{"id":32511,"date":"2022-06-06T19:24:44","date_gmt":"2022-06-06T19:24:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/?p=32511"},"modified":"2022-06-06T19:24:44","modified_gmt":"2022-06-06T19:24:44","slug":"opinion-if-anne-marie-schuberts-cant-survive-the-2022-california-primary-does-our-politics-have-a-chance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/2022\/06\/06\/opinion-if-anne-marie-schuberts-cant-survive-the-2022-california-primary-does-our-politics-have-a-chance\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion | If Anne Marie Schubert’s can’t survive the 2022 California primary, does our politics have a chance?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Adam Lashinsky is former executive editor of Fortune magazine.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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California hasn\u2019t elected a Republican to statewide office since 2006, when voters hired the notably moderate Arnold Schwarzenegger for a second term as governor. That lopsided track record hasn\u2019t prevented Anne Marie Schubert, an ex-Republican prosecutor, from mounting an independent bid in this state\u2019s \u201ctop two\u201d open primary on Tuesday for attorney general, California\u2019s second-most-powerful job.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Schubert should do well with Democrats who see their party failing on public safety and with Republicans who know their own candidates cannot win. But she has virtually no chance of winning \u2014 and that\u2019s a reminder of why third-party bids for office are usually the longest of long shots.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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On paper, Schubert is an ideal general-election candidate. Currently district attorney in Sacramento County, Schubert is an openly gay, pro-choice, anti-Trump 58-year-old who wrote in Condoleezza Rice twice for president. She is best known for having prosecuted the ex-cop known as the Golden State Killer<\/a>, who was nabbed by a pathbreaking DNA investigation and is serving multiple life sentences for 13 murders and nearly 50 rapes in the 1970s and 1980s.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Before being elected in Sacramento, Schubert worked for her entire career as a prosecutor in several California counties. She says she would enforce even laws she originally opposed. She was against legalized marijuana, for example, but she would support the law by going after illegal pot growers. And she\u2019s in tune with California\u2019s support for abortion rights, no matter what happens to Roe v. Wade<\/i> in the U.S. Supreme Court. \u201cThe concept that there are states that are going to criminalize this, I find appalling,\u201d she says. \u201cEspecially when you\u2019re talking about somebody that is a victim of a crime.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Schubert says the state has gone too far in relaxing sentencing guidelines for felons<\/a>. She is particularly outraged by measures that decline to define domestic violence as a violent crime<\/a>. She is probably helped in her quest by rising dissatisfaction with the progressive district attorneys in Los Angeles and San Francisco, George Gasc\u00f3n and Chesa Boudin, who have championed causes such as eliminating cash bail and de-emphasizing the prosecutions of low-level crimes. Even San Francisco voters have had enough of Boudin\u2019s emphasis on criminal justice reform; they\u2019re expected to recall the district attorney in a vote on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Schubert also talks about California\u2019s most visible problem \u2014 homelessness \u2014 with a candor that the two parties can\u2019t afford. In an hour-long interview late last month, Schubert described the problem as an \u201cepidemic along every freeway, under overpasses, in nooks and crannies. It\u2019s inhumane, what\u2019s happening. Everybody knows it. And everybody wants to help them. Because it\u2019s pervasive.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Homelessness doesn\u2019t equate with crime, of course. But Schubert\u2019s conflation of the two resonates with voters: \u201cThis epidemic of drug addiction, mental health and homelessness intersects with public safety in people\u2019s quality of lives.\u201d The groundswell of support for the effort to boot Boudin suggests that even San Francisco liberals \u2014 there are only about 30,000 registered Republicans in the city, yet some 80,000 voters signed a petition to put his recall on the ballot \u2014 would like public officials to focus at least as much on public safety as on criminal justice reform.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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So why can\u2019t Schubert win? Because in a state where primary campaigns are the main barrier to entry to the fall ballot, party endorsements still matter. In a deeply divided political moment, both parties will get their share of their bases: The incumbent Democrat, Rob Bonta, appointed to the job last year by Gov. Gavin Newsom<\/a> (D) when Xavier Becerra joined<\/a> the Biden administration, enjoys the wholehearted support of the state Democratic machine. And both Republicans in the five-way race are polling ahead of Schubert.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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That\u2019s partly because primaries are famously low-turnout affairs, peopled mostly by older voters who tend to be party stalwarts and not in the market for new approaches. No hot governor\u2019s race is underway this year to draw otherwise gettable, nonaligned voters to the polls. It doesn\u2019t help that Schubert\u2019s underfunded campaign is relying largely on digital ads that most voters won\u2019t see. Schubert knows even her modest goal \u2014 to get more votes than the Republican candidates \u2014 is a challenge. \u201cMy mission is to get to the top two,\u201d she says. \u201cThat\u2019s it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Still, Schubert tops her bid with one other uncommon boast: She says she has no higher political aspirations. That\u2019s notable considering the bipartisan list of past California attorneys general includes former governors Earl Warren, Pat Brown, George Deukmejian and Jerry Brown, as well as Vice President Harris. Schubert casts her independence from the Republican Party as a qualification for the nonpartisan office she seeks. \u201cMy political party has never played a role in anything,\u201d says Schubert. \u201cI have my own view about things.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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If only American politics were ready for that kind of leadership.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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