When this editorial board interviews candidates for local office, we frequently ask them to opine on the job other officials are doing. When the topic turns to Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer, we inevitably hear an uneasy silence, a little chuckling and then some variation of, “Well, Todd will be Todd.” They note his “ready, fire, aim” reputation.

We have closely followed Spitzer’s career as county supervisor, state Assembly member, assistant district attorney, again as a county supervisor and, now as a DA seeking a second term. We’ve criticized him, praised him and had intense policy discussions with him. We’ve also worried about the maelstroms that hover around him.

Spitzer manages to be simultaneously infuriating and endearing. He’s ambitious and at times cynical. Yet he’s also disarmingly earnest and — unusual for a politician — open to criticism. He’s accessible to the media and, despite all his bluster, can be extremely thoughtful. We’ve decided to again endorse him.

Let’s dispense with the lurid attacks against him. His main opponent, Pete Hardin, has depicted Spitzer as a racist because of remarks he made during an internal debate about whether to seek the death penalty against a Black man — and because of a video of Spitzer using the N-word during a speech. We’ve opined on the issue before, so there’s no reason to revisit it in too much detail.

Simply put, Spitzer has a plausible explanation for his comments. In the video, he was quoting racist criminals to assure a minority lawyers’ group that he would zealously pursue hate-crimes cases. He has never shown a shred of racism in his career. This attack is preposterous and highlights a lack of substantive complaints against him.

With Spitzer, it’s important to distinguish posturing from policy. With his over-the-top law-and-order themes and support from police unions, it’s easy to view him as an old-style “Neanderthal” prosecutor, but the reality is more complex.

He actually is one of the few Republican DAs who has embraced criminal-justice reforms and has been willing to prosecute police misconduct. He even has taken issue with efforts to make Proposition 47 — the 2014 initiative that reclassified certain felonies as misdemeanors — the scapegoat for the state’s crime wave.

Most significantly, he’s proud of his office’s move away from what he saw as a “win at all costs” mentality under his predecessor. That ruffled feathers and created blowback within his office, which explains some of the recurring bad publicity leaked from the office. He has recently launched a pre-booking diversion pilot program to try to keep people out of jail, instituted gang-reduction programs and strictly limited the use of jailhouse snitches.

He’s arguably sought a third way (between the progressives and Neanderthals) that zeroes in on fighting serious crime — while still being open to efforts that better promote justice.

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He doesn’t go as far in the reform direction as we’d like — Spitzer’s effort to federalize certain local fentanyl cases in order to achieve longer sentences, for example, shows he’s still overly reliant on the outdated “lock ‘em up” approach. We also question the wisdom of pursuing death sentences in a state where they probably won’t come close to being carried out. We’d also like to see more evidence of a zero-tolerance policy toward police misbehavior.

But at least we know what we’re getting.

We don’t know what a Hardin administration would be like. Hardin speaks sensibly about the need for criminal justice reform, but his experience is spotty. He also faces his own scandals, including being criticized by a judge for going easy on a Marine accused of misconduct when he was a military prosecutor.

Spitzer obviously has excesses and peccadilloes, and we’ll continue to keep watch on some ongoing controversies, but he’s done a solid job as DA. There’s no serious case for replacing him with an unknown alternative.