Crime wave? What crime wave? The White House would say the national explosion in violent crime, highlighted worst in major Democrat-run cities, is just a figment in the imagination of Fox News viewers.
If that’s the case, there must be an awful lot of Fox News viewers in Los Angeles and San Francisco, two left-coast cities that just rebuked the soft-on-crime progressive policies of the past couple of years.
Out of all the various primary votes from Tuesday night, perhaps none are more stunning than the results out west where states like Washington, Oregon, and California are starting to show just how high the red wave might crest in November.
First in San Francisco, where a recall effort succeeded against Chesa Boudin, a progressive anti-police district attorney backed by billionaire George Soros:
San Francisco voters fired their headline-grabbing reformist district attorney Tuesday, NBC News projects, after rising crime rates proved intolerable even for the famously progressive city.
Chesa Boudin, the son of left-wing radicals who was elected on a Black Lives Matter-aligned platform to reform the criminal justice system, faced a successful recall effort as voters grew frustrated with the perception that his office is not willing to do much about crime.
The outcome and its lopsided margin was a rebuke of the left as Democrats retreat from calls to “defund the police” in the face of polls nationally showing growing concern about public safety, especially from people of color.
With more than two-thirds of the expected vote counted, votes to remove Boudin from office were outstripping those to keep him 60.5 to 39.5 percent.
The end result wasn’t even close yet this was the mantle Democrats championed since 2020 about criminal justice reform and defunding police departments in favor of social workers.
The tip of this spear for DAs like Boudin was to simply decide that some laws weren’t to be enforced and some sentencing guidelines could be unilaterally re-written. The end result was a lawless society where smash-and-grab crimes are off the charts, robberies are up exponentially, and criminals run unabated due to soft-on-crime bail reforms.
In just ten days or less, Boudin will be removed from office with a new prosecutor appointed and voters having their final say in November:
Boudin will be removed from office 10 days after the Board of Supervisors formally accepts the election results. The city’s more moderate mayor, London Breed, will choose his immediate replacement, and voters will elect a new district attorney in November.
The result comes as little surprise to residents following numerous polls, almost all of which predicted a decisive defeat for Boudin.
In the grand scheme, it may seem irrelevant what kind of district attorney a city like ultra-left San Francisco picks. However, to see such rampant progressivism rejected outright among a sympathetic electorate speaks to just how far off the rails the Democratic Party has gone. Places like Chicago are next on the docket to reject this ideology in favor of sane, common-sense public safety policies.
Meanwhile, further south down the California coast, the city of Los Angeles will be headed for a genuinely competitive mayoral race in November as no primary candidate made it across the 50% threshold:
Democratic U.S. Rep. Karen Bass and billionaire developer Rick Caruso breezed past a large field of rivals looking to be the next mayor of Los Angeles and advanced Tuesday to a runoff election in November.
An early tally of mail-in ballots showed Caruso with 41% and Bass with 38%. A candidate needed to top 50% to avoid a runoff.
A dozen names were on the ballot, though several candidates dropped out.
Bass, a favorite of the party’s progressive wing, and the Republican-turned-Democrat Caruso easily distanced themselves from the rest of the field.
The race largely focused on homelessness and crime. More than 40,000 people live in trash-strewn homeless encampments and rusty RVs, and widely publicized smash-and-grab robberies and home invasions have unsettled residents.
While Caruso didn’t win outright, he forced a run-off campaign between himself and Bass, the progressive Democrat in the race.
Caruso is a life-long Republican who decided to run as a Democrat for mayor. That makes sense given the sheer number of self-described Democrats in the city of Los Angeles. His platform is quite simple: Roll back the progressive policies that have left the city, like the rest of the state, in the dumps when it comes to rampant crime, drug use, and homelessness. The basic functions of city government haven’t been met for years in these areas and residents seem to be finally saying enough is enough.
Caruso still has to defeat Karen Bass in November, a battle that could be difficult in a city so overwhelmingly liberal. However, it seems that many residents are tired of feeling continually unsafe and unprotected by the people they elected to enforce the law and keep the streets clean. The Caruso-Bass mayoral race will be one to watch for an upset in November.
Turnout in the state was pretty low considering the population. This point follows a nationwide trend of depressed Democratic voter turnout in blue states compared to record Republican turnout in red states:
There are roughly 27 million eligible voters in California, but as of right now only 3.9 million of them have voted in the primary election.
That's less than 15% of eligible voters! Sad!
— Lara Korte (@lara_korte) June 8, 2022
In essence, both cities rebuking the progressive policies of their current Democratic leaders is a canary in the coalmine for Democrats nationwide. With the economy and inflation as top concerns, crime and public safety are right underneath. None of these topics are winning issues for Democrats up or down the ballot.
