Billionaires pay for the Boudin recall

Photo: Bronte Wittpenn

From the Westside Observer:

by D. M. Scott

Billionaires, tech moguls, and “law and order” advocates have tried to recall Chesa Boudin since he won the 2019 election for District Attorney and began his term in January 2020. 

I’m strongly opposed to the latest recall effort heavily financed by a Republican-leaning billionaire (a previous attempt failed to gain enough signatures for the ballot). Ditto the cheap red-baiting accompanying it.

I’m tired of deep pockets seeking to undermine democratic elections because they CAN, and to undermine the widely-recognized need to reform policing and the prison system, treat people who’ve committed crimes with dignity that every human being deserves, and level the playing field concerning arrests, pre-trial bail, and sentencing of people of color. For these reasons, I oppose the recall.

Chesa Boudin is one of a new breed of public prosecutors whose reform agenda goes against the grain of fear-mongering, amped up and lingering since the 2016 presidential election and fed for the past two years by the pandemic. 

Fear---all around us---is as contagious as disease, while a sense of safety requires community engagement, something harder to feel behind COVID’s heightened walls of isolation.

Those seeking to recall Boudin would have us believe he’s responsible for the statistical rise in crime that’s occurred since the pandemic that coincided with his taking office. Research, however, suggests otherwise: that correlation doesn’t prove cause. 

As Susie Neilsen reported in the SF Chronicle: “While many in the city believe Boudin is responsible for changes in crime rates, for better and worse, research suggests district attorneys typically have little impact on the crime rate.” 

That is, there’s no evidence to support this connection....

See also a good editorial in the SF Examiner: Prop. H will punish Boudin, but it won’t solve San Francisco’s real problems.