A reckoning for Chesa Boudin?

The polls suggest so

Chesa Boudin is the far-left, soft-on-crime San Francisco district attorney. He’s the son of a convicted terrorist — the late Kathy Boudin — and was raised by a pair of terrorists — his adoptive parents Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn.

Boudin is facing a recall election next week, and no wonder. As district attorney, he has undermined public safety by favoring certain kinds of criminals over the public. He favors criminals by allowing them to avoid serving any jail time or by minimizing that time through lenient charging.

Under his watch, car thefts and burglaries have spiked. So have homicides and shootings. Shoplifting and organized smash-and-grabs are rampant in San Francisco.

Boudin’s policies have alienated a group of former prosecutors in Boudin’s office. They argue that the district attorney and his deputies have mismanaged and politicized prosecution.

Former San Francisco prosecutor Brooke Jenkins says:

Chesa has a belief that your approach should be defendant-centered. Everything should revolve around what’s best for the defendants. He’s never let go of his role as the public defender.

It’s not just former prosecutors whom Boudin has alienated. He’s also clashed with San Francisco’s liberal mayor, London Breed.

Breed has not taken a public position on the attempt to recall Boudin. However, one of her close allies on the Board of Supervisors has endorsed the recall.

What are the chances that Boudin will be recalled? Polls suggest they are good. In mid-May, a PPP poll of 697 like voters found that 48 percent of San Franciscans plan to vote "yes" on recalling Boudin, 38 percent plan to vote "no," and 14 percent are undecided.

This represented an improvement for Boudin from two previous polls. They had him losing by a 2-1 margin or greater.

Boudin’s supporters blame his political woes on spending by outsiders trying to unseat him. Politico seems sympathetic to this narrative, describing the recall campaign as “well funded.” It acknowledges that supporters like the American Civil Liberties Union and “Smart Justice” have poured money into Boudin’s defense, but says they have been outspent by opponents.

I hope so. But Politico neglects to note that the national campaign to replace serious, law-and-order prosecutors with far leftists like Boudin has been backed by obscene amounts of money from George Soros. I warned of this development early on when I wrote about Soros’ quest, successful in the end, to unseat strong prosecutors in two Northern Virginia counties.

It’s rich, therefore, to see the left bellyache about being outspent in one particular campaign in an ultra-liberal jurisdiction.

The bellyaching is understandable, though. The left fears that if Boudin is recalled, the result will, in Politico’s words, “ripple beyond San Francisco by emboldening foes of progressive prosecutors.” For example, there is proposed legislation in Pennsylvania to limit the Philadelphia district attorney’s tenure — widely seen as aimed at lefty Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner — and a bill in Illinois that would allow voters to recall the Cook County district attorney, a position currently held by Soros-backed Kim Foxx.

I doubt the result in San Francisco will affect outcomes elsewhere. Nor do foes of “progressive” prosecutors need to be “emboldened” at this point (they did need to be a few years ago, though).

But if the recall succeeds, it will show that even in San Francisco, the public is finally coming to its senses on the matter of radical leniency for criminals.