San Francisco voters back Prop H recall of District Attorney Chesa Boudin
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF/AP) -- San Francisco voters have recalled District Attorney Chesa Boudin.
Shortly after the polls closed on Tuesday, the race was called with more than 61% of voters saying 'yes on H,' to recall the embattled Boudin.
San Francisco's election website showed early Wednesday with 100% of the ballots counted, 74,331 or 59.98% of votes were cast in favor of recalling Boudin. The recall only requires a 50% vote plus one to pass.
In the end after all the city's mail-in ballots were counted, just over 55 percent of voters in the June 7 election voted in favor on Proposition H
At his watch party, Boudin did not specifically acknowledge his ouster or talk about being defeated but spoke of the inequalities plaguing his city.
"We have two cities. We have two systems of justice. Right, we have one for the wealthy and well-connected and a different one for everybody else, and this's exactly what we are fighting to change," a defiant Boudin told the crowd of supporters, insisting the city's progressive coalition remains united.
The recall push to oust one of the most progressive prosecutors in the country has bitterly divided Democrats trying to reconcile police reform and community safety.
One Democrat at the Yes on H watch party told KPIX 5, "What has happened here is certainly not a referendum on the criminal justice reform."
Boudin was narrowly elected in 2019 as part of a national wave of liberal district attorneys determined to reform a system they called racist and ineffectual. Boudin, a former public defender, vowed to hold police officers and corporations accountable for social ills. His prosecutors are not allowed to seek cash bail for defendants, charge juveniles as adults or request longer sentences due to a defendant's gang affiliations.
But his time in office has coincided with a pandemic in which attacks against Asian Americans and viral footage of rampant shoplifting rattled residents, some of whom launched a recall effort. They say Boudin is inexperienced and inflexible, often seeking to avoid charging criminals in favor of alternative treatment programs.
His supporters say conservative interests have poured money into a deceitful campaign that unfairly singles him out for blame in a system in which police and judges also face responsibility. San Francisco has long struggled with property crime and records show Boudin is filing charges at roughly the same rate as his predecessor, who also leaned progressive.
"This is not a recall campaign interested in safety or in truth or in justice or in solutions, it's interested in division, in fear and spreading hate and undermining policies ... that make our communities safer," Boudin said at a recent campaign event where he was joined by Asian American, African American and Latino community leaders.
During his 2019 campaign, many were drawn to his personal story. Boudin was a baby when his parents, left-wing Weather Underground radicals, served as drivers in a botched 1981 robbery that left two police officers and a security guard dead. They were sentenced to decades in prison.
While campaigning, he spoke of the pain of stepping through metal detectors to hug his parents and vowed to reform a system that tears apart families. Kathy Boudin was released on parole in 2003 and died of cancer in May. David Gilbert was granted parole in October.
Political experts say Boudin is in the crosshairs of outside forces as a political newcomer who barely won his race in 2019. Reports of overall crime in the city are down, but incidents of burglary and motor vehicle theft have gone up since 2017, according to San Francisco police data.
"It's a vote of general discontent," said Jason McDaniel, associate professor of political science at San Francisco State University. "San Francisco voters are largely very liberal and favorable toward criminal justice reform and yet, in a time when we've got a lot of people upset about a lot of things, you don't want to become the target of that."
The expected low turnout appears to have hurt Boudin. Mayor London Breed will appoint his successor. She has not weighed in publicly on the race but has clashed with him over how best to crack down on unfettered drug dealing and opioid use in the city's troubled Tenderloin neighborhood.
