So here it is: Election Day, with the voters of San Francisco about to decide Chesa Boudin’s fate. The D.A.’s entire defense against getting recalled is that it’s the work of “Republican billionaires” determined to wreck the national movement toward criminal justice reform. This is a lie, and voters know and resent it. Republicans make up only 7 percent of San Francisco voters. If Boudin is recalled, it will not be by Republicans, but by Democrats. And if he’s recalled by a huge margin, it’s because huge numbers of San Francisco Democrats are fed up with him.
In a race this pivotal, everybody is putting their own spin on what the result—whatever it is—means. Republicans and conservatives and also some moderate Democrats say a Boudin recall will prove that, even in liberal San Francisco, the conjoined anti-cop and pro-defendant movements have gone too far, allowing criminals to run rampant. Democrats and progressives are less coherent; in the event Boudin is ousted, they’ll probably claim that those “Republican billionaires” hoodwinked the voters with massive ad buys. They’ll also claim that ousting Boudin is not necessarily a sign that voters have had it with reform, only that Boudin was a flawed candidate, caught in a crossfire not of his making.
If Boudin were to survive, of course, the spins would be entirely different. Progressives will hail it as halting the onslaught of “Republican billionaires” and praise voters for seeing through the propaganda. Conservatives will point to the closeness of the results and claim it’s only a matter of time before San Francisco turns red, or at least purple.
Either way, all of America, or at least the chattering classes, is looking at this election. My own view, for what it’s worth, is that I hope Boudin is recalled, and the bigger the margin, the better. One of the progressive memes out there is that voters still want criminal justice reform, including holding police accountable, but I’m not so sure that’s true. If we look at police forces across the country, not just here in Oakland but everywhere, it’s clear that there’s been a lot of “reform” over the past five or ten years. Every cop on the street knows the new rules and understands that he’d better abide by them, or else find himself in trouble. Data-based policing is the norm now: statistics show what works and what doesn’t, and they also hold individual cops to more exacting standards. Police forces everywhere are losing personnel because policing has become so difficult (over and above its dangers); departments have low solve rates because there simply aren’t enough investigators. So what other types of “reforms” do criminal justice advocates believe voters want? If you ask me, I’d say, Let’s hit the pause button for a while. Let police departments absorb all the new rules before imposing yet more upon them. And don’t impose new rules just for the hell of it. Every regulation needs to justify itself, and not be made by “reform” advocates anxious to stymie the police.
So I’ll be watching the results of today’s election closely. I predict Boudin loses. If he somehow survives, I’ll have to explain why I got it wrong. But I don’t think that’s going to happen.
Steve Heimoff