Since San Francisco elected Chesa Boudin as its district attorney in 2019, right-wing media have pushed for his removal. Tuesday night’s successful recall vote shows how misleading narratives about lawlessness and crime in liberal cities can undermine progressive reforms in the criminal justice system.
Right-wing media’s cartoonish portrayal of San Francisco evokes the fictional crime-ridden Gotham City more than it reflects the realities on the ground. Headlines from the New York Post like “How looting turned the most upscale part of San Francisco into a ghost town” and “Thieves now mock the rule of law in ‘progressive’ cities like San Francisco” have portrayed a city in decline under Boudin’s tenure, but the data reveals a different picture.
Compared to 2018 — before Boudin was elected — San Francisco’s crime rate is largely down or back to pre-pandemic levels, while violent crime remains at historic lows. While the city’s homicide rate has risen during that time, San Francisco is not an outlier among similarly sized American cities, and still has one of the lowest homicide rates within that group.
Instead of including context on these wider trends, right-wing media coverage isolated and amplified stories about crime in San Francisco, even though California’s Republican-controlled areas actually have more violent crime than Democratic counties. Homicide rates are rising nationally, yet the attacks blamed progressive policies and a supposedly permissive approach to crime. This right-wing line of attack — which is often parroted by mainstream news — ignores the fact that most of the cities that have seen the sharpest upticks in homicides are Republican-led and -leaning cities.
Boudin's policies helped to reduce the incarcerated population in San Francisco and to keep it lowered. While conservatives claim this means Boudin was not enforcing the law, the reality is more complicated. Although Boudin charged 10% fewer crimes in 2020 than his predecessor, George Gascon, did the previous year, in 2021 Boudin filed charges on 54% of the cases brought to his office. “In 2019, when DA George Gascon was in office, the overall filing rate was 49 percent,” according to Mission Local.
Now that Boudin has been recalled, right-wing pundits are taking their victory lap. Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner heralded, “Woke San Francisco waking up to a new day after voters kicked out their progressive district attorney. Their decision has national implications, putting liberal prosecutors and defund-the-police Democrats on notice.”
Fox host Steve Doocy boasted that the recall would be a precedent for future progressive DAs: “There are a bunch of woke DAs across the country that are waking up today going, ‘You know the crime really stinks in my town, too. I wonder if I'm next.’”
Leading up to the recall, right-wing media have painted a picture of urban decay to attack meaningful criminal justice reform and municipal Democratic leadership. Using anecdotes, cherry-picked pundits, and isolated statistics, right-wing media played a significant part in promoting the recall against Chesa Boudin.