Chesa Boudin brought a recall on himself

It's not about policies or politics, it is about him

As we’ve been told over and over, 2022 is the year of the recall in San Francisco.

Three school board members have already been recalled and replaced. And on June 7, voters will be asked to vote on a recall of District Attorney Chesa Boudin.

The efforts have certainly made it clear that there are some extremely unhappy voters in the city. The totals to recall Alison Collins, Gabriela Lopez and Faauuga Moliga were too lopsided to be called anything but landslides. And independent polling on Boudin finds as many as 68% of respondents favor recalling him.

This, once again, has set off a great deal of hand-wringing among deep thinkers.

First, there’s the popular idea that California has gone recall-looney and is in the process of recalling and replacing politicians all over the place. Actually, as the Office of the Secretary of State points out, the overwhelming majority of recall efforts never make it to an election. And even if they do, history says the rate of success is generally about 50-50.

Which brings us to Part Two of hand-wringing, which is that the recalls are a reaction to taking “woke culture” too far. That the school board members and Boudin are only doing what they said they would do, and now, in a backlash to progressive policies, voters have had a change of heart and want a return to a “tough on crime” agenda.

I’d suggest the real factors are personality, not philosophy.

Those school board members were deeply unpopular as individuals. Voters may not have liked some of the wackier proposals — i.e. renaming schools — but they really didn’t like the perception that the board members were talking down to them and ignoring and belittling their concerns.

The same dynamic seems to be at work with Boudin. Regardless of his agenda, on a personal level he is not winning friends and influencing people.

There have their been widespread resignations in the D.A.’s office since he was elected in 2020. And two of the prosecutors who quit, Brooke Jenkins and Don Du Bain, not only joined the recall effort, they volunteered to appear in an on-line debate sponsored by the Eastern Neighborhoods Democratic Club to support recalling their former boss.

Jenkins is no conservative. She said she joined the office because she felt it needed people who looked like her, meaning a woman of color. She said she was a supporter of George Gascon, the previous D.A., who is an unapologetic progressive and is facing his own recall in Los Angeles.

As for accusations that the recall is an attempt to return to “tough on crime,” Jenkins said “I don’t think we are calling for a tough on crime D.A. We want a competent D.A.”

The two said 32 prosecutors have quit or left the office in the last two years, almost half the legal staff. And 18 of 36 victim advocates have also left.

“I have been a prosecutor for 30 years,” Du Bain said. “Never have I been in an office where I saw half the prosecutors walk off the job.”

Subscribing to this newsletter is simple. Just click the button.

The two also dinged Boudin for the fact that, Jenkins said, he “has not come with one single new program” to decrease crime and recidivism. Both Gascon, Jenkins said, and his predecessor, Kamela Harris, each enacted innovative programs to try to address those issues.

“I share the belief that the system is broken,” Jenkins said. “But what reform looks like is not simply declining to prosecute.”

And this is the point where we always add a caveat. When there’s a perception that crime is out of control — and there is in San Francisco — the District Attorney always gets the heat. The election of Chesa Boudin did not kick off a crime wave. Crime is up across the country, it was a problem before he took office and it continues today.

However, there are some clear and present examples of tragic errors. As Jenkins said, “lives are being lost,” because of Boudin’s insistence on keeping multiple offenders out of custody.

Susan Dyer Reynolds, a Boudin critic, obtained a 253-page official document for her “Gotham by the Bay” newsletter. It contains a rundown of the horrific saga of Troy McAlister, a violent felon, who got a plea deal from Boudin’s office.

You will remember that on New Year’s Eve, 2020, McAlister powered a stolen car through an intersection at speeds estimated at 65-70 mph, hitting and killing two innocent women.

The story has been well covered in the media and even Boudin has admitted that mistakes were made. But Reynolds’ research supports Du Bain’s contention that Boudin’s decisions, including with McAlister, were “reckless and irresponsible.”

The records say Gascon’s office had McAlister in custody “with an allegation of commission of offense while on parole, allegations for three strikes and six prison priors.” Gascon’s office said the “defendant’s exposure in State Prison is approximately thirty-five years to life.”

But, the report says, just two months after taking office, Boudin cut a plea deal with McAlister, where he pled to second-degree robbery and jail time was reduced to “time served,” meaning the five years he was in jail awaiting trial.

McAlister was out.

And between June 28, 2020 and that New Year’s Eve crash, McAlister was arrested five times for burglary, car theft, possession of methamphetamine and parole violation. After one arrest, police officers added a note, saying, “This suspect is dangerous. He has 73 felonies and 34 misdemeanors in S.F. alone.”

Boudin filed no new charges in those cases. McAlister served a total of 11 days in jail.

When the mother of one of the women who was killed, Hanako Abe, asked Boudin why he decided to cut the deal and release him, she told Reynolds that Boudin said “Because he worked hard and got his GED (high school diploma) in jail.”

Share this with someone you know? Certainly. Just click here.

And that’s the final piece in the narrative that has gotten Boudin to this recall election. He consistently tosses out ear-clanging comments that sound clueless at best, insensitive at worst.

Before he took office he told an interviewer he wanted to keep people out of jail with a plan to “replace incarceration with de-carceration.”

When a 19-year-old man shoved an 84-year-old Asian man to the ground in broad daylight, killing him, Boudin shrugged that the suspect had “some sort of a temper tantrum.”

And, when asked about the infamous open air drug market in the Tenderloin, Boudin said, “Most of the residents I speak with aren’t particularly upset that there are drug sales happening there.”

As we kids say, SMH. But it makes an important point. It is one thing to disagree with someone’s thoughts or theories.

But when it is personal it’s its a whole different deal.

Contact C.W. Nevius at cwnevius@gmail.com. Twitter: @cwnevius.