Snyder's courtroom transcripts can read like Clint Eastwood monologues. "I hope you suffer every day of your life," she told one defendant in a murder case. "Listening to both of you makes me sick," she told a pair of drug defendants.

...Across two decades on the bench, Snyder was legendary for her super-max sentences in narcotics cases. She named that autobiography, "25 Years to Life." She answered unhesitantly when one national television interviewer asked about the Rockefeller laws: "I've never had trouble with them."

Henican says Crocker Snyder is trying to reinvent herself as someone who only supports the death penalty in the gravest of circumstances and supports reform of the Rockefeller drug laws.

Morganthau responds:

"Is that the kind of person you want either as a judge or a DA?" Morgenthau was saying in an interview in his large and cluttered office adjacent to Manhattan Criminal Court.

"Talking about giving the needle herself" - or doing a politic about-face on the Rockefeller drug laws, he said, "It raises the whole question of temperament. When I meet with the hiring committee, I tell them I don't want any gunslingers. I want people committed to public service. I want people who can relate to victims and witnesses. Above all, who are fair and perceived to be fair.

"Ninety-five percent of the people in state prison are going to come out," said the city's longest-serving prosecutor, revving up for one last term. "You want them to feel they've been treated fairly. Apparently, she wants gunslingers in here. Her view and my view of who should be in the office are diametrically opposed."

It's Morganthau for DA by a mile for me.