Will San Francisco Recall Its District Attorney?
We don’t spend a ton of time tracking county-level races on our live blogs, but one election I’m keeping an eye on tonight is San Francisco’s Proposition H.
A yes on H will recall San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, a progressive elected to a four-year term in November 2019. In his two-plus years in office, he’s eliminated cash bail, which critics of the system argue criminalizes poverty by jailing only individuals who can’t afford to make bail; he’s stopped adding extra time to gang members’ sentences; he’s implemented diversion programs that allow individuals to avoid jail or prison and instead undergo education or rehabilitation programs focused on preventing reoffending; and he’s brought the first known excessive-use-of-force case against a San Francisco police officer.
These policies, though, have been implemented in a city that’s seen in recent years similar patterns of crime as other cities across the country. It’s why this recall attempt might be an early look at the role that crime and the rhetoric around it will play in the midterm elections. (The mayoral election in Los Angeles is another good case study.)
We’ve written a lot about how hard it is to identify trends in crime, understand its salience to voters and evaluate our individual risks from it. Crime trends are very hard to explain but very easy to feel, and in a state that votes as liberal as California, the way voters respond to what they’re feeling can tell us a lot about what they’re willing to change and by how much — not to mention that it could set a city of almost 900,000 people on a new path.
The limited polling we have on the recall indicates that Boudin is in real trouble. A late-May poll commissioned by the San Francisco Examiner found that 56 percent of likely voters would recall Boudin while 32 percent would not; 12 percent were still undecided. Internal polling doesn’t paint a much better outcome for the DA: A mid-May survey from Public Policy Polling, funded by the anti-recall campaign, had the recall winning by a 10-point margin, with 14 percent of likely voters undecided. Fundraising tells a similar story: The recall campaign has outspent the anti-recall effort by about $4.3 million. That said, Boudin’s campaign released a new poll showing a tie among likely voters, with 47 percent in favor and 47 percent opposed, so we’ll just have to see where the residents of San Francisco come down.