{"id":32577,"date":"2022-06-08T16:29:18","date_gmt":"2022-06-08T16:29:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/?p=32577"},"modified":"2022-06-08T16:29:18","modified_gmt":"2022-06-08T16:29:18","slug":"california-primary-is-this-the-end-of-the-george-floyd-moment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/2022\/06\/08\/california-primary-is-this-the-end-of-the-george-floyd-moment\/","title":{"rendered":"California Primary: Is This the End of the George Floyd Moment?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Since the massive nationwide protests that erupted in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd, the debate over crime and public safety in the Democratic Party has been dominated by urgent calls for reforming police departments and confronting entrenched racial inequities in the criminal-justice system. History might record yesterday\u2019s elections in San Francisco and Los Angeles as the end of that moment.<\/p>\n

The decisive recall of progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin in San Francisco, and the strong showing of the billionaire former Republican developer Rick Caruso against Democratic Representative Karen Bass in the Los Angeles mayoral primary, likely will pressure Democrats at all levels of government to rebalance their message on criminal justice going forward. The results in California\u2014combined with the former police officer Eric Adams\u2019s victory in the New York mayoral race last fall\u2014send a signal to Democrats that, even in some of their most reliable strongholds, voters are demanding a shift toward policies to combat crime and restore public order.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat you are really seeing is the Democratic base in cities is asserting its fundamental moderate values of prioritizing safety,\u201d says Mitchell Moss, a professor of urban policy and planning at New York University.<\/p>\n

The rising public demand for safety doesn\u2019t mean Democrats are about to abandon the cause of criminal-justice reform and return to the \u201ctough on crime\u201d ethos of the 1990s. But it might prompt more leaders in the party to pull back from policies that appear to prioritize reform over public safety\u2014the perception that doomed Boudin and also has triggered an ongoing recall effort<\/a> against Los Angeles County\u2019s progressive district attorney, George Gasc\u00f3n.<\/p>\n

Read: Why California wants to recall its most progressive prosecutors<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a brief moment and an excessive swing,\u201d Will Marshall, the president of the Progressive Policy Institute, a centrist Democratic think tank, says of the push to reduce incarceration and reimagine, or even defund, policing. After Floyd\u2019s murder by the Minneapolis police, Marshall says, \u201cwe had this progressive reaction, and a lot of utopian thinking crept in. But the problem was to view a strong response to crime and public disorder through the narrow lens of racial politics. That missed something big, which is that low-income and minority communities are on the front lines of crime\u2014they are the No. 1 victims. They don\u2019t want police beating up on their sons, but they also don\u2019t want to be ignored.\u201d Polls in Los Angeles have shown high levels of concern about crime and disorder across racial lines.<\/p>\n

Yesterday\u2019s results do not represent a decisive lurch toward the right for these cities. In Los Angeles, Caruso was about five percentage points ahead of Bass as of this morning. But Bass remained close enough that many local observers believe she will remain highly competitive in November\u2019s runoff, when the electorate will be larger and likely younger and more racially diverse. Also yesterday, Alex Villanueva, the scandal-plagued L.A. County sheriff who has become a hero to conservatives by blaming crime on \u201cwoke\u201d liberal policies, was forced into a runoff that he might struggle to win after attracting only about one-third of the vote in the early returns. And young leftist challengers denouncing the police department and city efforts to clear homeless encampments mounted strong primary races against several centrist Democrats on the L.A. City Council, including Gil Cedillo and Mitch O\u2019Farrell, with the latter likely headed to a runoff.<\/p>\n

Still, the results in the marquee contests\u2014the San Francisco D.A. recall and the L.A. mayoral race\u2014show how much discontent over crime and homelessness has shaken the political landscape in what are ordinarily two of America\u2019s most liberal cities.<\/p>\n

Optimists in the party believe Democrats can recalibrate and fashion a message and an agenda balancing public concern about safety with a commitment to criminal-justice reform. Ben LaBolt, a San Francisco\u2013based Democratic strategist and former campaign spokesperson for President Barack Obama, predicts that after the recall of Boudin, a child of 1960s radicals who was narrowly elected in 2019, Mayor London Breed is likely to appoint a centrist to complete his term. \u201cI think what we\u2019ll see is a return to the assertion that you don\u2019t have to choose between public safety and criminal-justice reform,\u201d LaBolt says. \u201cIn any other city, the next district attorney would still be considered a liberal Democrat. It\u2019s just that they\u2019ll be more focused on the public-safety piece than Boudin has been.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read: The people vs. Chesa Boudin<\/a><\/p>\n

Yet in practice, Democrats are finding it difficult to walk this tightrope, especially at a moment when crime is rising in most major cities. A leading advocate of criminal-justice reform in Congress, Bass has angered some of her traditional allies on the left<\/a>, particularly in the Black Lives Matter movement, by promising that as mayor she would reassign more Los Angeles Police Department desk officers to patrol and eliminate the city\u2019s widespread homeless encampments. On both fronts, she did not\u2014or could not\u2014go as far as Caruso, who has pledged much tougher action. Caught between divergent constituencies, Bass\u2019s message in the primary often seemed wan and indistinct.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just Bass who has been squeezed between reform and safety. California Governor Gavin Newsom, who cruised into the general election after yesterday\u2019s primary, has promised to spend more on housing for the homeless but also encountered resistance from liberal groups to his legislative proposal to require involuntary court-ordered mental-health care for more people on the streets. In Chicago, some reform advocates have sharply criticized Mayor Lori Lightfoot for imposing a curfew on young people, urging more pretrial detention for violent offenders, and colliding with Kim Foxx, the progressive Cook County state\u2019s attorney. But the greater threat to Lightfoot\u2019s reelection next year is that many voters think she has not done enough to combat rising crime. In New York, Adams has tried to project support for both reforming police conduct<\/a> and cracking down on violence<\/a>. But the state legislature has so far rebuffed proposals he supports<\/a> to detain more people before their trials and to try 16- and 17-year-olds as adults for certain gun crimes. Meanwhile, a poll released yesterday<\/a> showed his approval rating quickly sinking amid elevated voter anxiety about crime.<\/p>\n

Bass, who played a central role in drafting the criminal-justice-reform bill that passed the U.S. House of Representatives last year, hasn\u2019t moved as far to the center as Adams. \u201cI have spent my adult life working on police reform, and will continue to do so if elected mayor,\u201d she told one local publication<\/a>. When it comes to homelessness, she has stressed providing more social services, rather than tougher enforcement of the anti-camping law the city council approved in 2021. And while she has criticized some of Gasc\u00f3n\u2019s decisions, she also opposes his recall. (Supporters of that effort say they are nearing the 566,857 signatures they need by early July to qualify for the November ballot.)<\/p>\n

On each of these fronts, Caruso, who reregistered as a Democrat shortly before the election, has been able to stake out ground to Bass\u2019s right. He has endorsed the Gasc\u00f3n recall, pledged to add 1,500 more police officers to the LAPD, and promised to use emergency powers as mayor to override the provision in the anti-camping law that requires a vote of approval from the city council before any encampment is cleared.<\/p>\n

The size of the audience Caruso attracted for that agenda\u2014aided by about $40 million in spending<\/a>, primarily from his own pocket\u2014has been a sobering wake-up call for the city\u2019s left. Frustrated criminal-justice-reform advocates argue that entrenched law-enforcement interests, led by police unions<\/a> that spent heavily to promote Caruso and oust Boudin, are fanning a backlash before the new approaches have a chance to show their worth. Given time, they argue, policies that focus on avoiding incarceration (particularly for young people), reducing prosecution for nonviolent crimes, and emphasizing services and housing for the homeless over sweeps to clear encampments will produce better results.<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/strong>Two years after the George Floyd summer, after the stark income inequality in Los Angeles was exposed like never before during the COVID disaster, after tens of thousands of people took to the streets in Los Angeles, it would have been unimaginable that the front-runner for mayor would be a billionaire white guy who was on the police commission<\/a> and who has the backing of millions of dollars from the police union,\u201d says Mike Bonin, an L.A. City Council member from a Westside district who is stepping down this year after narrowly avoiding a recall effort over his resistance to cracking down on homeless encampments. \u201cClearly, we [progressives] have not really effectively articulated what these problems are about and what it takes to solve them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bass and Caruso face almost mirror-image challenges in the general election. Bass must show that her painstakingly balanced platform will deliver enough change for voters who are deeply dissatisfied with the status quo on crime and homelessness. Caruso must convince voters that, as a former Republican without any experience in elected office, he doesn\u2019t represent too great a leap into the unknown for such a Democratic-leaning city. \u201cHe\u2019s been a good entrepreneur and civic citizen, but I could see a lot of both the elite and nonideological middle just deciding that Karen Bass can do a better job,\u201d says Manuel Pastor, director of the Dornsife Equity Research Institute at the University of Southern California.<\/p>\n

Even if Caruso falls short in November, it would be a mistake for Democrats to ignore the message of his strong performance, combined with Adams\u2019s victory last year and the backlash against Boudin and Gasc\u00f3n. All are reminders that, as Marshall puts it, most Americans believe \u201cpublic order is the primary responsibility of government.\u201d After yesterday\u2019s primary results, it\u2019s clearer than ever that in order to confront the criminal-justice system\u2019s undeniable racial inequities, reformers must convince voters that they are equally committed to confronting threats to public safety.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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