If the job of New York's attorney general was just to be a super-prosecutor, any competent district attorney would do. But criminal prosecution is really a small part of the job. What the next attorney general most represents is the people of New York's best shot at good government.

That means both a government that's as clean as we can hope, and one that serves citizens well. That takes more than legal expertise. It takes a mind-set that fully appreciates that the job is about far more than the state's penal law.

Sen. Eric Schneiderman, a Democrat, understands that better than his Republican opponent, Staten Island District Attorney Dan Donovan. He brings the broad view this post demands.