After the election is done, it’s pretty obvious how much both the Working Families and Democratic parties wanted him gone. His far-right ideology, criticizing criminal justice reforms — that clearly are working — served neither well and his positions were not that of most Democrats much less Working Families Party members.

That said, Soares positions were politically popular with the general electorate, and especially with police and prosecutors and the conservative party which wholeheartingly has backed rolling back criminal justice reforms, to a time when criminal defendants were kept in the dark about the evidence against them, when people charged with minor non-violent crimes often spent months if not years behind bars because of high bail levels levied against them.

Should have run as a conservative and maybe a Republican …

If Soares asked for it, he could have most certainly gotten the conservative line, as the police unions generally control that in Upstate New York. Even the Republicans would have wholeheartingly adopted him, as they would love to keep him in office as a leading proponent of rolling back criminal justice reform and serving as a symbol of Democrats being soft-on-crime. Better yet, if he had publically endorsed Donald Trump, it’s certain that both state GOP dollars and Trump’s campaign dollars would have come flowing in to bolster his campaign.

Donald Trump could have found much use in David Soares. He would instantly become one of the nations’ leading black prosecutors who changed parties in defense of the former President. Soares, if he chosen to go on television railing against the “fake charges” brought against Trump would have gotten national attention, especially as his peer is the Manhattan DA who brought such charges and successfully convicted Trump of dozens of non-violent felonies.

Could a Trump-backed DA won the mostly liberal Albany County?

Possibly with enough cash, the continued backing of a sizable part of the black and brown population in the city — some certainly fed up with crime and wanting a tough on crime perspective in the DA’s office. Plus, while in the minority, there are still a lot of conservatives and Republicans in the county especially in the more rural and suburban parts of the towns. Wealthy people fear crime too, especially stealing of the color televisions. That said, it it still would have been a tough row to hoe, as Albany County is pretty liberal, and probably not all embracing of liberal policies.