As Americans all around the country are reckoning with the fallout of experiments in progressive policies, they’re taking steps to course correct.
Voters in San Francisco, California, seen as a progressive haven, are waking up to that reality this year and using the ballot box to fight back.
In the latest chapter of their bid to regain control of their city, residents voted 60% in favor of recalling District Attorney Chesa Boudin — who CBS News described as “one of the nation’s most progressive top prosecutors.”
“Boudin sought to reform the criminal justice system, ending the use of cash bail, stopping the prosecution of minors as adults, and focused on lowering jail populations amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Boudin also became the first San Francisco DA to file homicide charges against city police officers,” CBS notes.
Boudin was elected in 2019 and has faced complaints that he is not prosecuting criminals aggressively.
So how did San Francisco’s experiment with this progressive prosecutor work out?
A Bay Area Council poll released in March 2022 found that just 47% of residents said the region was safe, compared to 63% in 2019.
Sixty-five percent of respondents said they avoid downtown areas in the Bay Area due to concerns about crime. And 91% said they were concerned about car or home break-ins, 86% were concerned about violent crime, and 83% were concerned about public drug use.
Meanwhile, one in five of the 48% of people who said they were considering leaving the area pointed to concerns about crime.
And there’s a good reason for that. Since Boudin was elected, murders, gun violence, aggravated assaults, and car break-ins are all up.
If you listen to Boudin and his progressive friends, the recall election is the result of “right-wing billionaires” and the city’s police union who dropped tons of money to oust him and “exploited” residents who are “upset.”
This is a ludicrous claim. Residents of the city see the results of progressive policies, and they do not like them.
Even San Francisco Mayor London Breed (D), who slashed the city’s police department budget in 2020, appears to have had an epiphany about lax crime policies and enforcement and announced a plan to crack down on the “bullsh*t” that is “destroying” the city.
“It is time that the reign of criminals who are destroying our city, it is time for it to come to an end. And it comes to an end when we take the steps to be more aggressive with law enforcement. More aggressive with the changes in our policies and less tolerant of all the bullsh*t that has destroyed our city,” Breed said in December.
San Francisco Democrat Mayor London Breed announces she wants more "aggressive" law enforcement to combat skyrocketing crime, says progressive policies are "bullshit"
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) December 15, 2021
She previously supported defunding the police
pic.twitter.com/0HJknMV798
The claim that the recall election was driven by the right-wing might sound familiar.
That’s because after residents in San Francisco voted overwhelmingly in February to recall three school board members for focusing more on social justice issues than reopening schools after the COVID-19 pandemic, opponents of the recall argued it was driven by conservatives.
Liberals also insisted that the attempt to recall California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) was driven by Republicans.
But here’s where that argument runs into trouble for Boudin and the school board members.
Voters in San Francisco handily rejected the effort to oust Newsom last year.
And on Tuesday, Newsom won 75% of the vote in the city in the state’s jungle primary — where anyone can run — while the Republican candidate won 7%.
San Franciscans voted twice to reject these woke progressive officials, but still backed Newsom.
Tuesday’s results are a clear message that progressives like Boudin are a step too far, even for liberal San Francisco.
If Democrats want to keep winning elections, they’ll realize that these progressive policies are just going too far and take a step back to the center.
Or they can just keep making excuses for their losses and blaming conservatives and see what happens. But they can’t say they didn’t have any warning.
