Politics, they say, make for some strange bedfellows.
Nicole Aloise, the Democrat running for the District Attorney (DA) job in New York’s Nassau County, has reportedly invited convicted criminals to apply for a full-time position on her campaign staff. The posting for a “communications director” on the “Nicole for Nassau” campaign appears to state, explicitly, that “[p]eople with a criminal record are encouraged to apply.”
Ms. Aloise’s own campaign website is decidedly at odds with having an ex-con craft her messaging and communication statements. The site touts her 16 years’ experience as a prosecutor and strives to portray her as “tough on crime” – someone who will crack down on violent and nonviolent crime alike, and “pursue justice as a prosecutor, not a politician.” The incumbent Nassau County DA scoffs that the DA’s job requires “holding criminals accountable—not inviting them into the heart of a campaign for Nassau County’s top law enforcement post.”
At this point, it’s completely speculative whether this apparent support of criminal rehabilitation will manifest itself in the hiring of “justice-impacted individuals” or whether the campaign’s job ad is nothing more than a performative nod to the progressive fringe of the Democrat party.
Gun control, though, is part of Aloise’s platform, despite New York State already qualifying as one of the least gun-friendly jurisdictions in the country. Her campaign is endorsed by Everytown’s Moms Demand Action, which lists Aloise as a “2025 Gun Sense Candidate.” In an Instagram post on that “candidate distinction,” Aloise describes her commitment to “keeping dangerous weapons out of the wrong hands while protecting the rights of responsible gun owners.”
As it happens, the Nassau County DA’s Office already has a track record of antipathy towards guns, even when owned by the very employees the state entrusts to enforce its laws.
A decade ago, the DA’s Office prohibited its own prosecutors from having a handgun permit or ownership or possession of a handgun, even in their own homes. UCLA Law Professor Eugene Volokh wrote about the handgun ban for the Washington Post, noting the office’s justification that the policy was “to ensure the safety and comfort of staff, victims, and witnesses, and [was] consistent with other district attorney’s offices” in the New York City area.
Professor Volokh, however, asserted that the policy violated both the Second Amendment and New York state law, and after heightened public scrutiny and criticism from the NRA, the media and others, the then-DA partially rescinded the ban (here and here). Prosecutors remained “strictly prohibited from carrying or possessing a weapon any time they are working, including, but not limited to work in the DA’s office, courthouses, crime scenes, witness interviews, [and] meetings with other agencies,” but were allowed “to own and possess a legally registered handgun in their homes or for legally permitted activity unrelated to their employment and workplace.”
“As best I can tell,” Professor Volokh wrote, “the theory is that the DA’s office is worried that prosecutors will come in to the office in a rage and shoot up the place. What kinds of people is the DA’s office hiring? Are the chances of one of its employees, trusted to make daily decisions about citizens’ liberties and public safety, snapping and turning to murder so high that they outweigh employees’ constitutional rights to protect themselves and their families at home?”
With a new DA potentially on the horizon, one has to wonder whether Ms. Aloise’s professed commitment to protect gun rights includes the rights of the DA’s Office employees. If she’s sincere about that and about second chances for convicted individuals, might we even hope that she would support the Trump administration’s initiative to allow individuals subject to federal firearm disabilities to petition the government for restoration of rights?
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