The Rightward Tremor That Shook California

Price’s recall came after only two years on the job. She initially took office as the county’s first Black district attorney and by supporting progressive reforms to the criminal justice system. But her tenure was marred by concerns about rising crime, allegations of anti-Asian bias, and filing errors that prevented hundreds of cases from being prosecuted. She is the second Bay Area district attorney to be recalled in the last two years: San Franciscans ousted progressive District Attorney Chesa Boudin in 2022 over concerns about crime and safety.

Further south, in Los Angeles, voters also ousted George Gascon, a longtime progressive prosecutor who served as the county’s district attorney since 2020. During that tenure and a previous stint as San Francisco’s district attorney, Gascon had championed policies aimed at tackling mass incarceration, such as dropping some sentencing enhancements and ending cash bail for nonviolent offenses. His expected replacement, former federal prosecutor Nathan Hochman, campaigned on reversing those policies and what he described as Gascon’s “blanket filing policies” that didn’t take individual circumstances into account.

Voters in California had previously led the way on criminal justice reform and embracing the nationwide trend of progressive prosecution, even before the George Floyd protests in 2020. In 2014, voters approved Proposition 47, a statewide measure co-authored by Gascon that recategorized shoplifting, theft, forgery, fraud, illegal drug use, and some other offenses as misdemeanors up to a certain cash limit. The measure received 59 percent support at the time.