(Bloomberg) -- San Francisco residents voted to recall Chesa Boudin, a progressive district attorney who sought to reform the criminal-justice system but met fierce opposition from critics who painted him as too lenient on crime.
About 61% of voters in early returns favored ousting Boudin, according to the Associated Press. He’ll be replaced by an interim DA chosen by Mayor London Breed. The controversial referendum comes as local officials across the country debate approaches to public safety, and San Francisco’s economy struggles to recover from the pandemic. Boudin, 41, took office in January 2020 with promises of holding police accountable and ending harsh sentencing that fueled mass incarceration. But opponents blamed him for many of the city’s ills, including spikes in some categories of crime and drug use on the streets.
California’s recall-friendly process allowed Boudin’s detractors to get a referendum on the ballot, sparking a flood of national attention and local political jockeying in the months leading up to Tuesday’s election.
Boudin’s supporters argued that no prosecutor could single-handedly turn around crime trends, while the deeper problems plaguing San Francisco, like homelessness and mental illness, aren’t ones the district attorney has the power to address alone. Julie Edwards, a spokesperson for the campaign against the recall, cast Boudin’s opponents as part of a broader backlash to progressive policies, and said that they trafficked in misinformation and scare tactics to push their agenda.
But polling showed that even in a highly liberal city like San Francisco that professes to broadly support reform efforts, Boudin was unpopular. Frustration with his response to high-profile incidents of crime in the city, like shoplifting and hate crimes against Asian-Americans, also were likely factors in the recall’s success.
The recall campaign raised more than $7 million, mostly from PACs supported by prominent Bay Area tech, real estate and business leaders, including PayPal co-founder David Sacks and Republican donor William Oberndorf. Local papers like the San Francisco Chronicle and The San Francisco Examiner endorsed a “no” vote on the recall, and the ACLU of Northern California and Ripple Labs Inc. co-founder Chris Larsen donated to Boudin supporters’ smaller war chest.
Some locals stress that some of the factors that led to Boudin’s ejection – like management issues in his office – are hyper-local, and resist ascribing a broader narrative to his defeat.
“There are a lot of people on the right who see this victory as the rise or the return of the moderate to right-wing power structure in San Francisco,” said John Hamasaki, a former San Francisco police commissioner.
But Breed, a Democrat, is likely to appoint another progressive-leaning district attorney, and Hamasaki says shifting who’s in that office will likely have little impact on the way cases are prosecuted. “I don’t see any big broad changes made by any other district attorney that was to come in,” he said.
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