Last gasp of ‘Progressive DA’ movement? – The American Spectator | US news and politicsThe American Spectator

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The latest statewide polls show Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump in California by 22 percentage points in the presidential race, which is to be expected given the state’s deep blue politics. In 2020, Joe Biden defeated Trump by 29 points. In Los Angeles County, where Democrats hold an unfathomable 53 to 17 percent lead over Republicans, Biden defeated Trump by 45 points. Such lopsided voting numbers in a county of 9.7 million residents (more populous than 40 states) explain a lot about California’s overall progressive trend.

So pay close attention to this shocking news: Nathan Hochman leads incumbent Democrat George Gascón by 30 points in November’s race for district attorney, according to a poll from the University of California Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies and the Los Angeles Times. Sure, Hochman is running as an independent and even supporting Harris, but he ran for attorney general as a Republican and served as a federal prosecutor appointed by George W. Bush.

The reason, of course, is fear of the state’s crime wave and concern about Gascón — a leading light in the progressive prosecutorial movement — and his approach to public safety. Like the Times reported: “Violent crime increased about 8 percent in LA County from 2019 to 2023, and property crime increased 14 percent, according to data from the California Department of Justice.” It was noted that there has been a recent decline in violent crime in the city of Los Angeles, but residents are fed up with high-profile robberies and the erosion of law and order.

Gascón is actually an interesting and thoughtful person and less rigid than some of the other self-described progressive prosecutors who have won DA races across the country, in cities ranging from Philadelphia to San Francisco. But he is part of a movement with deep blind spots. In a nutshell, it sometimes promoted meaningful criminal justice reforms, but focused too much on reducing the prison population and refuting public fears of crime, rather than ensuring community safety. It ended up giving second chances to people who didn’t deserve them.

“I recognize that this is a new path for many… whether you are a protester, a police officer or a prosecutor, I ask you to walk with me. I ask you to join me on this journey,” he said during his swearing-in ceremony in 2020. Times report. “We can break the multigenerational cycles of violence, trauma, arrest and recidivism that have led America to incarcerate more people than any other country.” Specific policies included ending cash bail, barring prosecutors from seeking longer prison sentences and refusing to prosecute minors as adults. But it didn’t work as planned.

Gascón received immediate backlash for his approach. Some of that, as he claimed, was the result of career prosecutors resisting structural changes within the office. But some of his policies, such as refusing to send prosecutors to hearings to oppose the parole of murderers who have served their minimum sentences, telegraphed a soft message on crime and were cruel to the victims’ families. He backed away from this and a number of other controversial policies (such as always opposing the prosecution of minors by adults and always opposing the death penalty or life without parole), but the political damage had already been done.

In fact, the entire progressive prosecutorial movement is disintegrating in the Western cities most hospitable to their ideas. Politics article from May: “Progressive prosecutors are under siege up and down the West Coast, while voters in deep-blue urban areas express frustration with softer approaches to crime.” It pointed to hardline prosecutor Nathan Vasquez (also a registered independent), who won a landslide victory over progressive Mike Schmidt in Multnomah County, Oregon. That’s the home of Portland, a progressive Nirvana.

Even residents of notoriously liberal cities are tired of street crime, panhandling, homeless encampments, and unruly downtown streetscapes. In 2022, San Francisco voters recalled their district attorney, Chesa Boudin — one of the most outspoken left-wing prosecutors in this movement — by a margin of 60 to 40 percent. Boudin and his supporters blamed right-wing parties for his defeat, but in San Francisco that is an illusion. In the California Legislature, some prominent members have been dragged kicking and screaming to tighten sentencing for the worst offenders because of their tunnel-vision fears of “over-incarceration.”

This is not a good year to be a progressive prosecutor in California. As I mentioned in my post American spectator In the July column, Democrats delayed addressing public crime concerns. After a group of businesses and prosecutors qualified an anti-crime measure (Proposition 36), Governor Gavin Newsom and his allies in the Legislature passed a package of bills that was sufficient to solve some of the problems that were being addressed caused by 2014’s Proposition 47. sentence reduction for lower-level crimes.

But as I noted, lawmakers added poison pills that would destroy the legislative package if voters passed Proposition 36. After moving away from that cynical approach — designed to score political points rather than seriously address the crime issue — Newsom tried to qualify an alternative measure. That would confuse voters. When competing measures clog the ballot, voters tend to vote no on everything. That attempt failed and now Proposition 36 is rising in the polls. In my opinion, Prop. 36 too far in the old direction, but the progressives have only themselves to blame.

This most likely means the end of the experiment with progressive prosecutors. Undoubtedly, most Americans support sensible criminal justice reforms. Even many conservatives have long advocated a justice system that is financially responsible and fairer, that reins in judicial and police abuses, ends corrupting police state policies such as asset forfeiture, and provides alternatives to prison sentences for crimes at a low level and that embraces effective diversion programs. , and so forth. I certainly agree that we should not return to the heavy-handed anti-crime policies of the 1990s.

But the public will only support such reforms if they feel safe. There’s no reason prosecutors can’t do two things at once: diligently fight serious criminals and also seek meaningful reforms. Some California prosecutors, like Republican Todd Spitzer of Orange County, have sought that middle ground. Perhaps after Hochman wins, we can build a new, reform-minded consensus around that approach.

Steven Greenhut is the West Regional Director of the R Street Institute. Write to him at [email protected].

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