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      The Real Meaning of Chesa Boudin’s Recall

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      Asthaa Chaturvedi, Sydney Harper, Nina Feldman and Marion Lozano, Chelsea Daniel and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherThis episode contains strong language.This week, voters in San Francisco ousted Chesa Boudin, their progressive district attorney. The move was seen as a rejection of a class of prosecutors who are determined to overhaul the criminal justice system.But what happened to Mr. Boudin is really a fine point at the end of a much longer story.On today’s episodeAstead W. Herndon, a national political reporter for The New York Times.Chesa Boudin in San Francisco on Tuesday. The vote against him is set to reverberate through Democratic politics as the party fine-tunes its messaging on crime before the midterms.Gabrielle Lurie/San Francisco Chronicle, via Associated PressBackground readingBy ousting Mr. Boudin, voters in San Francisco put an end to one of the United States’ most pioneering experiments in criminal justice overhaul.The progressive backlash in California has sent a signal about the potency of law and order as a political message in 2022.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.Transcripts of each episode are available by the next workday. You can find them at the top of the page.Astead W. Herndon contributed reporting.The Daily is made by Lisa Tobin, Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Larissa Anderson, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Dave Shaw, Sydney Harper, Robert Jimison, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Kaitlin Roberts, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Anita Badejo, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Chelsea Daniel, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky and John Ketchum.Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Cliff Levy, Lauren Jackson, Julia Simon, Mahima Chablani, Sofia Milan, Desiree Ibekwe, Wendy Dorr, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Renan Borelli and Maddy Masiello. More

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      California Sends Democrats and the Nation a Message on Crime

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      LOS ANGELES — Voters in California delivered a stark warning to the Democratic Party on Tuesday about the potency of law and order as a political message in 2022, as a Republican-turned-Democrat campaigning as a crime-fighter vaulted into a runoff in the mayoral primary in Los Angeles and a progressive prosecutor in San Francisco was recalled in a landslide.The two results made vivid the depths of voter frustration over rising crime and rampant homelessness in even the most progressive corners of the country — and are the latest signs of a restless Democratic electorate that was promised a return to normalcy under President Biden and yet remains unsatisfied with the nation’s state of affairs.“People are not in a good mood, and they have reason not to be in a good mood,” said Garry South, a Los Angeles-based Democratic strategist. “It’s not just the crime issue. It’s the homelessness. It’s the high price of gasoline.”The West Coast contests were being monitored closely by strategists and leaders in both parties around the country, as Democrats seek to hold together a fractious and diverse political coalition that can be divided both by race and ideology over criminal justice.In Los Angeles, Rick Caruso, a billionaire luxury mall developer, spent nearly $41 million telling voters how he would restore order in the city, vowing to add 1,500 officers to the police department and promoting the endorsement of William J. Bratton, the former police chief famous for his broken-windows policy. The race now heads to a November runoff. Mr. Caruso will face Representative Karen Bass, the Democratic former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. Mr. Caruso had about 42 percent of the vote and Ms. Bass had around 37 percent early Wednesday morning.In San Francisco, about 60 percent of voters recalled Chesa Boudin, a former public defender who became district attorney in 2019 in a huge win for the progressive left. He promised then that “the tough-on-crime policies and rhetoric of the 1990s and early 2000s are on their way out.” Instead, he is.Chesa Boudin, the San Francisco district attorney, making final campaign appearances on Tuesday.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesThe elections on Tuesday showed the extent to which the political winds have shifted even in Democratic cities in the two years since George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer. The initial rally cry on the left then — “defund the police” — has since become so politically toxic that it is now more often used by Republicans as an epithet than by Democrats as an earnest policy proposal. And the crusading energy to overhaul policing in the face of rising crime has waned.For Democrats, the issue of crime and disorder threatens to drive a wedge between some of the party’s core constituencies, as some voters demand action on racial and systemic disparities while others are focused on their own sense of safety in their homes and neighborhoods.“People walking the streets, in many cases, feel themselves in danger, and that’s got to be dealt with,” said Willie Brown, a Democrat who is the former mayor of San Francisco.But Mr. Brown said too many Democrats do not want to talk about “what cops do” for fear of crossing the party’s activist class and offending “A.O.S. or A.O.C. or whatever that woman’s name is,” he said dismissively of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, the influential progressive.In a sign of how crime can divide the party in unusual ways, public and internal polling showed how the crime-and-homelessness campaign of Mr. Caruso, who is white, helped him make inroads with a large swath of Black men, even as he ran against Ms. Bass, who is Black. In one May survey, Mr. Caruso was performing more than 30 percentage points better among Black men than women.Mr. Caruso found traction in the heavily Democratic city despite being a longtime Republican who then became an independent and only joined the Democratic Party just before running for office. He ran a campaign promising to “clean up” the city and hailed Tuesday’s results as “a great awakening.”Jefrey Pollock, a pollster for Mr. Caruso, said the results should be a take-heed moment for the party.“If the Democratic primary electorate is showing a shift toward the middle on police and crime issues, then it is an even larger concern when thinking about the November general elections,” said Mr. Pollock, who also works for at-risk Democratic congressional candidates in other states.Turnout was low on Tuesday across California. And there is always a risk of over-interpreting local races where distinctly local dynamics are often at play. Mr. Caruso’s vast financial advantage — he outspent Ms. Bass by more than 10-to-1 — is not replicable in most races, and he still faces a fierce fight in the fall.Steve Soboroff, a Los Angeles police commissioner who himself ran for mayor in 2001 and endorsed Ms. Bass this year, was unimpressed by Mr. Caruso’s “basic guttural knee-jerk messages” on crime and his final showing, given his vast spending.“Caruso hit a glass ceiling made of Waterford crystal,” he said.In her own election night speech, Ms. Bass referenced the tilted financial playing field. “All of us stood strong against an onslaught,” she said.Election workers wait for voters at the Avalon Carver Community Center in Los Angeles on Tuesday.Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesStill, Mr. Pollock noted that vulnerable congressional Democrats are already hearing about crime back home and racing to show how they differ with the “progressive trends on handling crime.” In Washington, House Democrats boosted funding and grants for local and state law enforcement by more than $500 million in this year’s appropriations package, delivering Democratic lawmakers a talking point to rebuff “defund” attacks from Republicans.And at the White House, Mr. Biden has made a point of outright rejecting the most severe rhetoric embraced by the activist left.“The answer is not to defund the police,” Mr. Biden said in February when he visited New York City, where Mayor Eric Adams, who won in 2021 primarily on a crime-fighting message, has been held up as an example of how to approach the issue.Mr. Biden’s chief of staff, Ron Klain, met privately with Mr. Adams this spring in part to strategize on approaches to public safety. “He was empathetic to the plight and the issue that we’re all facing,” Frank Carone, Mr. Adams’s chief of staff, said of Mr. Klain.The extent to which crime is actually up depends on the category being measured and the particular jurisdiction. But strategists in both parties said that whatever the data shows, there is a widespread sense that daily life in big-city America is no longer as safe as it once was.“There are voters in the suburbs and exurbs all across this country — they’re seeing what’s happening in cities,” said Dan Conston, who heads the leading super PAC for House Republicans. “They’re both aghast and concerned for their communities.”Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      Who won and who lost in Tuesday’s primary elections.

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      Voters in seven states weighed in on key contests in Tuesday’s primaries. Here is a rundown of some of the most notable wins and losses:CaliforniaSan Francisco recalled its progressive district attorney, Chesa Boudin. Mr. Boudin had enacted sweeping overhauls since being elected two years ago and faced criticism that those changes led to increases in crime.Rick Caruso, the billionaire developer, and Representative Karen Bass will square off in a runoff contest to be the mayor of Los Angeles.Gov. Gavin Newsom, who last year easily beat back a Republican-led recall effort, will face State Senator Brian Dahle, a Republican.Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, will advance to the November runoff after his first place finish in the open primary for that office. A second candidate has not been determined yet.Representative Michelle Steel, a freshman Republican, will face Jay Chen, a Democrat and Navy reservist.Scott Baugh, a former leader of the California Assembly, fended off a crowded Republican field on Tuesday to earn the right to challenge Representative Katie Porter.Representative Mike Garcia, a Republican, will face Christy Smith, a former Democratic state legislator, for the third time.Kevin Kiley, a Republican state legislator backed by former President Donald J. Trump, will compete against the Democrat, Kermit Jones, who is a Navy veteran and physician, in the Third Congressional District.New JerseyRobert J. Menendez Jr., the son of Senator Bob Menendez, won his House Democratic primary in the Eighth Congressional District.Tom Kean Jr., a former lawmaker and the son of a two-term New Jersey governor, won the Republican nomination in the state’s Seventh Congressional District. He now faces Representative Tom Malinowski, the Democratic incumbent.IowaSenator Charles E. Grassley, 88, easily won his primary race and will run against Mike Franken, a retired Navy admiral who won the Democratic primary for Senate.State Senator Zach Nunn won the Republican nomination for Iowa’s Third Congressional District. Mr. Nunn will face Representative Cindy Axne, the Democratic incumbent.New MexicoMark Ronchetti, a former Albuquerque television meteorologist, was the Republican’s pick to challenge Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat.Gabe Vasquez, a Las Cruces city councilor, won the Democratic nomination for New Mexico’s Second Congressional District. Mr. Vasquez will face Representative Yvette Herrell, the Republican incumbent.Raúl Torrez, the Bernalillo County district attorney, defeated Brian Colón, the state auditor, in the Democratic primary for attorney general.South DakotaVoters defeated an effort to increase the level of support needed to pass most voter-initiated referendums to 60 percent from a majority.Gov. Kristi Noem won her Republican primary, and so did Senator John Thune.MississippiRepresentative Steven Palazzo, a Republican facing an ethics investigation, was forced into a runoff election in his party’s primary, according to The Associated Press. It has not yet been announced who he will face later this month. More

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      In San Francisco, Democrats Are at War With Themselves Over Crime

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      Fueled by concerns about burglaries and hate crimes, San Francisco’s liberal district attorney, Chesa Boudin, faces a divisive recall in a famously progressive city.SAN FRANCISCO — As the former chair of the San Francisco Democratic Party, Mary Jung has a long list of liberal bona fides, including her early days in politics volunteering in Ohio for the presidential campaign of George McGovern and her service on the board of the local Planned Parenthood branch. “In Cleveland, I was considered a communist,” she said in her San Francisco office.But the squalor and petty crime that she sees as crescendoing on some city streets — her office has been broken into four times during the coronavirus pandemic — has tested her liberal outlook. Last year, on the same day her granddaughter was born, she watched a video of a mentally ill man punching an older Chinese woman in broad daylight on Market Street.Ms. Jung, director of government affairs for the San Francisco Association of Realtors and head of a Realtors foundation that assists homeless people, wondered what kind of city her granddaughter would grow up in. “I thought, ‘Am I going to be able to take her out in the stroller?’”Now she finds herself leading what has been called a Democratic civil war in one of America’s most liberal cities: an effort to recall San Francisco’s district attorney, Chesa Boudin, that has echoes of the party’s larger split over how to handle matters of crime and punishment. In an overwhelmingly Democratic city, liberals and independents will decide a recall that is being financially backed by conservative donors.“What shade of blue are you — that’s really what it comes down to,” said Lilly Rapson, the campaign manager of the recall and Ms. Jung’s partner in the endeavor. A lifelong Democrat, Ms. Rapson said she was motivated to lead the campaign after her home was broken into last year as she slept.There is no compelling evidence that Mr. Boudin’s policies have made crime significantly worse in San Francisco. Overall crime in San Francisco has changed little since Mr. Boudin took office in early 2020.But his message of leniency for perpetrators has rankled residents of the city, many of whom feel unsafe and violated by property crimes. Like a president facing election during a bad economy, Mr. Boudin finds himself a vessel for residents’ pandemic angst and their frustrations over a wave of burglaries and other property crimes in well-to-do areas. Some residents, especially the city’s sizable Asian American population, also feel that a spike in hate crimes has made it unsafe to walk the streets.If successful, the recall would overturn one of the nation’s boldest efforts in criminal justice reform: an experiment to install a former public defender as the protector of public safety with promises to reduce mass incarceration, hold the police accountable and tackle racial disparities in the justice system.A vote to push Mr. Boudin from office would signal to Democrats that talking tough on crime could be a winning message in the midterm elections, and deal a blow to a national movement that has elected progressive prosecutors in cities such as Philadelphia, Chicago and Los Angeles.Mr. Boudin faced long odds in his race to become San Francisco’s district attorney two years ago.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesThe election comes as San Francisco is being convulsed by debates over the disorder of its streets — car break-ins, tent encampments that dot the sidewalks in some neighborhoods and the open-air markets peddling illicit fentanyl that has killed more people in the city than Covid-19.Read More About the Homelessness Crisis in America‘Invisible Child’: In 2013, a five-part Times series told the story of Dasani, an 11-year-old Black girl who lived in a Brooklyn homeless shelter. Today, she’s still struggling.A Rising Death Toll: More than ever it has become deadly to be homeless in America, especially for men in their 50s and 60s.Housing Discrimination: A voucher program aimed at reducing homelessness in New York City has been hamstrung by the discriminatory practices of landlords and real estate agents.Los Angeles Goes to War With Itself: The pandemic has intensified a bitter fight over homelessness in the city — with no end in sight.Mr. Boudin, 41, was an outsider to San Francisco politics who grew up while his parents, 1960s radicals with the Weather Underground, went to prison for their role in the notorious 1981 robbery of a Brink’s armored car in New York that left two police officers and a bank guard dead.He went on to become a Rhodes Scholar who graduated from Yale College and Yale Law School before starting his legal career as a public defender. In 2019, Mr. Boudin sought to move across the courtroom and was elected as the city’s top prosecutor, assuming office just before the pandemic.He promised to end cash bail, stop prosecuting children as adults and expand diversion programs that offer defendants a chance at rehabilitation instead of prison — all steps he has taken while in office. Almost immediately, his opponents began collecting signatures toward a recall.“It’s not been an easy time to start a career in public life,” he said recently at a community forum in the North Beach neighborhood, which was interrupted by protesters outside chanting, “Recall Chesa!”On the campaign trail, Mr. Boudin is facing stiff headwinds. Several polls showed him down at least 10 points. In fighting to keep his job, he has leaned on two main strategies: associate, at every turn, the recall effort with Republicans, and confront voters with data that shows overall crime has not increased meaningfully while he has been in office, even as some categories have risen during the pandemic.He has referred to one of the biggest donors to the recall campaign, William Oberndorf, a conservative and wealthy businessman, as an “oligarch,” called his opponents “Trumpian,” and sought to place the recall in the national context of a Republican-led effort to attack liberal prosecutors as weak on crime.“It’s really problematic that we are having a very Trumpian conversation in San Francisco,” Mr. Boudin said.California Democrats have had success using that strategy of attaching opponents to former President Donald J. Trump — most notably in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s triumph over a recall drive. But some wonder if the approach has staying power the longer Mr. Trump is out of office.Mr. Boudin added that the recall campaign had exploited individual tragedies like the story of a Thai grandfather who was fatally attacked last year while taking his morning walk. He also pointed to an increase in media coverage of crime, and especially high-profile videos on social media of shoplifting cases — like one showing a man on a bike stealing from a Walgreens.“And then people read the story, they see the video, and they perceive crime as being out of control,” Mr. Boudin said. “When in fact things like shoplifting are down dramatically. It doesn’t mean we don’t have a real problem with auto burglaries, but the notion that it’s out of control today and it wasn’t in 2019 is just demonstrably false.”Auto burglaries have been especially common in San Francisco’s tourist hot spots.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesBut more than anything, it was the case of Troy McAlister, a man with a long criminal history who mowed down two people with a stolen car on New Year’s Eve in 2020, that has fueled the recall effort. Mr. McAlister was free because Mr. Boudin’s office had previously negotiated a plea deal on an armed robbery charge. And Mr. Boudin says it is a case that keeps him up at night.“The nature of this job is we are always looking backwards and hindsight is 20-20,” Mr. Boudin said. “We know as a matter of material fact that some people will be released and commit bad crimes. There’s always going to be cases where if we look back we would make different decisions.”Unlike in other parts of the country, homicides are not driving the anger and passions of recall advocates. The annual number of people killed in the city has stayed within a range of 41 to 56 over the past seven years.Instead, recall advocates describe a pervasive feeling that quality of life in San Francisco has deteriorated. Burglaries, especially in wealthier neighborhoods, have soared during the pandemic. The city recorded 7,575 burglaries in 2020 and 7,217 last year, a sharp increase of more than 45 percent from 2019. Car break-ins, long a festering problem, were less frequent during the pandemic, but thieves shifted their targets from tourist areas to more residential neighborhoods, a change that gave the issue more immediacy and urgency among voters.Another problem is that Mr. Boudin and the Police Department, whose rate of arrests for reported crimes is among the lowest of major cities, have a toxic relationship. In the 2019 campaign, the San Francisco Police Officers Association attacked Mr. Boudin by calling him the “#1 choice of criminals and gang members.” Supporters of Mr. Boudin responded at his victory party with chants of epithets toward the union.Officers have been heard on body camera footage telling residents that the district attorney is unwilling to prosecute crimes. And while Mr. Boudin has been criticized for not more aggressively prosecuting drug dealing, he said the police make, on average, only two drug-dealing arrests a day.“The perception is right,” Mr. Boudin said. “Low-level drug dealers can reasonably expect in San Francisco that nothing will happen to them. Because they’re not getting arrested. Incidentally, the same thing is true with auto burglaries, where 1 percent of reported auto burglaries result in an arrest. So the focus on my office or on me or my policies is really misplaced.”The chief of police, Bill Scott, declined to answer questions on the department’s rate of solving crimes. A spokesman said in a statement that it was “not appropriate for him to get into the type of political discussion that could influence the will of the voters of San Francisco.”“While Chief Scott admits that he and District Attorney Boudin have their disagreements, he maintains that they have a candid and very professional relationship,” the spokesman said.San Francisco has had a long line of liberal prosecutors, including Vice President Kamala Harris. But if Mr. Boudin loses the recall, Mayor London Breed is likely to appoint a more moderate Democrat, political analysts say. The replacement would serve through the end of the year and then might be eligible for re-election.Some of the recall campaign’s most visible supporters have come from within the district attorney’s office, which has seen a high rate of turnover — dozens of lawyers have left since Mr. Boudin took over, after resigning or being fired.Brooke Jenkins, a former prosecutor, left the office to join the recall effort in part, she says, because she clashed with Mr. Boudin about how to prosecute a murder case. “I don’t believe Chesa is living up to his obligation as the district attorney,” Ms. Jenkins said. “He of course ran on a platform of reform, and reform is necessary in the criminal justice system. But you have to be able to balance that with your primary obligation of maintaining public safety.”Among the most frustrated residents in San Francisco are those who live and work in the Tenderloin, the compact neighborhood near City Hall that was once the city’s red-light district filled with bars and boxing gyms. Today, it is a gritty tableau of the city’s most persistent ills — the illicit drug markets, the desperation of those who are chronically homeless and the consequences of untreated mental illness.A homeless encampment in the Tenderloin.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesAs the manager of Threads for Therapy, a nonprofit thrift shop in the Tenderloin run by a Christian charity, Angel Fernandez watched warily on a recent afternoon as customers perused the women’s coats. The shop has a full-time security guard because so many people try to shoplift.Mr. Fernandez does not hesitate when asked how he will vote on the recall. He compares Mr. Boudin to Robin Hood, someone who views criminals as “the downtrodden forced into crime.” But like the concerns of many recall supporters, some of Mr. Fernandez’s complaints do not relate directly to the district attorney’s performance — they are more general feelings of a need for order and responsiveness from the city, including the police. When Mr. Fernandez calls the Tenderloin police station one block away to report fights on the sidewalk, drug sales, threatening behavior or shoplifting, he is frequently disappointed with the slow response. “Sometimes they don’t come at all,” he said of the police.Holly Secon More

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      Just How Liberal Is California? The Answer Matters to Democrats Everywhere.

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      LOS ANGELES — California is awash in money, with so many billions in surplus revenue that the state cannot enact programs fast enough. Democrats hold veto-proof majorities in the Legislature, and Gov. Gavin Newsom has a $25 million campaign war chest to fend off any token opposition in his re-election bid.Yet all is far from tranquil in this sea of blue. Deep fissures divide Democrats, whose control of state government effectively gives them unilateral power to enact programs. As elections approach, intraparty demands, denunciations and purity tests have exposed rifts between progressives and moderates that seem destined to become more vitriolic — and more consequential. We are about to find out just how liberal California is.The answer will shape policy as the most populous state wrestles with conflicts over seemingly intractable problems: too many homeless, too many drug overdoses, too many cars, too many guns, too much poverty. Although some dynamics are peculiar to California, the outcome will also have implications for the parallel debate swirling among national Democrats. Because if progressives here cannot translate their ideology into popular support that wins elections, it will not bode well for their efforts on a national scale.California has long been more centrist than its popular image. The “Mod Squad,” a caucus of moderate Democratic state lawmakers, has had outsize influence for more than a decade. As the Republican Party became increasingly marginal, business interests that had traditionally backed Republican candidates realized they could have more influence by supporting conservative Democrats. That paradigm accelerated with the shift to a system in which the top two finishers in a primary advance to the general election, regardless of party affiliation. Designed to promote more centrist candidates from both parties, it often results in face-offs between two Democrats.A contest emblematic of the California divide is unfolding in Los Angeles. From a crowded field of mayoral candidates, the two most likely to advance offer a stark contrast: Representative Karen Bass, a stalwart liberal embraced for both her politics and her background in community organizing, and the billionaire developer Rick Caruso, who has sounded the familiar refrain that it’s time for a businessman to clean up the failures of the political class. In a bow to the overwhelmingly Democratic electorate, Mr. Caruso, best known for his high-end shopping malls, recently changed his registration from no party preference to Democrat — even though the race is nonpartisan. For her part, Ms. Bass has called for freeing up more police officers for patrol (and hiring replacements for administrative duties) and equivocated on abolishing cash bail, positions that alarmed some of her natural allies.It is hard to know just how much the pandemic, on top of the Trump years, has scrambled the political calculus. We have traffic jams at the ports that rival those on the roads, restaurant tables where cars once parked, hotels that catered to tourists now sheltering the homeless. Anger over closed schools and mask mandates has triggered a record number of recalls (most notably the landslide that recalled three San Francisco school board members, on which progressives and moderates agreed). In the far northern county of Shasta, a group including members of a local militia won control of the board of supervisors by recalling a Republican ex-police chief who had not been sufficiently anti-mask or pro-gun. A prominent anti-Trump Republican consultant called the vote a “canary in a coal mine” for the direction of his state party.If mask and vaccine mandates have become the litmus test for the far right, the left has chosen as its defining issue a far more complex — but seemingly unattainable — goal: single-payer health care. When a bill (with an estimated price of more than $300 billion a year) made it to the Assembly floor, progressives threatened to deny party support to any Democrat who voted no. Far short of the necessary yes votes, the sponsor, Ash Kalra of San Jose, a progressive Democrat, pulled the bill rather than force a vote that could be used against his colleagues. He was pilloried as a traitor by activists.The Working Families Party, which has pushed for progressive priorities in the New York State Legislature, recently established a branch in California in hopes of having similar influence and endorsing and supporting progressive Democrats. The group’s state director, Jane Kim, a former San Francisco supervisor who lost the 2018 mayoral race to the moderate London Breed and then helped Bernie Sanders win the California primary, argues that the state’s electorate is more liberal than its elected officials, who are beholden to the influence of large corporate donors. Still, in the 2020 general election — with a record-setting turnout — voters defeated almost all ballot initiatives that were priorities of the progressives, opting not to restore affirmative action, nor impose higher taxes on commercial and industrial properties, nor abolish cash bail, nor expand rent control.In the arena of criminal justice, where voters and lawmakers have consistently made progressive changes in recent years, the growing concern about crime (some justified by data and some not) will soon test the commitment to move away from draconian sentences and mass incarceration. The conservative Sacramento district attorney, Anne Marie Schubert, is running for state attorney general on the slogan “Stop the Chaos,” tying her opponent, the incumbent Rob Bonta, to what she calls “rogue prosecutors” like the progressive district attorneys in Los Angeles and San Francisco, who are targets of recall campaigns.In June, San Franciscans will decide whether to recall District Attorney Chesa Boudin, a referendum on his performance as well as a vote that moderates have framed as a cornerstone of the fight to “take back” their city from progressives. In a city decidedly less liberal than its reputation, Mayor Breed has referred to members of the board of supervisors as “a very, very extremely left group of people.”With near-record office turnover — a result of reapportionment, term limits, frustration and fatigue — the winners of the coming elections will collectively reshape the political landscape for many years. A quarter of the 120 state legislative districts will have new representatives next year, and among those departing are some of the most influential lawmakers.It would be nice to think that change will usher in a new generation of leaders, one that builds on the excitement and enthusiasm generated, especially among young people, by the 2020 Sanders campaign. It is hard not to root for young activists. They will live or die with the consequences of decisions being made today on air, water, housing, schools.In a recent poll, young adults who were asked the most pressing issue for the governor and Legislature to work on this year were twice as likely as those over 35 to cite jobs and the economy, and were far less concerned about crime. They were also more optimistic, with more than half saying California was headed in the right direction.The pandemic might yet prove to be the disruption needed to trigger big political shifts, comparable with those triggered in the arena of jobs and work. So far, it seems to have driven people further into their corners. The next generation will have to find a way to fill in that hollowed-out middle, just as they will have to bridge the ever-growing chasms in wealth, which in turn drive so much of the political divide.Miriam Pawel (@miriampawel) is the author of “The Browns of California: The Family Dynasty That Transformed a State and Shaped a Nation.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Richard Blum, Political Donor and Husband of Senator Feinstein, Dies at 86

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      As a financier, he amassed a fortune that he spent on Democrats, helping to propel his wife from San Francisco mayor to a long career in the Senate.Richard C. Blum, a financier and major donor to Democrats — above all his wife, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California — died on Sunday at the family home in San Francisco. He was 86.The cause was cancer, according to a statement by Ms. Feinstein’s office.Ms. Feinstein missed votes in recent weeks as Mr. Blum’s health declined, imperiling the Democrats’ precarious Senate majority, which relies on a tiebreaking vote from Vice President Kamala Harris.Mr. Blum exerted influence generally as a political patron and an adviser. It was only during his final months that he sought government office, informing President Biden early last year that he hoped to be made an ambassador.That move could have caused Ms. Feinstein to leave the Senate and travel overseas with Mr. Blum, and some Democrats saw it as a potential way for her to make a graceful exit from Congress at age 87. Members of her own Democratic caucus had been grumbling that her mental acuity had diminished and that she had become too accommodating to Republicans.Mr. Blum became Ms. Feinstein’s companion between the death of her second husband, Bertram Feinstein, in 1978, and her victory in a race for mayor of San Francisco in 1979 after two unsuccessful attempts. They married in 1980. In 1983, Mr. Blum helped Ms. Feinstein raise $400,000 to beat back a recall attempt.He remained her closest confidant and most reliable fund-raiser through her mayoralty, which ended in 1988. The couple then poured about $3 million of their own money into the 1990 California governor’s race, which Ms. Feinstein lost to Pete Wilson, a Republican. But, again with Mr. Blum’s financial help, she won election to the Senate in 1992.Ms. Feinstein is now the fifth-longest-serving United States senator, and if she stays in office for just under a year longer she will surpass Barbara A. Mikulski as the longest-tenured female senator in American history.Mr. Blum ran his own investment firm, Blum Capital Partners, and during his career as an investment banker and financial manager his clients included large institutions like Bank of America.With deep pockets, he became a major figure in Democratic politics, counting Jimmy Carter as a jogging partner and Mr. Biden as one of many beneficiaries of his largess. His net worth was estimated to exceed $1 billion.He also held nonprofit positions; at one point he was chairman of the University of California Board of Regents.With the Dalai Lama among his influential friends, Mr. Blum developed an interest in South Asia as the home of Buddhist philosophy, as a recipient of philanthropy and as a place for adventure: He once led an expedition up part of Mount Everest.In a statement of condolence, Mr. Biden called Mr. Blum “a successful businessman and proud son of California who dedicated much of his public life to fighting poverty around the globe” through the establishment of the American Himalayan Foundation, a nonprofit group that builds schools and hospitals in Tibet, and the Blum Center for Developing Economies at the University of California, Berkeley, which focuses on innovative solutions to global poverty.Richard Charles Blum was born on July 31, 1935, in San Francisco to Louise Hirsch and Herbert Blum, a seller of robes and raincoats who died during Richard’s boyhood. Richard graduated from Berkeley with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in business administration.He joined Sutro & Company, a San Francisco brokerage firm, at 23 and became a partner before he turned 30, by which time he was already a millionaire.In addition to Ms. Feinstein, Mr. Blum is survived by a brother, Robert; his daughters, Annette, Heidi and Eileen; his stepdaughter, Katherine; and seven grandchildren.During Ms. Feinstein’s 1990 race to be California’s governor, Mr. Blum described to The New York Times what he called “the triathlon of politics.”“No. 1,” he said, “we get to see on a regular basis everything she’s ever done and I’ve ever done distorted in the newspapers. No. 2, we get to share 17 years of our tax returns on an intimate basis with 30 million people. And three, I get to pay to watch all this happen.”Shawn Hubler More

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      As Crime Surges, Roll Back of Tough-on-Crime Policies Faces Resistance

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      With violent crime rates rising and elections looming, progressive prosecutors are facing resistance to their plans to roll back stricter crime policies of the 1990s.Four years ago, progressive prosecutors were in the sweet spot of Democratic politics. Aligned with the growing Black Lives Matter movement but pragmatic enough to draw establishment support, they racked up wins in cities across the country.Today, a political backlash is brewing. With violent crime rates rising in some cities and elections looming, their attempts to roll back the tough-on-crime policies of the 1990s are increasingly under attack — from familiar critics on the right, but also from onetime allies within the Democratic Party.In San Francisco, District Attorney Chesa Boudin is facing a recall vote in June, stoked by criticism from the city’s Democratic mayor. In Los Angeles, the county district attorney, George Gascón, is trying to fend off a recall effort as some elected officials complain about new guidelines eliminating the death penalty and the prosecution of juveniles as adults. Manhattan’s new district attorney, Alvin Bragg, quickly ran afoul of the new Democratic mayor, Eric Adams, and his new police commissioner over policies that critics branded too lenient.The combative resistance is a harsh turn for a group of leaders whom progressives hailed as an electoral success story. Rising homicide and violent crime rates have even Democrats in liberal cities calling for more law enforcement, not less — forcing prosecutors to defend their policies against their own allies. And traditional boosters on the left aren’t rushing to their aid, with some saying they’ve soured on the officials they once backed.“I think that whole honeymoon period lasts about five or six hours,” said Wesley Bell, the prosecuting attorney for St. Louis County in Missouri, who is seeking re-election this fall.St. Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell, center, surrounded by area police chiefs before a news conference about a police officer who was shot and killed in 2019.Robert Cohen/St. Louis Post-Dispatch, via Associated PressMr. Bell, a former city councilman in Ferguson, Mo., is part of the group of prosecutors elected on a promise to address racial disparities in the criminal justice system. Most support eliminating the death penalty and cash bail, limiting prosecutions for low-level, nonviolent offenses and scaling back sentences.In a show of political strength, progressive prosecutors in Chicago and Philadelphia handily defeated challengers in recent years. Mr. Bell’s re-election bid in November is one of several races being watched for signs that voters’ views have shifted on those policies as violent crime has risen and racial justice protests have fallen out of the headlines.Homicide rates spiked in 2020 and continued to rise last year, albeit less slowly, hitting levels not seen since the 1990s. Other violent crimes also are up. Both increases have occurred nationally, in cities with progressive prosecutors and in cities without.That’s left no clear evidence linking progressive policies to these trends, but critics have been quick to make the connection, suggesting that prosecutors have let offenders walk and created an expectation that low-level offenses won’t be charged. Those arguments have landed on voters and city leaders already grappling with a scourge of pandemic-related ills — including mental health care needs and housing shortages, rising drug use, even traffic deaths.Last week, a Quinnipiac University poll of registered voters in New York City found that 74 percent of respondents considered crime a “very serious” problem — the largest share since the survey began asking the question in 1999 and more than 20 percentage points greater than the previous high, which was recorded in January 2016.Politicians are heeding those concerns. In New York, Mr. Adams, a Democrat, has promised to crack down on crime, and his police commissioner, Keechant Sewell, slammed Mr. Bragg’s proposals as threatening the safety of police officers and the public. In San Francisco, Mayor London Breed has become an outspoken critic of Mr. Boudin’s approach, which emphasizes social services over policing.“This is not working,” Ms. Breed said recently on The New York Times podcast “Sway.” “We’ve added all these additional resources — the street crisis response team, the ambassadors, the services, the buildings we purchase, the hotels we purchase, the resources. We’ve added all these things to deal with food insecurity. All these things. Yet people are still being physically harmed and killed.”The criticisms from two prominent Black mayors are particularly biting. In their liberal cities, the leaders’ nuanced complaints have far more influence with voters than familiar attacks from Republicans or police unions. Both mayors have argued that the minority communities that want racism rooted from the justice system also want more robust policing and prosecutions.President Biden, who was one of the architects of the tough-on-crime criminal justice overhaul of the 1990s, recently spoke highly of Mr. Adams’s focus on crime prevention. Some prosecutors and their allies took that as sign that the Democratic establishment is digging in on a centrist approach to criminal justice reform.Mr. Biden’s comments came as the Democratic Party worried about retaining the support of moderate suburban voters in midterm elections this year. Many Democratic lawmakers and strategists believe that protest slogans like “defund the police” hurt the party in the 2020 elections — particularly in Congressional swing districts and in Senate races. Republican candidates, eager to retake control of Congress in November, already have run advertisements casting Democrats as soft on crime.Most progressive prosecutors oppose the calls to gut police department budgets, but that is a nuance often missed. At one liberal philanthropic group, some newer givers have said they will not donate to any criminal justice groups — or to the campaigns of progressive prosecutors — because they don’t want to endorse defunding the police, according to a person who connects donors to criminal justice causes, and who insisted on anonymity to discuss private conversations.Samuel Sinyangwe, an activist who has been involved in several organizations pushing progressive prosecutors, said prosecutors hadn’t been as forceful as law enforcement unions in selling their solutions to rising violence in cities.“Police are spending a lot of money convincing people the appropriate response to that is more policing and incarceration,” he said. “I think that individual cities and counties are having to push back against that narrative. But I think they’re struggling to do that right now.”In San Francisco, Mr. Boudin argued that the effort to recall him was fueled by politics, not voters’ worries about crime. He pointed to the Republican megadonors who have funded the recall efforts and said Ms. Breed has a political incentive to see him ousted — he beat her preferred candidate for district attorney.San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin earlier this week. He faces an effort to recall him.Justin Sullivan/Getty Images“These are Republican talking points,” Mr. Boudin said. “And it’s tremendously destructive to the Democratic Party and the long-term progress that the party is making at the local and national level around public safety and criminal justice to allow a few folks dissatisfied with a local election to undermine that progress.”Mary Jung, a Democratic activist leading the recall campaign, said those who painted the efforts as fueled by conservatives or moderates were missing the point. Many of their supporters, she said, are lifelong liberal Democrats.Those voters, she said, don’t view the effort to recall Mr. Boudin, who was elected in 2019, as a broad shift away from progressive policies, but as a local response in a community that feels unsafe. She cited several attacks against Asian immigrants and incidents of shoplifting as the sort of crimes that have rattled residents, regardless of political ideology.In another sign of Democrats’ discontent, San Francisco voters ousted three progressive members of the Board of Education in a recall election driven by pandemic angst.“Over 80,000 San Franciscans signed our petition and we only needed 53,000 signatures,” Ms. Jung said. “There’s only 33,000 registered Republicans in the city. So, you know, you do the math.”Some progressives warn against ignoring people’s fears. Kim Foxx, the state’s attorney for Cook County, which includes Chicago and some of the country’s most violence-plagued communities, said that any dismissive rhetoric could make prosecutors risk looking out of touch.“You can’t dismiss people,” Ms. Foxx said. “I live in Chicago, where we hit 800 murders last year, and that represents 800 immediate families and thousands of people who are impacted.”Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, right, with Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Police First Deputy Supt. Eric Carter announcing charges last month in a fatal shooting.Pat Nabong/Chicago Sun-Times, via Associated PressMs. Foxx faced a well-funded opponent and won re-election in 2020, as did Philadelphia’s district attorney, Larry Krasner, the following year. Those victories show the resilient support for progressive ideas, Mr. Krasner said, warning the Democratic Party not to abandon them.“Put criminal justice reform on the ballot in every election in almost every jurisdiction, and what you’re going to see is a surge in turnout,” Mr. Krasner said. “And that turnout will overwhelmingly be unlikely voters, reluctant voters, brand-new voters, people who are not connected to what they see as governmental dysfunction between the parties — but they are connected to an issue that has affected their communities.”But there are signs that attitudes about overhauling the criminal justice system are changing even among progressives. Many activists have shifted their focus away from electoral politics and toward policies they think address root of the problem, such as reducing the number of police and abolishing prisons.That “makes it very difficult to even defend or support particular prosecutors, because at the end of the day, they’re still putting people in jail,” Mr. Sinyangwe said.In 2020, Mr. Bell, the St. Louis prosecutor, faced the ire of the same progressive activists who had helped elect him. That July, he announced that his renewed investigation into the 2014 fatal police shooting of Michael Brown Jr., a young Black man, which ignited weeks of protests, had delivered the same results: no charges for the officer who killed him.Mr. Brown’s mother denounced Mr. Bell’s investigation. Speaking to reporters then, Mr. Bell said the announcement was “one of the most difficult things I’ve had to do as an elected official.”Asked to discuss the incident and the investigation, Mr. Bell declined.Josie Duffy Rice, the former president of The Appeal, a news outlet focused on criminal justice, said that in some ways the voters were learning the limitations of the progressive prosecutor’s role.“Prosecutors have the power to cause a lot of problems,” Ms. Duffy Rice said. “But not enough power to solve problems.” More

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      San Francisco Recall Vote Fueled by Asian Voters’ Ire

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      The landslide vote to remove three school board members cut across ethnicities and income levels. But Chinese American voters and volunteers were crucial to victory, organizers say.SAN FRANCISCO — As Election Day approached, a flurry of messages flashed across the phones of San Francisco’s Chinese American community. “Remember to vote,” said one message in Chinese from a campaign organizer, Selena Chu. “And throw out the commissioners who are discriminating against us and disrespecting our community.”The lopsided victory in a recall election on Tuesday that ousted three members of the San Francisco school board shook the city’s liberal establishment and was a resounding alarm of parental anger over the way the public school system handled the coronavirus pandemic.Parents of varying ethnicities and income levels who had coalesced last year while San Francisco schools remained closed — they stayed shut for much longer than those in other large cities — organized themselves through Facebook groups and vowed to push out Board of Education members for what they saw as incompetence. They kept their promise: The three commissioners were removed by as much as 79 percent of voters, an unequivocal rejection in a city renowned for fractious politics.For many Asian Americans in the city, especially the large Chinese American community, the results were an affirmation of the group’s voting power, coming with a high degree of organizing, turnout and intensity not seen in many years. In an election where every registered voter received a ballot, overall turnout was relatively low at 26 percent; turnout among the 30,000 people who requested Chinese-language ballots was significantly higher at 37 percent.In an overwhelmingly liberal city, Asian American voters have sided with Democrats for decades. But in recent years, a growing number of Chinese residents, many of them born in mainland China, have become a moderating political force. Most Chinese residents in the city are registered as independents and, as Tuesday’s election appeared to show, they are not afraid to buck some of the more liberal elements of the Democratic Party. It is a pattern that has emerged in other cities, like New York, that are largely Democratic with significant Asian American populations.“They are absolutely up for grabs,” David Lee, a political science lecturer at San Francisco State University, said of Asian American voters in the city.In Tuesday’s election, two issues in particular motivated Chinese American voters. The Board of Education had voted to put in place a lottery admission system at the highly selective Lowell High School, replacing an admission process that primarily selected students with the highest grades and test scores. Lowell, whose long list of notable alumni includes Justice Stephen G. Breyer, for decades had represented what one community member described as the “gateway to the American dream.” The introduction of the lottery system has reduced the number of Asian and white ninth graders at Lowell by around one-quarter and increased Black and Latino ninth graders by more than 40 percent.Chinese voters were also upset by tweets by Alison Collins, one of the recalled school board members, that were unearthed during the campaign. Ms. Collins said Asian Americans used “white supremacist thinking to assimilate and ‘get ahead.’” She went on to compare Asian Americans to slaves who had the advantage of working inside a slave owner’s home instead of doing more grueling labor in the fields, using asterisks to mask an anti-Black racial slur. The tweets reinforced a sentiment among many Chinese voters of being taken for granted, underrepresented and insulted, people involved in the recall campaign said.Asian American voters also said they were motivated by issues beyond the actions of the board: The number of high-profile attacks against Asian Americans, many of them older, has traumatized the community. And many Chinese-owned businesses were suffering the effects of pandemic closures, especially in Chinatown.“We are losing faith in government,” said Bayard Fong, president of the Chinese American Democratic Club.Asian Americans make up about 36 percent of San Francisco’s population, one of the largest such communities in a major city, but they are an incredibly diverse group that includes Filipinos, Indians, Vietnamese and Thais and features different economic, linguistic and ethnic backgrounds. Chinese Americans are by far the largest Asian group, making up 23 percent of San Francisco’s population. Forty percent of the population is white, 15 percent Latino and 6 percent Black.The ouster of the three board members will elevate the only Chinese American member of the seven-person board to the position of president. And it puts Mayor London Breed in the delicate position of appointing three replacement members who will be acceptable to the parents now closely watching the process. Recall campaigners say they hope more Asian Americans will be appointed to the board.Autumn Looijen, who with her partner, Siva Raj, organized signature gathering and initiated the recall campaign, described the Chinese American community as crucial to the recall’s success.“They were the backbone of our volunteer efforts,” Ms. Looijen said. “They have been really powering this campaign from the beginning.”During the campaign, organizers used WeChat, the Chinese-language messaging app, to offer everything from detailed instructions on how to fill out a ballot to organizing the deployment of volunteers in Chinatown, where lion dances and drumming exhorted residents to vote.“We shall be silent no more,” said a flier in English and Chinese handed out by the Chinese American Democratic Club.Parents who campaigned for the recall described an awakening in the Chinese American community by people who had been largely apolitical until now.Ms. Chu, the woman who sent the WeChat message urging people to vote, said she grew up with parents who advised her to remain quiet if she felt she was being treated unfairly. Many first-generation immigrants still feel that way, she said.Now a mother of two children in the San Francisco public school system, Ms. Chu felt compelled, for the first time, to become actively involved in an election. Her hands hurt, she said, from texting so much on WeChat during the campaign.She was motivated by a sense of being punished and pilloried for working hard and striving.“This year a lot of parents are telling me, ‘We are done with being scapegoats,’” Ms. Chu said.“We are still being looked at as foreigners,” she said. “We are Americans. You have to give us respect.”She called the recall election a milestone for the Asian American community.“They finally understand the power of their vote,” she said.Crucial to the organizing efforts was Ann Hsu, a Beijing-born entrepreneur with decades of experience in starting up and managing companies in both China and the United States.Parents are watching to see if Mayor London Breed of San Francisco will appoint any Asian American members to the school board.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesMs. Hsu used her management experience to organize volunteers and set campaign strategies. She ignored the English-language media and instead focused tightly on Chinese-language newspapers, YouTube channels and advertising. She and her volunteers distributed thousands of yellow shopping bags emblazoned with recall messages and gave them out to older Chinese residents. She set up a task force that registered 560 residents, almost all of them Asian Americans, to vote.Using WeChat to organize her operations had the added advantage of breaking a language barrier: She speaks Mandarin while other residents are more comfortable in Cantonese. The written messages could be understood by all.Ms. Hsu’s voice fills with emotion when she discusses the issue of Lowell, which she said was the primary motivation for jumping into politics.“When you came for Lowell, you came for the Asians,” she said in an interview on Wednesday. “We are going to stand up and say no more, no!”The future admissions process at Lowell remains unclear — the lottery system will remain in place for students entering in the fall, but the board has not made a decision for admissions beyond next year.Ms. Hsu says Lowell is not directly personal for her. Her two teenage boys are at another school in the San Francisco public school district.But she saw in the board’s decisions a deep sense that the aspirations of Asian American residents were being ignored.The debate over admission to elite public high schools has galvanized Asian parents in other cities, notably New York. In both San Francisco and New York, the issue cleaves liberal voters who are torn between a desire to maintain a system that has traditionally benefited high-achieving students from poorer, often immigrant, backgrounds but at the same time left behind Black and Latino students.In New York, where Black and Latino students are disproportionately underrepresented in the elite public high schools, the issue of school segregation rose to the fore during New York’s mayoral election last year. Left-leaning candidates called for a fundamental overhaul of the admissions standards while centrist candidates called for its retention. Among those who promised to keep the test was Eric Adams, the current mayor.Ms. Collins, the board member who was criticized for her tweets, said during the campaign that she had “desegregated” Lowell.In the wake of the lopsided recall, political analysts are weighing whether the energy and fervor of the campaign will carry over into other elections both in the city and nationally.Mike Chen, a board member of the Edwin M. Lee Asian Pacific Democratic Club, said the results were remarkable — “nobody in the city can agree 80 percent on anything.” But he said he would “heavily caution” making predictions about other campaigns based off a single election with relatively low turnout. San Francisco had a very particular set of issues that pushed parents over the edge, he said.“People have been trying to make extrapolations: What does this mean for school board elections in Ohio or Virginia?” he said.“We had this very particular instance,” he continued. “We had very visible examples of incompetence, bad governance and malfeasance. Most people could objectively observe the decisions that were happening last year and think, ‘This is really messed up.’”Dana Rubinstein More