by Randy Shaw on February 21, 2022 (beyondchron.org)
Boudin’s 2019 Victory Party
Race Could Go Down to the Wire
Does the school board recall landslide signal a major citywide political shift? Or was it a one-off caused by factors unique to that election?
We’ll understand more about what’s happening in the city with the June recall election of District Attorney Chesa Boudin. Here’s my assessment of the race.
Boudin’s Advantages
Chesa Boudin has a bigger and more loyal political base than any of the recalled School Board members. He also has a national fundraising network that School Board members lacked. There are a huge number of people (many in the Public Defender’s office) willing to work day and night to retain Boudin.
Boudin will cast himself as a bulwark against police misconduct. As Heather Knight recently detailed, the San Francisco Police Department suffers from acute dysfunction. The SFPD is demoralized and ineffective. While some blame the low morale on Boudin, the SFPD has blamed the District Attorney for not prosecuting cases since at least the 1980’s.
School Board members did not have any other person or institution to blame. They cast votes to rename schools and remove murals. They mishandled changes at Lowell High School and flunked the school reopening process.
Boudin will make the case that he shouldn’t be blamed for the SFPD’s failures. He’ll cite prosecution statistics, Heather Knight’s high profile parklet vandalism story, and the lack of police visibility in the Tenderloin. The SFPD long had strong support in parts of San Francisco but this has declined sharply under Chief Scott.
Voters can identify a lot of police failures—-the Walgreens’ open shoplifting, failure to stop ongoing burglary at a cannabis outlet, the viral video of thefts of Louis Vuitton handbags in Unions Square—-but can they name a single defining “wrong” that defines Boudin’s failures? A wrong equal to the school renaming during the pandemic?
There are ample candidates—the revolving door for drug dealers ( repeat drug-dealing offenders are spending just five days in jail for each arrest under Boudin compared to 18 days before he took office), increased shoplifting and car break ins, and the overall sense of lawlessness and violence that many associate with the District Attorney’s approach. But the well-funded anti-recall campaign will blame these problems on the police, the courts and the pandemic.
Recall backers need a high-profile example of Boudin’s failure that cannot be blamed on outside factors. Relying on voters feeling a general sense of lawlessness may not be enough.
Finally, recall opponents will frame this as a right-wing attack on progressive District Attorneys. They will claim that supporting the recall promotes mass incarceration and a racist criminal justice system.
That’s a very effective political argument in San Francisco. It’s also completely false. Unlike other newly elected “progressive” DA’s, Boudin’s predecessor George Gascon opposed such reactionary policies—as did his predecessor Kamala Harris. Before Harris we had District Attorney Terrence Hallinan, a vocal opponent of racist policies including mass incarceration.
Boudin’s chief opponents in 2019 did not support racist practices. he would not be replaced by a DA espousing such policies.
Nevertheless, framing Boudin as part of a national criminal justice reform movement will dominate the anti-recall campaign. And it will likely get support from self-identified progressive voters who do not want to oppose criminal justice reform.
Boudin’s Disadvantages
The school board recall has built momentum for the anti-Boudin campaign. And whereas the school recall was heavily driven by Asian-American anger on the Westside, concern about the DA spans citywide. Many newly empowered Asian-American voters are troubled by the DA’s response to anti-AAPI violence; they will not sit out the recall.
I have always questioned the scope of Boudin support. I attribute his surprising victory to two factors: Mayor Breed’s misguided appointment of DA candidate Suzy Loftus as temporary DA during the campaign and the mayor’s failure to demand that Loftus and Nancy Tung cross-endorse. Both factors contributed to moderate/Asian-American Tung voters choosing Boudin rather than Loftus as their second choice.
The recall changes this dynamic. It’s an up or down vote on Boudin. That requires him to win a level of political support citywide that he may lack.
Chesa Boudin is not Mr. Personality. The positive side of this is that his behavior will not enrage voters as Alison Collins did in the school board recall (she even sued the district). But the downside is that Boudin lacks the personal connection with voters along the lines that we see true progressive Larry Krasner making in the documentary, Philly DA. Boudin won without making an emotional connection to voters; that absence hurts him in the recall.
A Fight for the Soul of San Francisco?
Is the political future of San Francisco at stake? Both sides may argue that it is.
Non-progressives feel San Francisco has gone way too far left. They see the massive Asian-American voter turnout for the school board recall as potentially moderating city politics. Progressives argue that “moderate” mayors have run the city since the Agnos era. (I use these terms as they are conventionally understood. Ed Lee was the most progressive mayor in San Francisco history but was always labeled a “moderate”).
If this election comes down to whether voters feel Chesa Boudin fits with their vision of San Francisco’s future, he is in deep trouble. His campaign needs to focus on the micro not the macro.
I wanted Chesa Boudin to succeed. My November 2019 story—“Will Chesa Boudin Prosecute Tenderloin Drug Dealers?” encouraged Tenderloin residents and activists to give him a fair chance. I described Boudin as “a true progressive who does not feel low-income communities should be containment zones for drug dealers. When Boudin met with a member of my staff during the campaign he expressed surprise that there was not more police visibility in the Tenderloin.”
So much for claims that Boudin is just doing what he campaigned on. Boudin has not called for more police visibility in the Tenderloin. Nor has he used his power to help the community. Sadly, our “progressive” DA has shown he doesn’t give a damn about the Tenderloin’s hard working residents.
As for a prediction now: We don’t know the mood of the San Francisco electorate in June. If the pandemic is declining, indoor dining in restaurants and tourism bouncing back, the SFPD remains in disarray and people are happy about the city returning to normal—all of which is certainly possible— than voters may not care much about the recall. But if public dissatisfaction with the state of the city remains as it now stands, Chesa Boudin faces an uphill fight.
Once the School Board recall qualified for the ballot I felt that it was certain to win. I currently see the Boudin recall as a toss-up.
Randy Shaw
Randy Shaw is the Editor of Beyond Chron and the Director of San Francisco’s Tenderloin Housing Clinic, which publishes Beyond Chron. Shaw’s latest book is Generation Priced Out: Who Gets to Live in the New Urban America. He is the author of four prior books on activism, including The Activist’s Handbook: Winning Social Change in the 21st Century, and Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century. He is also the author of The Tenderloin: Sex, Crime and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco
