Actually, he never went away. Just three weeks after his historic recall, San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin returned to the headlines today, with the San Francisco Chronicle blaring, column-to-column, that “Boudin won’t rule out new run for D.A.” (He’ll be turned out of office in a week or so.)
In an interview, Boudin was unrepentant about the recall, which was triggered by the perception of 55% of voters that he was too soft on crime. He also was coy about whether or not he’ll run again in November. But reading through the article, with its implications and hints, I’m pretty sure that, on Nov. 8, Boudin’s name will be on the ballot.
“A lot of my supporters and endorsements and donors and Democratic clubs…are urging me to run…”, he said. That’s more than a trial balloon; it’s practically a promise to them that they ought to get busy and work over the summer organizing a ground campaign.
If he’s not running, why would Boudin have given the interview so soon after being ousted? I smell the handiwork of a political consultant here. Boudin likely was told to strike while the iron is hot: to stay in the news before his name fades away into the irrelevance of the past. Once you’re old news, it’s nearly impossible to regain buzz. Ask Donald Trump.
Sadly, from my point of view, Boudin appears not to have learned a thing from his humiliating defeat. True, he acknowledged that he had made some mistakes. “We make mistakes every day. All of us do,” he said, without identifying precisely what those mistakes were. But he couldn’t bring himself to admit that his “progressive justice” approach had made San Francisco less safe, its citizens more worried than ever. Instead, Boudin blamed his “mistakes” on political naivete. “I didn’t make major changes when political winds shifted or when it was politically expedient to do so.” He also tried to pre-emptively scare the public about electing someone else who might have little prosecutorial experience. His fear, he said, “is that the person appointed [to fill his seat] with no mandate, having not gone through the traditional vetting of a normal election where they’re asked for a specific policy commitment, will not publicly reverse course, but instead quietly, slowly undermine the work that we’ve done these last 2½ years.”
This is the picture of a man angered and embittered by what he considers the unjust punishment that ungrateful voters inflicted on him. “I was attacked for literally everything that’s wrong in the city, things that have been wrong for decades.” That isn’t even remotely true. Nobody blamed Boudin for MUNI’s woes, or inflation, or a ghost-empty downtown, or COVID, or even for homelessness. What people attacked Boudin for was instructing his staff not to ask for cash bail (which resulted in more perps on the streets), for refusing to use gang enhancements in filing charges (which resulted in lesser sentences for inveterate gangbangers), for not adding “strikes” (previous convictions) to enhance prison time, and for not charging youths as adults in serious felonies. All of these things seemed ridiculous to the majority of voters.
We’re in a tough-on-crime era and Boudin either fails to understand it, or is dismissive of voters’ legitimate longing for safety. America does go through these cycles from time to time; woe to the politician who doesn’t recognize when “the political winds shift,” because he will be run out of office. Chesa Boudin failed to live up to the enormous responsibility of his high office: his job was to protect the public and help them sleep better at night by removing, or minimizing, the fear of them and their loved ones becoming victims. Boudin utterly fizzled in that department. Instead, he mistakenly believed his chief responsibility was to “reform” criminal justice in San Francisco, including making life harder for the police. That wrong thinking made San Franciscans more afraid, and it cost Boudin his job. We can only hope that voters aren’t dumb enough to return him to office.
Steve Heimoff