California Remains ‘National Beacon’ for Justice Reform, Says Architect of Boudin Recall

San Francisco voters’ decision to recall DA Chesa Boudin won’t eclipse the city’s position as a “national beacon’ for justice reforms, insists the chief architect of the recall movement.

“This election does not mean that San Francisco has drifted to the far right on our approach to criminal justice,” Mary Jung, the chair of the recall campaign, said Tuesday night, after voting results showed 60 percent in favor of scrapping Boudin.

“In fact, San Francisco has been a national beacon for progressive criminal justice reform for decades and will continue to do so with new leadership.”

The 2019 victory of Boudin, a public defender, was seen as monumental for the progressive left.  In office, however, he faced a simmering revolt from opponents in his own office as well as police, when he began fulfilling election pledges to eliminate money bail and not prosecute some non-violent offenses.

Nevertheless, observers said the results in San Francisco reflected a stark political shift from the reform atmosphere two years ago, fueled in part by rising violent crime.

Law and order issues also took center stage in Los Angeles, where former Republican billionaire Rick Caruso spent millions campaigning as a crime-fighter and now enters a run-off election in the Los Angeles mayoral race.

Caruso pitched himself as a moderate Democrat who could fix the cities soaring crime and homelessness crises. He vowed to add 1,500 officers to the police department and promoted the endorsement of William J. Bratton, the former police chief famous for his broken-windows policy.

“People are not in a good mood and they have reason not to be in a good mood,” said Garry South, a Los Angeles-based Democratic strategist. “It’s not just the crime issue. It’s the homelessness. It’s the high price of gasoline.”

The race for Orange County’s next district attorney is also testing voters’ appetite for criminal justice reform.

According to preliminary results, incumbent Todd Spitzer holds a significant lead over his challengers, which can nullify a run-off election if held.

Spitzer clashed with the lone Democrat in the race, Pete Hardin, a former Orange County prosecutor.

Hardin has said that, if elected, he would not seek the death penalty in any prosecutions. Instead, he promised to replace cash bail with a risk-based system and to draw back on charging juveniles as adults. Many of the ideas align him with some of the more progressive district attorneys in the nation.

But Spitzer said he does not want Orange County to adopt the ideology “that has destroyed Los Angeles and San Francisco.”

“I will continue to prioritize the prosecution of violent criminals and hate crimes, while pursuing common-sense criminal justice reforms that do not jeopardize public safety,” Spitzer added.

Reformers around the country, however, insisted that the California results were not a setback.

“The reform-minded prosecutor movement is here to stay,” said Miriam Krinsky, Executive Director of Fair and Just Prosecution, a group that promotes moving beyond incarceration-driven approaches to crime reduction, in a statement.

Krinsky pointed to several circumstances other than crime that affected Boudin, including social conditions worsened by the pandemic, which she claimed effectively turned Boudin into a scapegoat for the city’s worsening homelessness crisis.

“We are deeply proud of the progress Chesa Boudin has made as San Francisco District Attorney and disappointed that his vision for a safer and more just city has been obstructed by a deep-pocketed special interest campaign that peddled fear and disinformation,” she said.

“Yet, even in the face of this isolated result, the reform-minded prosecutor movement continues to grow stronger because communities recognize that criminal justice reform makes us safer.”

But another potential victim of the tough-on-crime mood is Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon, who survived one recall attempt, and is expected to face another.

Deputy LA District Attorney Jon Hatami made that clear in an interview with Fox News Tuesday night.

“What I want to tell everybody and tell [Los Angeles DA] George Gascon is, you’re next,” said Hatami. “The people of Los Angeles have had enough.”

Meanwhile, San Francisco Mayor London Breed is expected to name a replace for Boudin, who must vacate the office 10 days after the election results are certified. Voters will get another chance to choose a permanent DA during the Fall, 2023 elections.

James Van Bramer is Associate Editor of The Crime Report