Democratic voters are turning on left-wing prosecutors and congressional candidates amid a nationwide crime surge.
Late last month, Maryland voters ousted Baltimore state’s attorney Marilyn Mosby (D.), who backed decarceration and defunding police even as the city’s homicide rate skyrocketed. Mosby was only the latest “reform-minded” prosecutor to get the boot. San Francisco residents removed District Attorney Chesa Boudin (D.) in June after he crusaded against policing and prisons as “failed responses” to crime. Los Angeles County district attorney George Gascón (D.), who has supported “shrinking the size and the role of policing,” is on the verge of a recall.
The purge is the latest sign of voters’ dissatisfaction with rising crime. The FBI in 2020 recorded its highest ever single-year increase in homicides. A year later, 12 Democrat-run U.S. cities saw the most murders in their history. The uptick in crime particularly galvanized minority voters in San Francisco, whose neighborhoods were racked with drug overdose deaths, robberies, and murders.
According to former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, this type of backlash was inevitable.
“People will only be victims for a limited period before they get fed up,” he told the Washington Free Beacon.
Progressive prosecutors aren’t the only soft-on-crime figures getting the boot. Across the country, nearly half-a-dozen Democratic candidates lost their elections because of their far-left criminal justice agendas. Texas voters chose moderate Democrat Rep. Henry Cuellar over Squad-backed Jessica Cisneros in a June primary.
Later that month, Illinois voters booted left-wing Rep. Marie Newman (D.) from office and voted against progressive candidate Kina Collins. Ana María Archila, a favorite of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.), lost a bid for New York lieutenant governor months after she had said the Empire State needed to “divest resources from police, prosecutors, and jails.”
Rather than acknowledging voters’ concerns, progressive prosecutors are trying to blame conservatives for their troubles. Boudin decried “right-wing billionaires” who “outspent us three to one” after his recall. But campaign filings show some of the largest donations to Boudin’s recall effort came from wealthy Bay Area Democratic donors.