Thomas Kenniff, Manhattan D.A. Candidate, Sees a City on the Brink – The New York Times

Mr. Kenniff was born in Brooklyn in 1975 and grew up in Massapequa, in a waterfront house on the South Shore of Long Island. He attended the University of Rochester, where he majored in history. And he began to consider the possibility of being a lawyer, in part because of the unlikely influence of the actor Tom Cruise.

Whatever part he was playing, you wanted to do that, Mr. Kenniff said. I saw Days of Thunder, I wanted to be a racecar driver. I saw Cocktail, I wanted to become a bartender.

The movie that really influenced Mr. Kenniff was A Few Good Men, in which Mr. Cruise plays a member of the Judge Advocate Generals Corps, military lawyers who prosecute and defend members of the armed services.

After graduating from Hofstras law school, and spending several years at a law firm and the Westchester district attorneys office, Mr. Kenniff began the commissioning process. In early 2005, he was deployed to a military base right outside of Tikrit, Iraq.

While abroad, he defended soldiers who were charged with violations of military law and provided counsel to soldiers and civilians. He also sweated out a number of rocket attacks, said his roommate, Major Robert Kincaid, who added that Mr. Kenniff soon got used to the strikes.

We heard the alarms go off and I was like, Oh, were supposed to go to the shelter, Mr. Kincaid recalled. And he looks at me and goes, Are you going to do that? I think its safer in here.

Mr. Kenniff returned to the United States toward the end of 2005 and after about six more months as a prosecutor in Westchester, he left the office to start a law firm with another veteran, Steven M. Raiser, where over the past 15 years he has done defense work for a wide range of clients.

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Thomas Kenniff, Manhattan D.A. Candidate, Sees a City on the Brink - The New York Times