Editorial Board of the Boston Globe: David Solet for Middlesex DA.

The race for Middlesex district attorney is a race between two seasoned prosecutors. Incumbent Marian Ryan, who took over as top prosecutor in 2013, started her career in that office in 1980. Her challenger, David Solet, who started his career there in 2001, resigned a year ago to run against his former boss and colleague.

Both Ryan, 71, and Solet, 50, have experience and passion for the job. But the Globe editorial board is endorsing Solet because of his exceptional record of advocacy and compassion for long-forgotten victims of crime and his commitment to changing the way an office, long-criticized for its turnover of personnel and lack of transparency, is run.

Solet, who went to work in the Middlesex DA’s office after graduating from Harvard Law School in 2001, has prosecuted a broad range of crimes, including murder, domestic violence, organized crime, and public corruption. From 2015 to 2019, during the administration of former governor Charlie Baker, he served as chief legal counsel for the Executive Office of Public Safety and Security.

In 2019, he returned to the DA’s office, where he started and led the Cold Case Homicide Unit, which is credited with solving more than a dozen cases. In an interview with the editorial board, he said he was motivated by the desire to speak for “people who did not have a voice.” As he also told the board, a prosecutor is “not just there to win cases, but to do justice,” and that is what he worked to do for victims whose cases had ended up in the cold case files.

Solet, who was named the Middlesex DA’s “Prosecutor of the Year” in 2025, resigned last September over what he said were disagreements with Ryan over priorities and management style. If he wins the Sept. 1 primary and goes on to become DA, he wants to focus, among other things, on stopping illegal gun trafficking and said he would work to close loopholes that prevent prosecutors from asking that suspects be held without bail as a danger to the public in certain cases.

“A critical part of being the district attorney is not just using the laws we have to protect people … but speaking out when you know the laws we have, have failed,” he told the board.

Solet’s campaign website touts the more than 40 endorsements he has received from law enforcement and public safety organizations, and Ryan, who told the editorial board that she does not accept endorsements from police unions, has raised that as a point of concern. In a follow-up interview with the editorial board, Solet said the idea “that anybody who accepts support, political or financial, from somebody, means you are beholden to that person” is misguided. Whether that support comes from a police union or a criminal defense lawyer, “either you trust that somebody knows how to separate political support from doing the right thing, or you don’t,” he said.

The editorial board believes that Solet can do that, separate political support from doing the right thing if a law enforcement officer is involved in alleged wrongdoing. Working in the DA’s office, he has shown a willingness to take on public officials. In one example he provided to the board, he led the prosecution of an investigator for the Alcoholic Beverages and Control Commission for extortion.

However, that was a while ago. Today, a commitment to taking on the powerful, especially in law enforcement, is even more important.

Under Ryan’s leadership, the Middlesex DA’s office has been dealing with fallout from the controversy involving the 2023 crash of a State Police cruiser driven by State Police Sergeant Scott Quigley when he was allegedly drunk, which resulted in the death of a disabled passenger in a wheelchair van. The crash happened while Quigley was working as a homicide investigator as part of the State Police Unit assigned to Ryan’s office. But as Ryan told the editorial board, she was never notified about the crash or Quigley’s alleged intoxication. After details surfaced when the crash victim’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit and through in an unrelated murder case, she called for an independent investigation into the crash and alleged cover-up. Given Quigley’s role investigating homicide cases, there are now questions about whether they are tainted by his own alleged wrongdoing.

In the aftermath of the Quigley controversy, Ryan told the editorial board that she has set a “high bar of police accountability.” Yet how she did not know that a homicide investigator in the DA’s office was involved in a serious cruiser crash at the time that it happened is difficult to understand.

The Middlesex DA’s office serves 54 cities and towns in what is the most populous county in Massachusetts and New England. The office prosecutes approximately 39,000 cases a year in 12 district courts, four juvenile courts, and two superior courts.

Ryan, who was appointed to the job in 2013, has subsequently won election three times. She’s considered a progressive prosecutor. She backs criminal justice reform, established an opioid crisis response program, and has taken a strong stand against the anti-immigrant policies of the Trump administration. Ryan, the only female DA in Massachusetts, has been endorsed by Attorney General Andrea Campbell and former Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis.

But over the years, she has periodically come under fire for a management style that critics contend has led to a high turnover rate. Ryan disputes that characterization of her office and attributes any turnover to salary issues.

When the Globe endorsed Ryan in 2014, the board cited her prosecutorial experience. Still, the Globe endorsement referenced what Ryan “admits is a tough management style,” and also cited concerns about a lack of transparency.

Twelve years later, those issues persist.

Solet has been endorsed by Lisa McGovern, a former Massachusetts Lawyer of the Year, who worked with him in Ryan’s office and who describes him as “a team leader” who can “inspire people to do better jobs.”

Experience, leadership, and the ability to inspire prosecutors to do better jobs. That’s what Solet represents and that’s why the Globe editorial board is endorsing him.