San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
If voters recall D.A., crime will be mayor’s to resolve
San Francisco Mayor London Breed hasn’t taken a public position on the recall of District Attorney Chesa Boudin. But, politically, she’d better hope Boudin survives it.
For her sake.
If Breed has to pick Boudin’s successor, then she will own the crime issue in San Francisco until she faces voters next year. That’s not a re-election position she wants to be in given how people feel about crime — even if statistics compiled by The Chronicle show many crimes returning to prepandemic levels.
“It certainly moves the issue closer to her,” said
longtime California Democratic strategist Garry South. “Nobody can lay Boudin on her. But if you handpick somebody, then that gum is on your shoe.”
That is because voters traditionally hold mayors accountable for “crime and how the economy is doing,” said Jason McDaniel, a professor of political science at San Francisco State University who closely watches local politics.
So if voters kick Boudin out of office a year before his term ends, “voters will be looking to the mayor and looking at the (crime) situation, and that will be part of their calculation they make as to whether to support the mayor” for reelection.
“It will be a perfectly valid part of the campaign,” McDaniel said. “It will be her responsibility to take on that issue, and it will be her responsibility to show improvement and responsiveness.”
By the time Breed comes before voters next year, she will have broadened her imprint on the city’s politics. She will have appointed City Attorney David Chiu and will soon be choosing a replacement on the Board of Supervisors for now-Assembly Member Matt Haney.
Breed is already in a similar situation when it comes to education, another issue voters hold mayors responsible for, McDaniel said — even though the mayor has no direct control over San Francisco’s public schools.
That’s because she recently appointed three people to replace the school board members voters tossed out of office in February in San Francisco’s first nationally watched recall of the year. Now, along with school board President Jenny Lam, her former education adviser, Breed can potentially count four allies on the sevenmember board.
Breed wasn’t shy about publicly supporting the school board recall. Two months before election day, she said she was backing the “the parents’ call for change.” When she announced her three appointees to the board last month, Breed said she agonized about the decision. “This is probably the hardest decision I’ve had to make as mayor,” she said, “because it’s about the future of our children.”
After she announced her picks, political consultant David Ho, who previously worked for a pro-Breed independent expenditure group said, “Voters will hold her accountable for the success and failure of the school board results.”
Wait until Breed has to pick a new district attorney.
Because while schools are a top concern for parents, crime — along with housing and homelessness — is what’s angering San Franciscans. Soon, the mayor could own all of them. That’s a heavy load of longtime, intractable problems to shoulder going into a reelection campaign.
A March survey by the Bay Area Council found that 65% of Bay Area residents were afraid to visit a downtown in the region because of fears about crime. That is not good news for the mayor of the region’s most prominent downtown.
That same poll found that in 2019, 2% of respondents said crime was their top concern.
San Francisco Mayor London Breed will have to appoint a district attorney if the recall campaign is successful.
Now 15% said it is their top worry, trailing only homelessness (24%) and housing (21%).
Boudin has largely been the mayor’s political human shield on crime, absorbing most of the criticism from voters. The result: 74% of the respondents disapproved of him and 78% gave Boudin a negative job performance rating, according to a March survey of 800 likely voters by EMC Research, which was commissioned by the pro-recall campaign.
Breed has done little to hide her disdain for Boudin. While she may be publicly neutral on the recall, when asked in February whether she had faith in what the district attorney
was doing, Breed replied: “I am not necessarily on the same page with a number of things that he’s doing.”
The concerns about crime have affected Breed, too. Her approval rating is now hovering around 50%, according to those familiar with internal polls. Her approval rating was in positive territory after she won acclaim for keeping the city’s COVID infection rate low and vaccination rate high during the darkest days of the pandemic.
But now concerns about crime have supplanted those about the pandemic. According to the Bay Area Council survey, only 2% of the region lists COVID as their top issue. Boudin is unbowed about the recall. He proudly points to how every San Francisco elected official who has taken a position on the recall is opposing it, along with the Sierra Club, the ACLU and top labor organizations.
For Breed, it’s smart politics to stay mum. She sees polls showing that upward of 60% of voters want to boot Boudin. There’s no need for her to pile on and perhaps trigger blowback from pro-Boudin progressives whose support she will need for her re-election campaign.
“My goal is to work with the district attorney,” she told my colleague Mallory Moench recently, the kind of measured, gritted teeth response you give while trying to remember that if you don’t have anything nice to say about somebody, say little.
Breed hasn’t spent time focused on who she’d pick to replace Boudin. She is concentrating on the issues that voters care most about — like housing and homelessness. But if Boudin is recalled, she will be on the clock.
Then she will own another issue that is fraying San Francisco’s international reputation, and there will be no other elected leader around to cushion the impact.