The Daily - The Real Meaning of Chesa Boudin’s Recall

Episode Date: June 10, 2022

This 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 can be seen as more the exception than the rule.Guest: Astead W. Herndon, a national political reporter for The New York Times.Want more from The Daily? For one big idea on the news each week from our team, subscribe to our newsletter. Background reading: By 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.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Earlier this week, when San Francisco voters ousted their progressive district attorney, it was seen as the rejection of an entire class of local prosecutors who are determined to reform the criminal justice system. prosecutors who are determined to reform the criminal justice system. Today, I spoke with my colleague, Astead Herndon, about what exactly happened in San Francisco and about why the reaction to it may be a major misreading of the moment. It's Friday, June 10th.

Ased, what is the context in which Chesa Boudin was first elected the district attorney in San Francisco? What's happening in San Francisco is really a fine point at the end of a much longer story. It really starts years before with a wave of progressive prosecutors who were seeking to reimagine the role of the district attorney and of prosecutors in big American cities. This is what democracy looks like. This is what democracy looks like. This is what democracy looks like. This is what democracy looks like.

If you think back to the kind of rise of Trump and the grassroots energy that came from the Democratic Party in response to that, Black lives matter. Black people are welcome here. a lot of the places where progressives and the left were able to get real electoral wins were in these prosecutor-district attorney races. Mm-hmm. Larry Krasner has won the Democratic primary for district attorney. People like Larry Krasner in Philadelphia.

This is a mandate for a movement that is loudly telling government what it wants. And what it wants is criminal justice reform. The work is just beginning. Kim Fox in Chicago. The need to rebuild a broken criminal justice system here in Cook County is not work that should be taken lightly. Wesley Bell in Missouri. Will soon become the first African-American

to hold the St. Louis County prosecutor's post. These were people who had run and won on the idea that the criminal justice system was fundamentally flawed, using that energy, particularly coming out of the Black Lives Matter movement, to say that the criminal justice system needed a real overall rethinking for the role of prosecutor to be just. That was really the message they had given to voters and they had latched onto, including in San Francisco. J-Stop! J-Stop! J-Stop! Where Rujing really explicitly ran on those type of promises.

We won an election, people. And then won in 2019. And with your help, we're gonna end money bail. We're gonna stop treating mental illness with solitary confinement. And we're going to start investing in our communities, in all of our communities. And we're going to do it together. And we're going to do it starting right now.

Thank you, San Francisco. Thank you. Thank you. So all these folks are turning the traditional image of the district attorney, the one you think about when you watch Law & Order, as the tough as nails, how many years can we get against this fellow? They're just turning that on its head. Exactly. And I think that that was really emblematic of a Democratic Party that was largely rethinking its relationship to criminal justice and public safety. If we think back to the last presidential primary, yeah, candidates all across the kind of ideological spectrum really embraced that message. It wasn't just that progressive prosecutors were winning their own races. It's that they were winning the general

argument among Democrats about how they should be talking about criminal justice and public safety, that this was actually what people wanted. Got it. So tell us about Boudin. Yeah, I think that it's fair to say that Boudin is someone who fits the mold of San Francisco. If you were to close your eyes and draw up the bio of the archetype of a San Francisco progressive prosecutor, it would be someone with this history. Boudin's parents were actually members of the notorious 60s leftist group, the Weather Underground. And they spent decades in prison after being convicted as part of the group's violent activities. He was raised in Chicago with other members of leftist, radical politics, royalty, frankly. And that is really the

tradition in which he comes from. Spent time in Venezuela, was a Rhodes Scholar. And so he comes to San Francisco with that in mind. And he runs really putting those academic ideological things he'd been thinking about into very specific language, kind of owns what progressive prosecutors would call a decarceration platform and is telling voters that with him as district attorney, he won't help ICE with raids and arrests of undocumented immigrants, that they would re-evaluate wrongful convictions on crimes, that he was going to focus on reducing cash bail and other issues that have really become the order of the day for those progressive prosecutors across the country. So his election in San Francisco, which comes after these other candidates you mentioned,

feels like the capstone to this wave of progressive prosecutors taking over these big jobs in American cities. Yeah, I think you can say that. But when you get to that later wave of prosecutors elected, people like Boudin, they're coming to power in a changed political environment, much different than that grassroots Trump resistance energy. And it's pretty clear that a backlash, at least the headwinds of a backlash, were really just starting to form. Got it. And what does that backlash look like in San Francisco? Within the first month of Boudin's tenure, he's really put under

pressure by a familiar opponent for these progressive prosecutors, the police union. He had decided not to prosecute a man who was seen on camera hitting a police officer with a liquor bottle. Now, that man was also shot by the police officer and was a really contentious overall case. But in choosing not to charge the man initially with hitting the police officer with the liquor bottle, you had the union come out early and say that Boudin was giving criminals a green light to attack officers. And so they eventually reversed that decision to give the man some charges later. But it was the first initial drawing of lines between a police union that was actively pushing back against the newly elected district attorney. And I think he ends up having to deal with

really visible incidents of crime. They broke in and stole a bunch of stuff and, you know, insurance doesn't cover possessions, really. The grocery store across from my house, the windows have been broken at least twice and now it's boarded up. Car thefts have been going up. The shattered car safety glass around the city is known as San Francisco snow. So far this year, there have been 700 more car break-ins than last year. Burglaries have been going up in the city. Crime and looting are out of control. There were rampant shoplifting at downtown San Francisco pharmacies and grocery stores. Just this past weekend, thieves ransacked retail stores, pharmacies, luxury shops.

And there was just some quality of life concerns that were piling up in both media and kind of taking off online. For the last two weeks, parents and school leaders have been trying to get help with a homeless encampment right next to their school. And, and I think principally... San Francisco police last month revealed hate crimes targeting Asians exploded more than 500% in 2021. He's dealing with a real increase of Asian American hate crimes.

The Vishwarathnapakti case in particular, where an 84-year-old Thai grandfather was shoved to the ground and killed in January of this year. That really kind of inflamed tensions in the city. Huh. And how does Boudin respond to these trend lines that seem to be going, in many cases, in the wrong direction.

Boudin says that he is going to follow through that playbook in which he ran on, which is not going to prioritize the tough on crime or try to block people away forever. But specifically, in the incident of the man who was killed, Boudin said some things that got him in trouble. Boudin was quoted in the New York Times as saying Watson was having some sort of temper tantrum, a term more often used to describe toddlers that doesn't sit well with Visha's family. He responded by explaining some of the actions of the attacker as a temper tantrum. Hearing this excuse of hissy fit is just, it's really upsetting.

hearing this excuse of hissy fit is just it's really upsetting the victim's family went to local media and talked about how that showed that budine really didn't understand the reality of violence and the deep-rootedness of the hatred that those communities are up against it was a criticism of both tone and policy at the same time. And that's really what his critics started hammering on. That includes some of his political critics also. The mayor of San Francisco, London Breed, talked about Boudin and said that his policies were out of touch with what the city needed. I mean, that's a pretty rare thing to happen on local levels, is for the mayor to be taking a stance against the active district attorney, who are theoretically working in tandem on public safety.

And in this case are both Democrats. And in this case are both Democrats. Importantly, in these big cities are largely often both Democrats. And I think that really shows that the mayor, who is hearing from a different kind of voting base, is kind of recognizing that backlash. And this, frankly, started increasingly throwing Boudin out to the wolves saying, you know, that's his stuff, not mine. And so that tension kind of builds to state laws that allows a little more easily for politicians to be recalled. Remember, the governor just survived a recall effort recently. And so there are signatures that are passed around in San Francisco and enough folks sign on where Boudin has to face a recall election. And as this recall election gets underway instead, how much are people talking about and analyzing the question of whether Boudin's policies are really responsible

for things like robberies going up and shoplifting going up and hate crimes against Asian Americans? This is a question that the progressive prosecutors all across the country have to answer all the time. They feel like it is not proven. And we should say, journalistically, we do not really have a causal stat to show that the policies of progressives are directly responsible for increases in crime and in violent crime. These things were happening in places that had not elected these type of prosecutors. And so there was not a one-to-one factual basis to say that the things that were happening in San Francisco was the fault of the election of Boudin. And that's what led to the recall election. But we know that politics, I think I said this on The Daily before, politics isn't debate class. It is not actually just about what is factually related, but how people feel things are related. And it became very clear that the recall vote was wrapping in all of those issues into this one election.

Right. And of course, as we now know, Boudin loses that recall election decisively. Yeah, it was about the 60 to 40 margin. And that's a pretty clear electoral rebuke, even in a low turnout election. For Boudin, you know, it also is pretty damning on where this came from. You know, this was a rejection that was driven by the large Asian population of San Francisco that

was across economic scale, if you look at neighborhoods, and says that there was a real coalition of folks who were dissatisfied with these policies. And so what is the reaction to this 60-40, clear-as-day political rejection of Boudin? Among progressives, it is a real recognition that they cannot dismiss the criticism being levied by their opponents, that it has taken root, and they can't deny that. Among some, we should say. But I think really among media and the kind of national politics, there's a real rush to say that Democrats are retreating from criminal justice reform, are turning their back on some of the affirmations we heard in the kind of Black

Lives Matter moment in 2020, that voters were sending a message to Democrats saying that they don't want policies that could be considered, quote unquote, lenient on crime. Right. The thinking is if Democrats in the country's most progressive city are tossing out their most progressive district attorney, that it's kind of game over for this kind of prosecutor everywhere. Right. The thought was if San Francisco is rejecting its beacon of progressives, then the country must be. But in my reporting and in talking with these people, drawing that one-to-one causal relationship, that progressive policies meant crime went up and thus people are retreating from criminal justice reform. It's just too simple of a connection.

And the reality is, as it often is in politics, more nuanced and more complicated. We'll be right back. So, Ested, explain, as you started to before the break, why Chesa Boudin's recall is not necessarily meaning what people might think that it means. Yeah, this wasn't the first time a progressive prosecutor has faced real pressure on these type of issues. And some of them have been successful in winning reelection in the face of that. When we look at Larry Krasner in Philadelphia, he faced a well-funded challenger who was hitting on these issues,

talking about rising crime rates and saying that his policies were not deterring criminals. And Krasner was successful in getting reelected. You had Kim Fox in Illinois and Cook County, a place that obviously has its real issues with public safety and crime. Someone who won reelection, even when people were hitting her on those type of issues.

So I think that we have to think of what happened in San Francisco as one plot point out of many, rather than just a singular story that says, because Boudin was recalled, people don't like criminal justice reform. And I said, why did the district attorneys you just mentioned win those recent races? Do you think? When you talk to people in those cities, and I've talked to both of those district attorneys themselves, they really think that they win by basically doing good politics, that they recognize the disconnect between progressive

activists and some of their constituents, and they changed or shifted or emphasized different portions of their message to do that. I mean, it's important to remember that it's not as if progressive prosecutors think crime doesn't matter. They just think they have a different method of approaching public safety. I think we also have to be clear that we're talking about cities with different racial makeups. And specifically, Philadelphia and Chicago have much larger Black populations than San Francisco does. And if you talk to anyone across the criminal justice kind of community, or even these prosecutors themselves, they will say how Black communities have been talking about the issue of criminal justice reform for a long time in these cities, and it's actually really taken root the reform in a different way.

You know, we know that the Chicagos and Philadelphias of the world experienced the real brunt of the 90s ramp up of tough on crime and incarceration. And that legacy is still really palpable there. It's not to say that that's not true in San Francisco, but you have a different voting bloc set. You have much more affluent white liberals. You have a much larger Asian electorate. talking about how Krasner and Fox leaned on those relationships to help their re-election, that wasn't necessarily an option that exists in the same way for Boudin in San Francisco. And the base is that it's a different city with a different local complexion. So in reality, Boudin was in a unique situation, and perhaps he was more the exception in many different ways than he was any kind of rule

when we think about the state of the progressive district attorney in the United States. But to the degree that the narrative of the Boudin recall as emblematic of where American politics is, even if it's not quite right. What is the impact of that perception? The impact is politics. In a midterm election year, you have both parties really seeking a message that's going to stick. And Republicans have zeroed in on crime and public safety as a winning one. And they have done that by really drawing a conflation between three different types of liberals. Progressive activists who embraced defunding police and structural change. Progressive prosecutors who came to power from those communities but talk

a little differently. And you have the institutional Democratic Party, right, led by Joe Biden. And what Republicans are going to try to do is really flatten all three of those and say that the reason to reject Joe Biden and the congressional Democrats running is because they have gone too far to the left. And the example you can use for that are these scary progressive prosecutors and their scary progressive language. Got it. So when they're telling Boudin and his policies are the same as Joe Biden in the White House, even though Joe Biden and Boudin probably couldn't be further apart on criminal justice within the Democratic Party. Absolutely. I mean, we're talking about a Joe Biden who passed the 90s crime bills, right? We're talking about Joe Biden who has made his legacy around

these things, who's really an architect of the thing that Chesa Boudin is running against, right? But still, in this moment, and with Biden's the party leader, what Republicans are going to do is use the D next to both of those names to really play up the fear. And because that is so clear that that is going to be a line of Republican attack, it has also impacted Democrats too. How? It's kind of funny because it's like a prevent defense if we think in the NFL terms, right? Because you know that the other side is going to do something dramatic. You self-correct to try to stop that impact from happening. And so you have Joe Biden in major speeches kind of consistently hammering that he wants to fund the police, not defund the police, right? You have the kind of prominent figures in the Democratic Party right now embracing New York City's Mayor Eric Adams

as a kind of avatar of a different type of criminal justice reform, one that embraces cops, one that wants to increase police funding, even while talking alongside the need for criminal justice reform issues. And the way that we began this by saying that progressive prosecutors have won the argument and the party about how you should talk about criminal justice reform, you are increasingly seeing that tested. And the party really elevate people who have a little bit of a different message on that issue. And if you talk to anyone around this, they think that's because they know Republicans are trying to use progressive prosecutors as a wedge. So I said, what you're describing, the Republican attacks on progressive

criminal justice reform, and the Democratic Party's fear that those attacks might work. What does that mean for all of these district attorneys around the country that you have introduced us to in this conversation who were elected on the progressive message? In the progressive prosecutor vision, they need the mayor, the city council, Congress, the president to really do the other stuff that they can't, right? They say that you shouldn't charge people with crimes, not because that inherently makes the society better, but because that money and energy should go to other things that will make societies better. But they don't

control those other things. They don't control funding for mental health and education and housing and all of those other things. And so they need legislative partners to really fill that gap. And so when we're talking about the impacts of the perception, what you hear from them is, yeah, yeah, it might make our reelection harder, right, in just the normal way that we discussed. But what they're really scared about is that it isolates them to a degree where they lose their legislative partners, that their legislative partners lose the political will to really support them. And without that, the whole thing falls apart. So Boudin's loss, it might not mean what people think it does, that Democrats in the country have turned against progressive law enforcement reform.

But the impact could still be the same, because these prosecutors won't be able to make these reforms a reality. The question will be, what message does the party take from the recall? And if that is one that says that progressive prosecutors and their policies cannot be defended in this political environment, it would be a retreat from that commitment that the Democratic Party really made on these issues.

You know, they had come around to a new language on this. They had come around to new policies on this. But they had done it in a moment free of political pressure. This will be the test and how deep and enduring that commitment really is. Will Estead, thank you very much. Thank you. We'll be right back.

Here's what else you need to know today. The select committee to investigate the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol will be in order. In the first televised hearing of the bipartisan House Committee examining the causes of the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol, lawmakers sought to demonstrate through never-before-seen testimony Donald Trump's responsibility for

causing the attack and his refusal, once it was underway, to take any steps to stop it. On this point, there is no room for debate. Those who invaded our Capitol and battled law enforcement for hours were motivated

by what President Trump had told them, that the election was stolen and that he was the rightful president. President Trump summoned the mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. In one piece of testimony, Trump's former Attorney General, Bill Barr, described his futile efforts in the weeks leading up to the attack to persuade Trump to stop repeating the lie that there was widespread election fraud in 2020. Claims that played a major role in inspiring the attack. during the attack. I had three discussions with the president that I can recall. And in that context, I made it clear I did not agree with the idea of saying the election was stolen

and putting out this stuff, which I told the president was bullshit. And, you know, I didn't want to be a part of it. Even the president's own daughter, Ivanka, had concluded that there was no fraud, telling the committee she was persuaded of that fact by Attorney General Barr. How did that affect your perspective about the election when Attorney General Barr made

that statement? It affected my perspective. I respect Attorney General Barr. So I accepted what he was saying. So I accepted what he was saying. Throughout the hearing, the committee's members asked Americans to see January 6th as a historic betrayal of American values, traditions, and laws. Any legal jargon you hear about seditious conspiracy, obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy, obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States,

boils down to this. January 6th was the culmination of an attempted coup, a brazen attempt, as one rioter put it, shortly after January 6th to overthrow the government. Today's episode was produced by Asta Chaturvedi, Sydney Harper, Nina Feldman, and Claire Tennesketter. It was edited by Patricia Willans and was engineered by Marion Lozano. Contains original music by Chelsea Daniel, Dan Powell, and Marion Lozano. Our theme music is by Jim Rundberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly.

That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you on Monday.