On the menu today: How often does the state of California give conservatives some good news? San Francisco district attorney Chesa Boudin is on his way out, Los Angeles billionaire Rick Caruso got the most votes in yesterday’s primary, there’s a Republican with an actual shot to win a statewide race, and the California GOP did something yesterday it hasn’t achieved in a decade. Meanwhile . . . aren’t you glad you don’t work at the Washington Post?
California’s Defenestration
Do you want a reason to smile this morning? Voters in San Francisco — Nancy Pelosi’s backyard! Arguably the most progressive and hard-left big city in America! — overwhelmingly supported the recall of Chesa Boudin, the city’s radical district attorney, two years after he was elected on a platform that emphasized reducing the jail population and prioritizing “restorative justice.” The vote wasn’t even close — 59.98 percent for recall, 40.02 percent against.
Here’s a quick refresher, from the NR editorial calling for Boudin’s ouster:
For those in need of an introduction, Boudin is left-wing royalty. When he was 14 months old, his parents were arrested and convicted of murder for their role in the Brink’s armored-car robbery of 1981, which killed two cops and a Brink’s guard. They were members of the left-wing Weather Underground. He was raised by fellow Weather Underground members Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. Boudin temporarily served as a translator in the Venezuela Presidential Palace under Hugo Chávez.
Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn! And you thought you would stop hearing about them after Obama left office. They are truly the radical left’s gift that keeps on giving:
In 2019, with the backing of George Soros, he ran for district attorney on a platform of ending mass incarceration and cash bail, as well as paralyzing police under the guise of aggressively hunting for evidence of police misconduct. Upon taking office, he unveiled an even more radical agenda of de-emphasizing the prosecution of drug cases and property offenses. In the first year, he reduced San Francisco’s jail population by 25 percent. . . .
Boudin’s record reflects his deepest views. He sees the criminal-justice system and the police as the problem in the lives of criminals, and he views the public’s impatience with crime and its demands for justice and good public order as the cause of more evil than good. He is not just bad at the job, but unfit for office. His recall is a necessary precondition for improving life in San Francisco.
As Jeff Blehar acidly observed, “Alas, poor Chesa Boudin. I hear they’re hiring Brinks truck drivers, though.”
Politico summarized why this wasn’t just another district-attorney recall:
The result is likely to reverberate far beyond San Francisco. Opponents of criminal justice reform and Republicans seeking to depict Democrats as weak on public safety will likely cite Boudin’s rejection in a deeply liberal city as evidence that voters are balking at efforts to ease sentencing and reduce incarceration.
Progressive district attorneys took a fundamentally anti-policing stance on crime in America’s biggest cities, and even the most sympathetic populations of voters are concluding that it is failing them. At least on this issue, sweeping change is coming to America, even to its most progressive corners. I guess you could say that you don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind — eh, you get the idea.
A little further down the coast, billionaire developer and relatively right-of-center-voice Rick Caruso did not win the Los Angeles mayor’s race outright, but he got the most votes. As of this writing — with a frustratingly low 34 percent of precincts reporting — Caruso won 42 percent, and establishment favorite, Representative Karen Bass, has just under 37 percent.