Candidate for attorney general rips S.F.’s Boudin
SACRAMENTO — Anne Marie Schubert, the Sacramento County district attorney, said Monday that she will run for California attorney general next year and lashed out at progressive advocates of criminal justice reform such as San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin.
Schubert, a conservativeleaning career prosecutor, said she will run against recently swornin state Attorney General Rob Bonta, a former Bay Area state legislator, because cities like San Francisco are “in chaos” due to liberal policies that endanger public safety.
“In San Francisco, you have a district attorney ... who is letting violent criminals out with little oversight or consequences, criminals who go on to victimize again,” Schubert said.
Although Bonta is her opponent, Schubert focused much of her attention Monday on Boudin and other progressive local prosecutors including George Gascón, a former San Francisco district attorney who now holds the same position in Los Angeles County.
Schubert, a Republicanturnedindependent, evoked harsh descriptions of crime in San Francisco as she announced her candidacy in a hotel conference room in downtown Sacramento, surrounded by relatives of murder victims.
“Major conventions are pulling out of San Francisco because their executives are worried that their guests’ safety is at risk,” she said. “Tourists think it’s too dan
“District Attorney Schubert has always been committed to a failed, toughoncrime approach.”
Chesa Boudin, San Francisco D.A.
gerous to visit that beautiful city . ... It is true and it is tragic that San Francisco is suffering.”
Schubert said she fears that Bonta, who was one of the most progressive state lawmakers as an Assembly member from Alameda, will bring the same type of polices to the rest of California if he wins a full fouryear term.
Boudin said Schubert is clinging to outdated views that increased incarceration numbers and exacerbated racial disparities in the justice system.
“District Attorney Schubert has always been committed to a failed, toughoncrime approach where the powerful, and especially police who commit acts of violence, are never held accountable,” Boudin said in a statement.
Schubert entered the race just three days after Bonta was sworn in Friday following his confirmation by the Legislature. Gov. Gavin Newsom nominated him to replace Xavier Becerra, who resigned to become President Biden’s secretary of health and human services.
Schubert is perhaps best known for prosecuting Joseph DeAngelo, the Golden State Killer. DeAngelo was sentenced to life in prison last year after admitting to 13 murders and 13 kidnappings for robbery across California in the 1970s and ’80s.
Dana Williamson, a senior adviser to Bonta’s campaign, called Schubert a “tremendously flawed” candidate and noted that she is treasurer of a prosecutors group that is under investigation by the state attorney general for its use of funds.
The California District Attorneys Association siphoned $3 million that was supposed to be used for publicadvocacy
litigation, such as environmental cases, and instead spent it on training and lobbying, according to an audit conducted by an accounting firm the group hired.
“Now she wants to lead the Department of Justice, the same entity that is investigating her organization’s misdeeds,” Williamson said.
Schubert has been Sacramento County district attorney since 2015, and was a prosecutor in the county for
25 years before taking elected office. She left the Republican Party after she was reelected in 2018 and registered as a “no party preference” voter.
She is the second person to announce a challenge to Bonta, after Nathan Hochman, a Republican and former assistant attorney general in the George W. Bush administration.
Schubert has long clashed with criminal justice reformers over her handling of police useofforce cases and support for longer sentences for some crimes.
In 2018, Schubert was criticized by some justice groups after she received campaign contributions from police unions days after Stephon Clark, a 22yearold unarmed Black man, was shot to death in his grandmother’s backyard by two Sacramento police officers.
Schubert later decided not to charge the officers with any crimes. She said they believed that Clark, who was holding a cell phone, was armed with a gun and that they were in imminent danger.