At an election night party in November, I asked then-Rep. Diane Papan about the seemingly widening divide in San Mateo County politics between progressives and moderates—although she clearly aligns with the latter.

Papan quickly resisted the label. She is not a moderate, she said, but a pragmatist.

The implication is clear: a progressive agenda must be tempered by the need to get things done. Some progressives would argue that this pragmatism is an excuse to back away from genuinely seeking solutions to problems like the climate crisis, housing costs and related discrimination, or police misconduct.

Progressive is just one of the terms I use a lot when writing about politics. In this lull between campaigns, it seems like a good time to ask yourself what it means and how it should or shouldn’t be used. Moderate is another term that comes up here and I’m not at all sure it can be applied with any precision. Another is the word activist and I’m pretty confident about its application.

What difference does it make?

Well, as long-winded as this corner is, I’m limited to 800 words. For the sake of economy, like many journalists, I resort to a kind of shorthand—terms that, at least in the political world I visit, have a common understanding. The risk is that these words – yes, labels – are generalizations, with all the bias and inaccuracies that can accompany them.

Especially now, in the peninsular political environment, I admit that I have some confusion about how to use terms like progressive and moderate as labels in confidence of their usefulness—to me, to the people I write about, and to those of you who do I have the honor of reading this.

The Pew Research Center describes progressives as proponents that “US institutions need a complete overhaul because of racial prejudice.”

Pew also notes—and it’s totally true here—that progressives are among the most politically active Democrats.

Many peninsular progressives are young; Many of them – not all – come from communities of color that are slowly evolving into the combined peninsular majority.

You are liberal. Many of them are supporters of the democratic socialist principles advocated by US Senator Bernie Sanders. They’re big fans of US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who responded to the extremists’ label online and offered a list of positions she considers more mainstream than what the political establishment believes: Medicare for all, the Green New Deal, ICE is a “rogue agency” that should be dismantled. “I believe in cooperative economics and cooperative democracy, also known as democratic socialism,” she wrote.

Incidentally, I’ve heard more than one candidate say he or she wants to be “SMC’s AOC.” I don’t think this is an AOC district, but there you go.

The complication of describing progressives as a distinct political entity within our local political landscape is that most elected officials in the peninsula – certainly the most prominent – can only be characterized as progressive. Then-MP Kevin Mullin, who ran for Congress last year, has been named by several progressive groups as one of the leading progressives in the legislature. He is also certainly a leading member of the political establishment.

It is noteworthy that Papan’s election night commentary was delivered at the Plumbers’ Union Hall in Burlingame, a decades-long political arena in the county. Labor was perhaps the key factor in San Mateo County’s transition from staunchly Republican to fully Democratic. Labor remains the most influential advocacy group in the county and is clearly progressive. But progressives could easily view the labor leadership as pragmatic and mainstream establishment. Labor has consistently had a strong track record of supporting winning candidates, which is undeniably the ultimate sign of pragmatism.

And that might be the crux of the matter. The real conflict between progressives and pragmatists is that more pragmatists win office—at least for now. That tension plays out in other ways: in voting on policy issues in the Democratic Central Committee, or in battles over who goes as a delegate to Democratic conventions. On these battlefields, the sides are evenly divided.

A core of leading progressive officeholders is emerging — County Supervisors David Canepa and Noelia Corzo, San Mateo Mayor Amourence Lee, and South San Francisco Councilmember James Coleman are among the most notable.

But the real tension may simply be that a younger generation is impatiently waiting for an older establishment generation to step aside.

And that is as old as politics itself.

Mark Simon is a veteran journalist whose career spanned 15 years as an executive at SamTrans and Caltrain. He can be reached at markimon@smdailyjournal.com.

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Plymouth County District Attorney Tim Cruz, the only Republican district attorney seeking re-election in Massachusetts, is trying to fend off a challenge from Democrat Rahsaan Hall this week.

The contest marks an important challenge for the so-called progressive prosecutor movement, which hopes to overhaul the criminal justice system and suffered key losses in Massachusetts this fall.

Timothy Shugrue defeated fellow Andrea Harrington, the progressive district attorney in Berkshire County, in the Democratic primary. Boston City Councilor Ricardo Arroyo, a progressive Democrat, lost his bid for Suffolk County district attorney to the more moderate Kevin Hayden, a fellow Democrat who was appointed as interim district attorney in January.

Nationally, progressives have also faced challenges around the country with concerns rising about crime in some major cities. For instance, San Francisco residents overwhelmingly voted to recall a progressive district attorney, Chesa Boudin, in June.

But Democrats are hoping to beat two Republicans in the Bay State on Tuesday. Democratic attorney Robert Galibois is running against Republican Assistant District Attorney Daniel Higgins for the district that includes Cape Cod, Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard. The seat is open because longtime District Attorney Michael O’Keefe, a Republican, is retiring.

And in Plymouth County, Hall is challenging Cruz, the longtime Republican incumbent. Despite the recent setbacks in Massachusetts and across the country, Hall says there is still a lot of interest in criminal justice reform.

“The voices that would normally push for the type of reforms within the system aren’t there,” said Hall, who worked as a prosecutor in Suffolk County and led the ACLU’s racial justice program.

Rev. Rahsaan Hall, of the St. Paul AME Church in Cambridge, speaks outside the State House on July 20, 2020 in Boston. (Matt Stone/MediaNews Group/Boston Herald)

Hall, also an ordained minister, vowed to find “another way to deal with harm and disruption in a community that doesn’t over-criminalize and overburden people and still find ways to keep people safe and healthy in their communities.”

Hall says his views are similar to former Suffolk County district attorney and now US Attorney Rachael Rollins. He supports her so-called “do not prosecute” list of low level crimes where prosecutors wouldn’t automatically prosecute, but would seek diversion instead. Hall said he would also support reducing cash bail with the goal of eliminating it entirely.

“This is a very significant moment in the life of progressive reform in the criminal legal system here in Massachusetts,” Hall said.

Much of his time on the campaign trail has been focused on educating voters about the role of the county prosecutor and outlining his proposals to improve transparency and collect data to measure outcomes and the effectiveness of reforms. He said he realizes he’s running in what’s considered a more conservative part of a blue state, but he said he’s encouraged.

“Because the public narrative around this system tends to default to law and order and public safety, a lot of people don’t push for or expect the types of reforms that are achievable,” Hall said.

Hall points to research showing that crime declined in Suffolk County under Rollins. But Cruz, who has been district attorney in Plymouth for more than two decades, questions that research and says progressive reforms have been ineffective.

“People are talking about reimagining criminal justice,” Cruz said. “I don’t believe that our county is ready for the philosophies of a progressive district attorney who wants to turn a courthouse into a turnstile where people are coming in and out of there. I think that’s very dangerous and I think it doesn’t work.”

Plymouth County District Attorney Tim Cruz holds a news conference in 2017. (Barry Chin/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

Cruz opposes reducing bail and creating a list of crimes that would not be automatically prosecuted. He also supports mandatory minimum sentences and opposes raising the age by which a juvenile charged with a crime is treated as an adult.

To be sure, Cruz acknowledges that many crimes are related to poverty, addiction and mental health, but he said his office already has programs to address those issues. He also said crime rates in Plymouth County are down, showing he has been effective as the region’s top prosecutor.

“We’re in an era where cases are going down, the people that are being incarcerated are going down,” Cruz said. “That means what you’re doing is working and you can continue to help your community and keep it safe and at the same time help people with these terrible diseases like addiction and mental health problems.”

Cruz also noted he has beaten a string of Democratic challengers before.

“I’m the last standing Republican DA, which is why there’s a target on my back,” Cruz said. “This is my sixth election and it’s the fourth time I’ve been contested. I think I’ve had more contested elections than all the other DAs put together.”

In addition, incumbents traditionally have a big advantage at the polls, particularly for low-profile races.

Still, Cruz may be vulnerable, according to Nasser Eledroos, managing director for Northeastern University’s Center for Law Information and Creativity. Eledroos says some recent studies have found criminal justice reform efforts are effective.

“The body of research is there,” Eledroos said. “It’s now a big, long game of trying to communicate that effectively to voters.”

Eledroos also thought the demographics in Plymouth County have gradually shifted, increasing the odds for Democratic challengers. President Joe Biden got 57% of the votes, compared to Donald Trump’s 40% two years ago.

The results for this year’s contest should be in the near future. Polls close in Massachusetts at 8 pm on Tuesday.

correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated Cruz was the only Republican district attorney in Mass. He is the only GOP district attorney seeking re-election. The post has been updated. We regret the error.

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By Derek Barnes

Like so many, I often wonder if we are truly moving forward and making progress in ways that lift our humanity. It’s hard to affirmatively answer a question like this in these difficult times where gun violence, serious crimes, mental illness, poverty, and homelessness are rising. Are progressive policies and programs doing good things for our communities, and what does it mean to be progressive?

In a recent Oakland City Council meeting, Councilmember Carroll Fife proposed a permanent policy change to alter the 22-year formula for determining the allowable rent increase in Oakland—which does nothing to address the real problem of a severe housing shortage and inadequate production. Pro-tenant groups branded it as a bold, progressive move.

Fife’s intention aimed at protecting more vulnerable renters at risk of displacement or being homeless. However, Fife and supporters of the ordinance never attempted to get the input and perspective from small, community-based independent rental property owners/operators. An opportunity to discuss and create a more comprehensive policy was missed. Ultimately, the move also forged a greater wedge between renters and rental property owners.

It’s time to deliver some hard truth. There’s rarely a one size fits all solution in the matters of policy creation. It takes empathy, careful thought to identify and examine core problems, and bringing different or opposing stakeholders together to build durable solutions. All seems logical and pragmatic, but sadly this method isn’t applied often, as evidenced by Oakland City Council’s rushed decision to pass the recent housing ordinance.

Using Oakland’s recent housing decision as an example, there are some vital points to make about the unintended consequences of seemingly progressive policies that provide protections to one stakeholder group over another:

• Small rental property owners will continue getting pushed out of the business entirely or choose to exit the local rental housing business and invest in geographies that make it easier to do business. This is a disturbing and continuing trend, and the data is irrefutable. The most vulnerable owners are under-resourced—primarily women, BIPOC, immigrants, retirees, and our elderly.
• More rent-controlled units that are older properties will be owned and managed by faceless investors, absentee owners, and large investment companies with no roots or interest in the community where they own housing assets.
• Housing will become less safe and maintained as owners will have no choice but to minimize other expenses to offset rising operating costs due to high inflation. Owners will defer maintenance, security, and improvement projects that increase the quality of habitability, security, and safety for residents.

So, while Oakland City Council might think a progressive, pro-tenant agenda gets political wins and votes in the short term, the bottom line is that they’re not focusing on strategic priorities that affect long-term change, innovation, and transformation in housing. They’re shifting the burden of inadequate living wage policies, public safety, departmental accountability, and housing programs for increased production onto small property owners, who have already been struggling due to a two-year pandemic.

There’s a lot of talk these days about equity and social justice. The truth is that after decades of “progressive policies,” the Black and African American populations in San Francisco and Oakland have decreased by 50% and 40%, respectively, since the 1980s. Many of these residents were property owners who typically rented to other BIPOC and immigrant residents who really needed affordable and below-market-rate housing options. These things are connected. There are many more examples of bad policy and legislation creating unfavorable outcomes and contributing to today’s societal problems—cause and effect.

Good policy matters. Progressive housing policies without impact studies, deep analysis, and varied stakeholder input create conditions that drive unintended consequences. Moreover, there may be little political accountability if policy and program success metrics aren’t well defined. This must change. We’re losing generations of San Franciscans and Oaklanders who are being replaced by more affluent renters and owners who are not deeply attached to these cities’ rich history and cultural vibrance.

Derek Barnes is the CEO of the East Bay Rental Housing Association ( www.EBRHA.com ). He currently serves on the boards of Horizons Foundation and Homebridge CA. Follow him on Twitter @DerekBarnesSF or on Instagram at DerekBarnes.SF

Published on June 9, 2022

The post The Progressive Parable – San Francisco Bay Occasions appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Tom Kean Jr., the son of a popular two-term New Jersey governor, beat six Republican opponents Tuesday to win the nomination to compete against Representative Tom Malinowski, an embattled Democrat accused of ethical lapses, in what is shaping up to be the state’s most competitive midterm contest.

Another son of a storied New Jersey political family, Robert Menendez Jr., easily won a Democratic House primary, making it likely that he and his father and namesake, the state’s senior senator, will serve together in the Capitol.

Mr. Malinowski, 56, in a swipe at Mr. Kean’s three unsuccessful campaigns for Congress, said: “I want to do this job. He just wants to have this job.”

Mr. Kean, 53, who narrowly lost to Mr. Malinowski in 2020, said his opponent had “squandered” the opportunity to serve New Jersey during two terms in Washington.

Mr. Kean’s primary opponents had challenged him from the right as they competed for the support of conservative Republican voters aligned with former President Donald J. Trump. Outside a school near Mr. Kean’s home in Westfield, NJ, where he voted on Tuesday with his wife and daughters, a sign parroting one of Mr. Trump’s favorite labels read, “Warning RINO alert.”

But just after midnight, he was more than 22 percentage points ahead of his closest opponent in a race that was seen at least in part as a measure of Mr. Trump’s grip on the Republican Party in a state better known for a moderate brand of Republican politics once epitomized by leaders like Mr. Kean’s father, Gov. Thomas H Kean.

The largely suburban Seventh Congressional District is filled with the type of affluent, well-educated voters who helped Democrats take control of the House in 2018.

During the last midterm cycle, Democrats in New Jersey flipped four seats—many of which, including Mr. Malinowski’s, are again seen as potential battlegrounds.

As he runs for re-election, Mr. Malinowski is facing allegations that he failed to report stock trades as required. He is also running in a district that gained more Republican-leaning towns when the borders were redrawn to reflect demographic changes in the 2020 census.

But late Tuesday, Mr. Malinowski’s campaign got a potential boost from an unlikely camp: Republicans hoping to make a home for centrist voters with the creation of a new party, the Moderate Party. The new party, which will almost certainly face legal challenges, has filed nominating petitions on behalf of Mr. Malinowski.

Mr. Menendez won in a largely urban district where registered Democrats outnumbered Republicans five to one; winning the primary in the Eighth Congressional District, which includes parts of New Jersey’s two largest cities, is often tantamount to victory in the general election.

A lawyer making his first run for office, Mr. Menendez had an array of political and union support early on — as well as crucial backing from his father, also a Democrat and the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Just after midnight, when The Associated Press called the race for Mr. Menendez, he was 70 percentage points ahead of his main challenger, David Ocampo Grajales.

If he wins in November, Mr. Menendez, 36, will occupy a seat held for a decade by Representative Albio Sires, a Democrat who announced in December he would not run for re-election.

Mr. Ocampo Grajales, the son of immigrants from Colombia, said last week that he had entered the race to give Democrats a viable alternative to a handpicked candidate.

“It’s not so much who Menendez is himself, but what he represents: more of the same,” said Mr. Ocampo Grajales, 25.

The New Jersey congressional candidate Tom Kean Jr., with his family, after voting at Wilson Elementary School in Westfield, NJ, on Tuesday.Credit…Bryan Anselm for The New York Times

A Republican primary in a central New Jersey swing district represented by Andy Kim, a Democrat running for his third term in Congress, was the state’s most colorful contest.

Bob Healey Jr., a former singer in a punk band who helps run his family’s yacht-manufacturing company, beat two challengers, Nicholas J. Ferrera and Ian A. Smith, with the backing of the Republican Party.

In March, Mr. Smith, the former owner of a gym that repeatedly flouted Covid-19 lockdown rules, was charged with driving under the influence, reviving talk of his past conviction for vehicular homicide. He served time in prison for killing a teenager in 2007 while under the influence of alcohol, and pleaded not guilty to the new charges.

“I may have sung in my past about killing someone,” Mr. Healey said during a debate in May. “Ian actually did kill someone.”

By midnight, the winner of the Republican primary to face Representative Josh Gottheimer, a Democrat competing for re-election to a fourth term, had not yet been called.

Frank Pallotta, a wealthy former investment banker who lost to Mr. Gottheimer two years ago, was 5 percentage points ahead of Nick De Gregorio, a Marine Corps veteran, with about 85 percent of the vote counted.

Mr. Pallotta won the endorsement of former President Donald J. Trump in 2020, but not this time. He also had raised significantly less money than Mr. De Gregorio, who had emphasized his service in combat roles in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“We did everything we possibly could, and we left no stones unturned,” Mr. De Gregorio said as he watched the returns come in from the Republican Party headquarters in Bergen County. “We went out there and we listened to what the voters had to say.”

Mr. Menendez will be a heavy favorite in November against Marcos Arroyo, a housing inspector from West New York, NJ, who was the lone Republican candidate to enter the race.

Mr. Menendez has said that, if elected, he would focus on expanding access to early childhood education and issues that affect the cost of living in New Jersey, where property owners pay some of the nation’s highest taxes.

“One of the things we’ve focused on — just because we don’t know the climate that we’re going to be walking into, should we win — is trying to think about what Democratic proposals haven’t been passed yet that we can have bipartisan support for,” Mr. Menendez said in an interview on Saturday.

Before being appointed to the Senate in 2006, Senator Menendez held the House seat that his son is now seeking. The borders of the district, formerly the 13th Congressional District, have since been redrawn slightly.

The state debuted a new electronic voting system in November, but this was the first time that New Jersey voters were offered a chance to cast ballots in person, on machines, during a primary election.

Still, with no statewide races on the ballot, turnout was low.

“We were told that we were the fourth and fifth people in our district to be voting today,” Gov. Philip D. Murphy said on Tuesday morning, “and they’ve been open for a while.”

Shlomo Schorr contributed reporting.

The post San Francisco Recollects Progressive Prosecutor; Caruso to Face Bass for Los Angeles Mayor appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — San Francisco’s progressive district attorney, elected on a platform of reducing incarceration, faces a recall election driven by a pandemic in which brutal attacks against Asian seniors and viral footage of smash-and-grab robberies tested residents’ famously liberal political bent.

Recall proponents say Chesa Boudin is inexperienced and ideologically inflexible, often seeking to avoid charging criminals and siding with offenders over victims. His prosecutors are not permitted to seek cash bail, try juveniles as adults or seek longer sentences for perpetrators with gang affiliations.

The June 7 recall has pitted Democrat against Democrat in this city of not quite 900,000 people where reports of burglary and motor theft are up from 2017, but overall reported crime is down. Recall proponents have raised more than $7 million — double what his supporters have collected — with funding from the real estate industry and a conservative billionaire.

Boudin’s supporters say his platform is in line with voters who approved measures to reduce sentences. They say conservative interests have exploited high-profile tragedies to make everything Boudin’s fault when crime rates are much higher in districts with traditional law-and-order prosecutors.

Political experts, and Boudin himself, say he’s bearing the brunt of general angst.

San Francisco residents have long accepted a middling public school system, homeless encampments and open drug dealing as part of city life. But the pandemic amped up dissatisfaction as schools remained closed to in-person instruction while city and police officials appeared indifferent to graffiti and vandalism.

“Part of it is a tremendous amount of understandable frustration and anxiety that people have felt in the context of COVID, uncertainty about the direction our country’s headed, anger at the Trump administration and misinformation that administration fueled on everything from public safety to vaccines,” Boudin told The Associated Press.

The vote also comes at a time when recalls are increasingly being used in California, said Joshua Spivak, a recall expert who is with the Hugh L. Carey Institute for Government Reform at Wagner College in New York City.

gov. Gavin Newsom easily survived a recall in September, but three members of the San Francisco school board were ousted in February.

“Boudin was elected in a very, very close race,” Spivak said. “He’s somebody who was kind of a perfect target for a recall challenge.”

Boudin’s office has been locked in open battle with San Francisco police, which accused his office of withholding evidence in a case against an officer. Boudin says police often fail to bring thorough cases to the DA’s office for prosecution, making arrests in just 5% of cases. He made headlines when he disclosed that police had used DNA collected from a rape to arrest the victim in an unrelated property crime.

He is backed by the San Francisco Democratic Party and most of the 11-member Board of Supervisors. Mayor London Breed, however, has declined to take a position on the recall, highlighting political divisions in a democratic city where leaders embrace immigrant and gay rights but have fought over police accountability and cracking down on drug dealing.

Boudin, 41, had never worked as a prosecutor when in November 2019, he eked out a 51% win over the more moderate candidate backed by the mayor.

Many were captivated by 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.

On the campaign trail, 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.

The honeymoon period in office was short-lived.

An allegedly intoxicated parolee driving a stolen car hit and killed two pedestrians on the final day of 2020. Critics say the driver had been arrested multiple times that year and should have been in jail, but Boudin’s office had declined to press charges for burglary, drug possession and car theft. Instead they referred him to state agents who didn’t revoke his parole.

Boudin spokesperson Rachel Marshall said the case prompted the DA’s office “to begin charging parole violations ourselves rather than relying on parole to do it.”

Former prosecutor and recall supporter Brooke Jenkins said the office under the previous district attorney was progressive. But unlike Boudin, she said, George Gascón gave prosecutors discretion and allowed them to insist on onerous treatment programs as conditions of avoiding jail time.

“We are conditioning people to believe they can do whatever they want in San Francisco with no consequences,” Jenkins said. “I think San Francisco sees the need for a little bit more balance to social justice and criminal justice issues.”

Leanna Louie, a Democrat campaigning for the recall, said she was outraged at Boudin’s office released to home treat a young man who viciously kicked an elderly Chinese man sitting on a walker, severely injuring him.

“I think everybody could do better. But this, this is the worst,” Louie said. “Chesa is probably the least helpful person in this whole process.”

Marshall said the defendant was jailed for about seven months at the request of the DA’s office. His attorney then requested he be transferred to mental health diversion, which the judge granted, she said.

It’s unfair to single out Boudin in a complicated system that relies on judges, police and social services to do their parts, his supporters say.

Rico Hamilton, a longtime advocate for ending street violence who was shot last year, was among Black, Asian American and Latino leaders at a recent news conference against the recall.

“We are the leaders of change,” Hamilton said. “And us saying that we don’t want Chesa is saying that we don’t want to change the system.”

At a former tanning salon in the city’s gay-friendly Castro neighborhood that is Boudin’s campaign headquarters, the district attorney expressed pride in what his office has achieved while in a pandemic that drastically cut access to treatment, counseling and courtrooms.

His office filed charges in 62% of arrests brought by San Francisco police in 2021, up from a low of 45% his first year and on par with years dating back to 2016, according to the office’s annual report. Reported crimes include burglary, robbery, vandalism and theft but not homicides, sexual assaults and domestic violence.

At the same time, his office expanded the percentage of defendants who successfully completed diversion programs, some of which are mandated by the state, to avoid incarceration. In May, he announced a new Asian American Pacific Islander victim services unit.

Last year, Boudin south manufacturers and shippers of ghost guns, weapons popular with criminals made from parts bought online. His office pursued assault and battery charges against an on-duty San Francisco police officer, although a jury acquitted him. While opponents have cited high turnover in his office, Boudin said he has no problem filling vacancies.

“There’s a playbook that Republicans and police unions across the country are using to attack criminal justice reform. They exploit tragedies to suggest that those tragedies are a result of reforms,” Boudin said. “They don’t do that in tough-on-crime jurisdictions where the exact same tragedies occur, with more frequency.”

The post San Francisco might vote out progressive DA in heated recall appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — San Francisco’s progressive district attorney, elected on a platform of reducing incarceration, faces a recall election driven by a pandemic in which brutal attacks against Asian seniors and viral footage of smash-and-grab robberies tested residents’ famously liberal political bent.

Recall proponents say Boudin is inexperienced and ideologically inflexible, often seeking to avoid charging criminals and siding with offenders over victims. His prosecutors are not permitted to seek cash bail, try juveniles as adults or seek longer sentences for perpetrators with gang affiliations.

The June 7 recall has pitted Democrat against Democrat in this city of not quite 900,000 people where reports of burglary and motor theft are up from 2017, but overall reported crime is down. Recall proponents have raised more than $7 million — double what his supporters have collected — with funding from the real estate industry and a conservative billionaire.

Boudin’s supporters say his platform is in line with voters who approved measures to reduce sentences. They say conservative interests have exploited high-profile tragedies to make everything Boudin’s fault when crime rates are much higher in districts with traditional law-and-order prosecutors.

Political experts, and Boudin himself, say he’s bearing the brunt of general angst.

San Francisco residents have long accepted a middling public school system, homeless encampments and open drug dealing as part of city life. But the pandemic amped up dissatisfaction as schools remained closed to in-person instruction while city and police officials appeared indifferent to graffiti and vandalism.

“Part of it is a tremendous amount of understandable frustration and anxiety that people have felt in the context of COVID, uncertainty about the direction our country’s headed, anger at the Trump administration and misinformation that administration fueled on everything from public safety to vaccines,” Boudin told The Associated Press.

The vote also comes at a time when recalls are increasingly being used in California, said Joshua Spivak, a recall expert who is with the Hugh L. Carey Institute for Government Reform at Wagner College in New York City.

gov. Gavin Newsom easily survived a recall in September, but three members of the San Francisco school board were ousted in February.

“Boudin was elected in a very, very close race,” Spivak said. “He’s somebody who was kind of a perfect target for a recall challenge.”

Boudin’s office has been locked in open battle with San Francisco police, which accused his office of withholding evidence in a case against an officer. Boudin says police often fail to bring thorough cases to the DA’s office for prosecution, making arrests in just 5% of cases. He made headlines when he disclosed that police had used DNA collected from a rape to arrest the victim in an unrelated property crime.

He is backed by the San Francisco Democratic Party and most of the 11-member Board of Supervisors. Mayor London Breed, however, has declined to take a position on the recall, highlighting political divisions in a democratic city where leaders embrace immigrant and gay rights but have fought over police accountability and cracking down on drug dealing.

Boudin, 41, had never worked as a prosecutor when in November 2019, he eked out a 51% win over the more moderate candidate backed by the mayor.

Many were captivated by 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.

On the campaign trail, 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.

The honeymoon period in office was short-lived.

An allegedly intoxicated parolee driving a stolen car hit and killed two pedestrians on the final day of 2020. Critics say the driver had been arrested multiple times that year and should have been in jail, but Boudin’s office had declined to press charges for burglary, drug possession and car theft. Instead they referred him to state agents who didn’t revoke his parole.

Boudin spokesperson Rachel Marshall said the case prompted the DA’s office “to begin charging parole violations ourselves rather than relying on parole to do it.”

Former prosecutor and recall supporter Brooke Jenkins said the office under the previous district attorney was progressive. But unlike Boudin, she said, George Gascón gave prosecutors discretion and allowed them to insist on onerous treatment programs as conditions of avoiding jail time.

“We are conditioning people to believe they can do whatever they want in San Francisco with no consequences,” Jenkins said. “I think San Francisco sees the need for a little bit more balance to social justice and criminal justice issues.”

Leanna Louie, a Democrat campaigning for the recall, said she was outraged at Boudin’s office released to home treat a young man who viciously kicked an elderly Chinese man sitting on a walker, severely injuring him.

“I think everybody could do better. But this, this is the worst,” Louie said. “Chesa is probably the least helpful person in this whole process.”

Marshall said the defendant was jailed for about seven months at the request of the DA’s office. His attorney then requested he be transferred to mental health diversion, which the judge granted, she said.

It’s unfair to single out Boudin in a complicated system that relies on judges, police and social services to do their parts, his supporters say.

Rico Hamilton, a longtime advocate for ending street violence who was shot last year, was among Black, Asian American and Latino leaders at a recent news conference against the recall.

“We are the leaders of change,” Hamilton said. “And us saying that we don’t want Chesa is saying that we don’t want to change the system.”

At a former tanning salon in the city’s gay-friendly Castro neighborhood that is Boudin’s campaign headquarters, the district attorney expressed pride in what his office has achieved while in a pandemic that drastically cut access to treatment, counseling and courtrooms.

His office filed charges in 62% of arrests brought by San Francisco police in 2021, up from a low of 45% his first year and on par with years dating back to 2016, according to the office’s annual report. Reported crimes include burglary, robbery, vandalism and theft but not homicides, sexual assaults and domestic violence.

At the same time, his office expanded the percentage of defendants who successfully completed diversion programs, some of which are mandated by the state, to avoid incarceration. In May, he announced a new Asian American Pacific Islander victim services unit.

Last year, Boudin south manufacturers and shippers of ghost guns, weapons popular with criminals made from parts bought online. His office pursued assault and battery charges against an on-duty San Francisco police officer, although a jury acquitted him. While opponents have cited high turnover in his office, Boudin said he has no problem filling vacancies.

“There’s a playbook that Republicans and police unions across the country are using to attack criminal justice reform. They exploit tragedies to suggest that those tragedies are a result of reforms,” Boudin said. “They don’t do that in tough-on-crime jurisdictions where the exact same tragedies occur, with more frequency.”

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When a task force set out to draw lines for the new supervisory districts in 2002, a lot of us were worried. Willie Brown was mayor, and he would have significant influence on the task force. Bad lines could divide up communities, fracture alliances—and, like any gerrymandering, elect people who don’t represent the most vulnerable communities in the city.

But it was fine. The lines were pretty much what the city had put in place when the voters restored district elections. The task force tinkered around the edges to adjust for population, but nobody was unhappy.

The PVI shows the percentage of voters who tend toward progressive positions on key issues. Note that D5, D8, D9, and D10 have high concentrations of progressive voters. Mapping overlays by Michael Redmond

Ten years later, we worried again. Gavin Newsom was mayor; just a little bit of political influence could have made it harder to elect progressives. Again: It was fine.

As Sup. Aaron Peskin told me recently, since the return of district elections everyone has played by the book. They’ve kept the politics out of it, kept neighborhoods together, and made changes only around the margins.

Not this time.

The most recent district lines, which a sharply divided task force seems prepared to accept, would take the most progressive district in the city, which has elected two Green Party members and a Democratic Socialist, and blow it to bits.

It’s strange: District 5 has had very little population change, but the vast majority of the redistricting changes have happened there. “It’s makes me suspicious and I start to disturb the process,” Christin Evans, who owns a bookstore in the Haight and is part of the Haight Ashbury Merchants Association, told me.

The task force—by a 5-4 vote—decided March 25 to continue its work with a map known as 3B as a starting point. Another version, 3A, is pretty close to the current lines and doesn’t make any radical changes.

But 3B does.

Now, another new version, 4A, goes even further.

Take a look at the map here:

This is version 3B. Note how it chops up the progressive vote in the Haight.

Map Version 4, which shifts part of the Western Addition in to D2.

Map V4 with the PVI. It even further breaks up progressive voting communities.

Since the first version of district elections, in 1977, the Haight Ashbury neighborhood has been in an intact part of a district. Version 3B would split the Haight and the Western Addition, moving most of the Haight into district 1 or district 7, and moving the Tenderloin from D6 into D5.

Map 4A would shift part of the Western Addition into District 2, the most conservative district in the city.

Meanwhile, D6 would be made up largely of residents in the new condo buildings that we’ve seen in the past decade, meaning it’s going to be a much more conservative district.

So the progressives lose that one (or, if Matt Haney isn’t elected to state Assembly, get a representative who is moving hard to the Yimby side). District 4 moves west, meaning it will be almost impossible for a candidate like Gordon Mar to win. The progressive vote in D5 is scattered. D3 picks up more conservative areas on the edge of the Marina.

“This is,” Calvin Welch, a longtime neighborhood activist, told me, “a clear and direct attack on the progressive board majority.”

There are three meetings next week, April 2, 4, and 6. And there will be no doubt more versions.

But this process keeps coming up with maps that stray further and further from the old districts, for no apparent demographic reason.

I once said that it would be hard to draw 11 bad districts in San Francisco. I was wrong; the task force has done it.

You think the Mayor’s Office might be behind all of this?

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The loved ones of a Bank of America executive found beaten to death in her home are urging that her alleged killer be charged with special circumstances charges as the Los Angeles County Attorney General has criticized his progressive policies and a faced with a recall attempt.

Michelle Avan, 48, had recently been promoted to a senior vice president position when she was killed by her former boyfriend, colleague Anthony Turner, authorities said. She was found at her home in the Reseda neighborhood of Los Angeles on August 5, 2021.

Avan’s loved ones are frustrated that District Attorney George Gascon’s office has not filed special circumstances charges against Turner and says he could potentially be paroled after 10 years if convicted.

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Michelle Avan, 48, was allegedly beaten to death by her ex-boyfriend. Her family is urging prosecutors to charge him with crimes under special circumstances.
(Courtesy of the Avan family)

“He’s entitled to everything that a killer shouldn’t be eligible for,” Avan’s brother Patrick Miller told Fox News.

Turner faces first-degree murder and burglary charges. He was released on detention days after his arrest. Fox News has contacted Gascon’s office.

Avan’s relatives plan to gather outside the prosecutor’s office on Thursday to urge him to seek more serious charges.

Authorities said Turner broke into Avan’s home on August 3 and killed her before leaving the next day. Her body was discovered by her son, Trevon Avan.

Gascon has been criticized since taking office in December 2020 for his controversial policies, which include not seeking bail for some criminal suspects, refusing to prosecute certain crimes and not seeking increased sentences for others.

Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon faces a second recall attempt as criticism of his progressive policies mounts.
(Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

Opponents are in the midst of a second recall attempt against the progressive prosecutor whose efforts to re-imagine how crimes are handled in California’s most populous county have drawn the ire of other district attorneys, law enforcement officials and die-hard crime advocates.

A previous recall failed to gather enough signatures from registered voters. Recall supporters have said that crime has risen since Gascon took office, although crime began to rise in the months leading up to his election, as well as in other cities across the country.

The only criticism they all voice is that Gascon, a former San Francisco district attorney and deputy chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, has abandoned crime victims in favor of protecting criminals’ rights.

Desiree Andrade, whose son Julien was murdered in 2018, is part of the committee leading the recall against him.

Michelle Avan attends the 48th NAACP Image Awards at Pasadena Civic Auditorium on February 11, 2017 in Pasadena, California. (Getty Images for NAACP Image Awards)

“In the case of my son, they all faced special circumstances… and these will be dismissed. They all faced the death penalty or life without parole, and now they face only 25 years of the possibility of parole,” she told Fox News. “It’s a slap in the face for me. So I can see the Avan family being upset about this. There are no more consequences.”

Some of Gascon’s own prosecutors have also publicly opposed his policies.

“George Gascón says facts are important. They do,” Jonathan Hatami tweeted Monday. “Homicides and shootings are at a 15-year high in LA. Releasing criminals on $0 bail, defunding the police, refusing to prosecute crimes, issuing blanket policies, and failing to hold people accountable are not reforms and only lead to violence.”

The Avan family hopes prosecutors will bring the most serious charges in Turner’s case, but they’re not optimistic.

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“I don’t think his policies are designed for the people he was elected for,” Miller said, adding that he believes Gascon’s policies are politically motivated. “We expect justice if something happens. It enables you to make justice seem not the norm.”

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Progressive Voter Index (PVI)

Less progressive

Progressive

Based on the results of the local coordination measures from 2018 to 2020.

For decades, San Francisco’s national election results have shown a deep blue city. But new Chronicle analysis, using data from citywide elections, shows that there are indeed many shades of blue that color the city’s neighborhoods.

Using data from the San Francisco ballot papers, we calculated a score for each of the city’s constituencies – small geographic areas typically used for elections. The scores measure the relative “progressiveness” of an area, with higher scores indicating more progressive districts.

The scores show a donut pattern when assigned. The most progressive boroughs are near the city center and include neighborhoods like Haight, Mission, and Bernal Heights. As you move away from the inner core, the values ​​indicate areas of more moderate attunement, with the least advanced areas in Portola, Visitacion Valley, and near Lake Merced.

To calculate the scores, we combined the district-level results of 14 local votes from the 2018-2020 elections. We have selected the most politically divisive measures on tax, social, land use and government issues that are often at the center of the left-right debate in San Francisco. Using a technique called principal component analysis, we combined the results of the referendum into two indexes, which we then summed and scaled from 0 to 100. These values ​​form the Progressive Voter Index (PVI).

The PVI has decades of history. The results were first calculated in 1999 by the professor emeritus at San Francisco State University, Richard DeLeon. The methodology was passed on to former policy advisor David Latterman, who updated the values ​​in 2004, 2006, 2008, 2011 and 2015. For the current iteration of the Chronicle, Latterman and political researcher Alex Lantsberg helped select the 14 analyzed referendums.

The updated values ​​show a largely unchanged political landscape. According to Latterman, the same small pockets show up to be most or least progressive.

But some neighborhoods have shifted politically. The southeastern neighborhoods in particular, including Bayview Hunters Point and Visitacion Valley, have become more moderate since the PVI was last calculated in 2015.

According to experts, the PVI values ​​are mainly explained by two factors. The first is home ownership. According to political strategist Kate Maeder, the less advanced areas correlate with more single-family homes – and thus more homeowners. In contrast, neighborhoods near the geographic center, like Mission, are mostly tenants.

The second attribute that correlates with the scores is demographics, which can also explain the PVI changes in certain neighborhoods. Over the past decade, gentrification and rising housing costs have forced Asians out of the city center to the more affordable suburbs and blacks out of the city.

In 2010, about a third of Bayview Hunters Point’s residents were black. Today they make up less than a quarter – an eight percentage point decrease – and Asians make up the largest ethnic group in the neighborhood. This black brain drain and Asian immigration may explain the PVI changes at Bayview Hunters Point.

Racial and Ethnic Composition of the Neighborhoods of San Francisco

Click on a race / ethnicity to change the map. Hover your mouse over a neighborhood to view details.

Asians, black and white do not include those who identify as Hispanic American.

David Lee, executive director of the Chinese American Voters Education Committee, said Asians tend to vote more moderately than other non-white voters. He says that because of the relatively high proportion of Asian homeowners and business owners in general, this is the case for housing and small business-related issues – the Census Bureau’s 2019 estimates show that over 40% of San Francisco homeowners are Asian, and Lee estimates that Asians earn between 30 and 40% of the city’s small business owners.

But Asians are anything but conservative. When it comes to San Francisco politics, we speak of more or less progressive degrees, Lee said. For example, in the 2018 general election, Proposition C authorized the city to fund homeless services by taxing certain businesses. In the most progressive parts of the city, over 70% of residents voted in favor of passing the measure. Mostly Asian areas, however, have still passed the measure – just not as overwhelming as other districts.

But, according to Professor James Taylor of the University of San Francisco, the racial makeup of Bayview Hunters Point does not fully explain the PVI changes since blacks and Asians are not always in ideological disagreement. He points to California’s 2010 marijuana legalization proposal, which saw blacks and Asians voting the most conservative in the state.

In addition, black voters do not always side with the progressive side. The inner core of the city voted overwhelmingly against the 2018 Proposition H, which would have tased San Francisco police officers. But, according to Taylor, members of the black community supported the referendum, and the Bayview Hunters Point results reflected that sentiment.

Results of the local voting metrics in San Francisco used in the Progressive Voter Index

Click an election to view the results on the map

June 2018 – PROP C

Commercial rent tax for childcare

June 2018 – PROP E

Ban on the sale of flavored tobacco

June 2018 – PROP G

Package tax for SFUSD

June 2018 – PROP H

Taser for police officers

Nov. 2018 – PROP C

Tax on assistance to the homeless

Nov. 2019 – PROP F

Campaign Contribution Limitations

March 2020 – PROP A

City College Loan

March 2020 – PROP D

Vacancy tax

Nov. 2020 – PROP C

Member of the municipal corporation

Nov. 2020 – PROP D

Sheriff supervision

Nov. 2020 – PROP E

Police personnel

Nov. 2020 – PROP G

Youth election

Nov. 2020 – PROP I

Real estate transfer tax

Nov. 2020 – PROP L

CEO’s tax

The changing ideology of the neighborhoods can have a major impact on local politics, especially with respect to the upper boroughs. The neighborhoods that have changed the most are in District 10, which includes the progressive Dogpatch and Potrero Hill, as well as the more temperate Bayview Hunters Point and Visitacion Valley. The district is now the second least advanced district, according to its median PVI, and less advanced than District Two, which includes some of the city’s most affluent neighborhoods like Pacific Heights, Presidio Heights, Russian Hill, and the Marina.

Progressive Voter Index Results by San Francisco Regulatory District and Current Overseer

Each point is a district and its Progressive Voter Index value

According to Corey Cook, a political scientist who has used the PVI to analyze years of election results, the PVI keeps showing the city’s political dynamism. Earlier iterations correlated with results from mayoral elections, most citywide votes, and overseer races.

“The PVI has been the best tool to understand what is going on in San Francisco politics,” said Cook. “It is a consistent and reliable measure of how issues are shared, the persistence of the moderately progressive divide, and residential voting behavior.”

According to political strategist Maeder, PVI values ​​can help target campaigns. A politician running in city or county races can prioritize their efforts, such as advertising and targeted mail, in areas that most closely match their ideology. “If you had limited campaign resources, you would look at a map like this and target where you want to go first,” Maeder said.

But Latterman cautions that the results are not always perfectly predictable. While they often correlate with citywide election results, they are best for understanding the past, not the future, and the district chairman’s ideology does not always align with their voters.

“People often comment that candidates do not fit into the district because their ideological position does not fit the composition of a district, but there is much more to winning an election than a candidate’s ideology. You still need to have a vision, have good policy ideas, run a good campaign, ”Latterman said. “Nobody should decide to run because they compare their ideology with the PVI values ​​of their district.”

Progressive Voter Index Results for San Francisco Districts

The link to download the data can be found below the table

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Long-time San Francisco civil rights activist and black community leader, Rev. Amos Brown, who also served on the board of directors from 1996 to 2001, recently sat down for an interview with the Chronicle – and he didn’t say a word about the city’s history, when it came to city treating blacks.

Brown is a pastor of the Third Baptist Church in the Fillmore District and has seen the area transform since much of it was razed as part of redevelopment in the mid-1960s. It was not until the 1980s that many of the buildings were replaced, and by then much of the black community that had made the place the Harlem of the West had left.

Before Brown became a Church pastor in 1976, Brown was a youth activist in Mississippi and met Medgar Evers at the age of 14. At 15, in 1956, Brown formed the first NAACP youth council in Jackson, MS, and was later arrested along with Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. during a lunch hour sit-in in Atlanta.

Brown says he doesn’t believe in bitterness and that he believes in moving forward. But there is no doubt that there is intergenerational bitterness over the atrocities and displacement that “urban renewal” wreaked havoc in the Fillmore.

When asked in the interview whether he “believes”[s] that the Bay Area is a safe haven for blacks and other colored people, ”Brown replies quickly with“ no ”.

“The Bay Area, and San Francisco in particular, lived a lie,” says Brown. “The city doesn’t deserve the brand and image it has as liberal and progressive. The only thing that San Francisco is liberal and progressive is sex. That’s it. And there should be no restrictions on how people express their sexuality. But there is a problem for black people getting a good education in San Francisco. [And] Since 1970 we have lost black people who were driven out of this city. “

As KQED explained in an article last year about the disappearance of the Fillmore Jazz District, 10% of the population of San Francisco identified themselves as black in the 1970s (the same was true according to the 1960 US census). The black population is now half the size of the 2019 census data, which found that 5.2% of the city was black.

Writer James Baldwin famously referred to “urban renewal” as “Negro removal,” and that is exactly what happened with the refurbishment of the Fillmore. Baldwin was the focus of a 1963 KQED-produced documentary in which he visited San Francisco.

And in those days leading up to the Summer of Love and SF’s newfound reputation as a magnet for flower children and antiwar activism, Baldwin reiterated some of what Rev. Amos Brown is still saying.

“I can imagine that it is easy for any white man walking through San Francisco to imagine that everything is at peace,” said Baldwin. “Because it certainly looks that way on the surface. You also have the legend of San Francisco, which is that it’s cosmopolitan and forward-thinking.” [city]. But it’s a different American city. “

Brown’s interview with the Chronicle is part of a series published in the Hearst family of publications, which coincides with the Juneteenth. “Lift Every Voice connects young black journalists with black elders in their communities to celebrate and learn from their life experiences – and deepen connections with the past to position us all for a better future.”

Photo: Library of Congress

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