As an A.D.A in 1973, Snyder was photographed by Glamour for a story about young powerful women.   (Photo: Courtesy of Leslie Crocker Snyder)

“When the Times asked him why he was running, his only answer—which I thought was incredibly feeble—was something about keeping his staff together, and frankly, his staff is totally out- of-date. The top people have been there 25 to 30 years, and they haven’t seen a new idea in 20 years that they liked!”

For years, those who work with Morgenthau’s office have complained that it is riven with fault lines: “It’s like having the emperor in some distant place in Austria while everybody else is running their little tiny fiefdoms,” says attorney (and Snyder backer) Murray Richman.

Snyder has snagged the endorsements of ten police unions. A major reason was the reversal of the Central Park–jogger convictions, says Michael Palladino, president of the Detectives Endowment Association. Palladino claims the decision was the by-product of fiefdom infighting: the abrupt dismissal of the case was seen as an attempt by Morgenthau’s trial chief Nancy Ryan to dump on her old rival Linda Fairstein, who supervised the prosecutions.

Snyder and other judges complain about a culture of assistant D.A.’s being afraid to try cases, forging inappropriate pleas because they lack training. She adds that the office needs ballsy, streetwise local-law-school grads like in the old days—and could cut back on the Harvard Law Review types, the celebrity offspring.

Snyder also thinks Morgenthau is spending an ungodly amount of money on white-collar crime. The rap on Morgenthau has always been that he wishes he were still U.S. Attorney. “He was fired from the job. He refused to leave!” says Snyder. (Citing unfinished business, Bob Morgenthau delayed his resignation an entire year after Republican Richard Nixon was elected president in 1968 and left only after Nixon named his replacement and demanded his resignation.)

“He has this whole family baggage that he carries around where he has to prove himself over and over,” Snyder continues, “and that meant getting all the white-collar cases he could that would be a headline, a Kozlowski or a BCCI or a Belnick. A lot of those prosecutions really ended up badly. They cost millions, especially the international-banking cases. He’s sending D.A.’s to Venezuela!” she hoots.

“I don’t care about headlines,” says Snyder. But attorney Gerald Lefcourt can’t imagine she would do things any differently. “White collar is the juicy stuff. She’ll want the sexy, interesting cases, with the great lawyers coming to beg.”

Playing Thelma to Snyder’s Louise is U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White, who was always arm-wrestling Morgenthau for cases (Snyder argues there needs to be more cooperation between the two offices) and is now Snyder’s campaign chair. Snyder the judge had “put her life on the line,” says White.

With those Moulin Rouge! chokers and flowing black robes, Snyder looked like a character hatched by Genet, generally sympathetic to the women before her but maxing out society’s most “violent predators” with triple-digit prison stretches. In 1998, a bust turned up bags of “25 to Life”–brand heroin stamped with her likeness.

After several credible death threats in the early nineties, Snyder and her family required 24/7 security. Her Park Avenue co-op board expressed irritation when a SWAT team came rappelling down from the roof. Bomb-sniffing dogs went along to charity dinners. Her kids were told not to walk through the living room of their summer house because a sniper might take them out. When it was determined that the Wild Cowboys gang had hired a hit man known as Freddy Krueger to get her, “there were two men posted on either side of the pool during my water-polo match,” remembers her investment-manager son Doug. Judge Snyder says her sleep was permanently affected: “At night, my fears would come out.”

Snyder is the state judge with the longest continuing police protection. Some colleagues scoff at the expense, insisting that her demeanor in court created these situations: Did she really need to call the defendants “monsters” and “psychopaths” as she handed out those throw-away-the-key sentences?

Five years ago, a boiler-room stockbroker tried to pay someone $35,000 to kill Snyder on her way out of Forlini’s, the judiciary’s power lunchroom, where she is the only woman with her own booth. A Law & Order episode not long after improvised on the incident: A blonde judge is so hostile and power-besotted as she runs around trailing police protection that the D.A.’s sympathize with the accountant who ordered the hit.

Defense lawyers hated the way Judge Snyder would refer to their clients as “choirboys,” asking them to quit “whining” and “carrying on” before the jury. Often, Snyder would play prosecutor, asking her own questions. Though many lawyers had the utmost respect for Snyder, some objected to the blithering-idiot treatment. “I don’t mean to slight her as a judge, but for years I thought, Wow, wouldn’t she be a great D.A.?” says attorney Judd Burstein.

Snyder was considered a favorite judge of Morgenthau’s. In 1995, his office was accused of steering the high-profile multi-defendant drug cases to her courtroom, and the assignment system was changed. The fact that a number of prominent defense lawyers are backing Snyder seems like heresy. Murray Richman explains, “I supported Morgenthau when he ran for governor, and I literally worship his family”—Morgenthau’s grandfather was Woodrow Wilson’s ambassador to Turkey, and his father was Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Treasury secretary. “But it’s like Ecclesiastes 3. There’s a time to retire.”

Snyder had a way of ingratiating herself with defense lawyers while skewering their clients, says defense attorney Scott Greenfield. “As you came into the courtroom, Leslie would wave you up to the bench and give you a peck on the cheek. It wasn’t a sexual thing, but judges don’t do that.”