she was no longer a judge.
Democrats hold a nearly 3-to-1 advantage among registered voters in Westchester and the party is expected to endorse a candidate for DA in February. No Republican has entered the race yet.
Cacace was a prosecutor in the DA’s Office for 14 years before joining her husband in the law firm Cacace & Dibbini. Two years later she was elected a county court judge and she won re-election in 2015. She has spent the past several years presiding over the Sex Offense Court.
The 59-year-old Democrat lives in Bronxville but has deep institutional ties in Yonkers where she grew up. The Cacace Justice Center, the police and court building on South Broadway, is named for her late father, Robert Cacace, who was the chief administrative judge in Yonkers. Her brother Kevin is a Yonkers school board member and president of the Chamber of Commerce and another brother, Robert, is commissioner of information technology at City Hall.
Cacace’s name had been among those mentioned as possible candidates in 2016 when then-DA Janet DiFiore stepped down to become New York’s chief judge. But she kept her judgeship as it became clear Democrats would pick Anthony Scarpino, a former judge who won the election later that year.
Scarpino was beaten by Rocah in the 2020 Democratic primary, becoming the first DA in 50 years not to serve more than one term. Rocah will be the second.
All three announced candidates have said they would remain in the race even if Cacace, a proven vote-getter, entered.
"There's no candidate that will stop me from running this race. Period," Wagstaff said.
Pulver said she didn't believe any judge could match the varied experience she brings to the race as a former prosecutor and defense lawyer who has management experience as a former deputy commissioner of the Westchester Department of Probation and now administrator of the office that assigns lawyers for the indigent.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Susan Cacace leaving bench as Westchester DA run is expected
