SAN FRANCISCO ( Associated Press) — San Francisco residents voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to recall progressive district attorney Chesa Boudin after a heated campaign that has captivated the nation and reformed crime, police and public safety in the famed liberal city. But the Democrats were badly divided.
watch: Rising crime prompted San Francisco voters to try to recall their district attorneys
Supporters of the recall cheered the results at a victory party, with California state leaders of the hotel and retailer’s unions applauding Boudin’s removal as a sign that visitors, shoppers and workers should be allowed to live in a city like will again be given priority in the region which depends heavily on tourism. He rejected Boudin’s attempts to portray him as a Republican.
“This election does not mean that San Francisco has gone too far on our approach to criminal justice,” Mary Jung, chair of the recall campaign, said in a statement. “Indeed, San Francisco has been a national lighthouse for progressive criminal justice reform for decades and will continue to do so with new leadership.”
Boudin, 41, was the first political candidate to win the position in November 2019 as part of a national wave of progressive prosecutors who promised to explore alternatives to incarceration, end the racist war on drugs and hold police officers accountable was.
But his time in office coincided with a depressing and horrifying pandemic in which viral footage of brazen shoplifting and attacks against Asian American people prompted some residents to launch a campaign to recall the son of the former public defender and left-wing activist.
Tuesday night’s partial return supported the recall of nearly 60 percent of voters, but Boudin was defiant, saying in a speech to supporters that he was overtaken by “right-wing billionaires.” He said voters were deeply disappointed by the pandemic and the city government which has failed to provide security, housing and equity.
“We have two cities. We have two systems of justice. We have one for the rich and the well-connected and a different one for everyone else. And that is exactly what we are fighting to change,” he said. Said justice was in his favor.
It was unclear Tuesday what Boudin’s glorious memory might mean at the national level and for the progressive prosecutor movement in California, where reform candidates compete against more traditional law-and-order candidates in a handful of races with mixed results. Was doing.
California’s progressive attorney general, Rob Bonta, who was appointed by Governor Gavin Newsom, was leading Tuesday night with 57 percent of the vote, easily leading into November’s general election. Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert, a critic of Boudin, who ran as an independent, did not proceed.
In Los Angeles County, the campaign to recall Progressive District Attorney George Gascon said in a statement that the results showed Gascon, a former San Francisco prosecutor, could be next.
But Miriam Krinsky, executive director of Fair and Just Prosecution, said the movement toward a more liberal approach to criminal justice was growing as more people understand that tough-talking prosecutors do not result in safe communities.
“If one can read anything in tonight’s results, it must be the distorted effect of a low vote recall process that is easily influenced by special interests and coming at a time of deep despair and shock, not an obvious and Committed to ending is regarded as a protest by the prosecutor. Failed crime-on-crime policies,” she said.
watch: The recent surge in violent crimes has again made ‘law and order’ a hot button topic
Mayor London Breed, who supported a more liberal Democrat in the 2019 district attorney race, will name Boudin’s replacement after results certified by the Elections Office and approved by the Board of Observers.
Boudin could even run in November when the race returns to the ballot.
Boudin’s time in office was marked by a fierce battle with the San Francisco Police Department, which accused his office of withholding evidence in a case against an officer. Boudin countered that when police failed to produce evidence it could not prosecute cases and made arrests in only 5 percent of cases.
He made headlines when he revealed that the police had used DNA collected from rape to arrest the victim in an unrelated property offence.
San Francisco has long been plagued by open drug dealing, vandalism, auto theft and home theft. Political experts say that the political newcomers, who won marginally in 2019, were the target of external forces, which made them easy targets of public dismay.
Boudin was a child when his parents, the left-wing Weather Underground Radicals, worked as drivers in a 1981 New York robbery that killed two police officers and a security guard. He was sentenced to decades in prison.
During the election campaign, he spoke of the pain of stepping through metal detectors to hug his parents and vowed to reform a system that breaks families apart. Kathy Boudin was released on parole in 2003 and died of cancer in May. David Gilbert was granted parole in October.
The recall campaign against Boudin was supported by the same people who successfully ousted three liberal members of the San Francisco school board in February. Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom, however, easily defeated the Republican-led recall last year.
