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LOS ANGELES \u2014 Voters in California delivered a stark warning to the Democratic Party on Tuesday about the potency of law and order as a political message in 2022, as a Republican-turned-Democrat campaigning as a crime-fighter vaulted into a runoff in the mayoral primary in Los Angeles and a progressive prosecutor in San Francisco was recalled in a landslide.<\/p>\n
The two results made vivid the depths of voter frustration over rising crime and rampant homelessness in even the most progressive corners of the country \u2014 and are the latest signs of a restless Democratic electorate that was promised a return to normalcy under President Biden and yet remains unsatisfied with the nation\u2019s state of affairs.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople are not in a good mood and they have reason not to be in a good mood,\u201d said Garry South, a Los Angeles-based Democratic strategist. \u201cIt\u2019s not just the crime issue. It\u2019s the homelessness. It\u2019s the high price of gasoline.\u201d<\/p>\n
The West Coast contests were being monitored closely by strategists and leaders in both parties around the country, as Democrats seek to hold together a fractious and diverse political coalition that can be divided both by race and ideology over criminal justice.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
In Los Angeles, Rick Caruso, a billionaire luxury mall developer, spent nearly $41 million telling voters how he would restore order in the city, vowing to add 1,500 officers to the police department and promoting the endorsement of William J. Bratton, the former police chief famous for his broken-windows policy. The race now heads to a November runoff. Mr. Caruso will face Representative Karen Bass, the Democratic former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. Mr. Caruso had about 40 percent of the vote and Ms. Bass had around 38 percent early Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n
In San Francisco, about 60 percent of voters recalled Chesa Boudin, a former public defender who became district attorney in 2019 in a huge win for the progressive left. He promised then that \u201cthe tough-on-crime policies and rhetoric<\/a> of the 1990s and early 2000s are on their way out.\u201d Instead, he is.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The elections on Tuesday showed the extent to which the political winds have shifted even in Democratic cities in the two years since George Floyd\u2019s murder by a Minneapolis police officer. The initial rally cry on the left then \u2014 \u201cdefund the police\u201d \u2014 has since become so politically toxic that it is now more often used by Republicans as an epithet than by Democrats as an earnest policy proposal. And the crusading energy to overhaul policing in the face of rising crime has waned.<\/p>\n For Democrats, the issue of crime and disorder threatens to drive a wedge between some of the party\u2019s core constituencies, as some voters demand action on racial and systemic disparities while others are focused on their own sense of safety in their homes and neighborhoods.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cPeople walking the streets, in many cases, feel themselves in danger and that\u2019s got to be dealt with,\u201d said Willie Brown, a Democrat who is the former mayor of San Francisco.<\/p>\n But Mr. Brown said too many Democrats do not want to talk about \u201cwhat cops do\u201d for fear of crossing the party\u2019s activist class and offending \u201cA.O.S. or A.O.C. or whatever that woman\u2019s name is,\u201d he said dismissively of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, the influential progressive.<\/p>\n In a sign of how crime can divide the party in unusual ways, public and internal polling showed how the crime-and-homelessness campaign of Mr. Caruso, who is white, helped him make inroads with a large swath of Black men<\/a>, even as he ran against Ms. Bass, who is Black. In one May survey, Mr. Caruso was performing more than 30 percentage points better among Black men than women.<\/p>\n Mr. Caruso found traction in the heavily Democratic city despite being a longtime Republican who then became an independent and only joined the Democratic Party just before running for office. He ran a campaign promising to \u201cclean up\u201d the city and hailed Tuesday\u2019s results as \u201ca great awakening.\u201d <\/p>\n Jefrey Pollock, a pollster for Mr. Caruso, said the results should be a take-heed moment for the party. <\/p>\n \u201cIf the Democratic primary electorate is showing a shift toward the middle on police and crime issues, then it is an even larger concern when thinking about the November general elections,\u201d said Mr. Pollock, who also works for at-risk Democratic congressional candidates in other states.<\/p>\n Turnout was low on Tuesday across California. And there is always a risk of over-interpreting local races where distinctly local dynamics are often at play. Mr. Caruso\u2019s vast financial advantage \u2014 he outspent Ms. Bass by more than 10-to-1 \u2014 is not replicable in most races, and he still faces a fierce fight in the fall.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Steve Soboroff, a Los Angeles police commissioner who himself ran for mayor in 2001 and endorsed Ms. Bass this year, was unimpressed by Mr. Caruso\u2019s \u201cbasic guttural knee-jerk messages\u201d on crime and his final showing, given his vast spending. <\/p>\n