In just a few years, the progressive prosecutor movement, which has taken a more lenient approach to criminal prosecution, has managed to gain some noteworthy victories, capturing district attorneys positions in some of the biggest localities throughout the country. Now, these same prosecutors and the policies they have promoted have been facing significant backlash. Republicans made a purported increase in crime one of their key messages in the November election, which was believed to help in races in New York and elsewhere. At the same time, they have made efforts to remove the prosecutors themselves.
Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, who kicked off the progressive movement’s success with his shocking 2017 victory and easy reelection win in 2021, was just impeached by Pennsylvania’s Republican state House of Representatives. The state Senate still has to try and hear the case.
Krasner may be facing the wrath of the legislative branch, but in Florida, Hillsborough County State Attorney Andrew Warren is being attacked from another direction: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis removed him from office after he announced that he would not enforce the state abortion ban and cases involving anti-transgender laws. Warren’s case is now in the courts, though the people of Hillsborough will not have their chosen prosecutor.
New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who has been tagged with the progressive label though he ran for office straddling the progressive-moderate divide, was also threatened with removal by a potential executive. Republican gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin made that one of his campaign talking points, but lost the election.
In California, progressive prosecutors have faced a different threat. In the Golden State, the recall looms large against the prosecutors. San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin was ousted from office in June, with 55 percent of the voters deciding to replace him mid-way through his term. In Los Angeles County, petitioners collected signatures from over 520,000 registered voters to remove District Attorney George Gascon. They missed the cut-off to get on the ballot by just under 47,000 signatures. If they had gotten to the ballot, Gascon would have faced a serious challenge, as polls showed him losing by a significant margin.
Despite the recall’s success against Boudin, backers of progressive prosecutors can point to other successes. On the same day of Boudin’s removal, right across the Bay, the larger Alameda County elected progressive prosecutor Pamela Price as district attorney.
It should not be a surprise that the progressive prosecutor movement is a major political battlefront. The crusading district attorney has long been a popular launching point for elected officials — one of the first famous officials in this vein, former Republican presidential candidate Thomas Dewey, used his prosecution of mobsters to nearly win the presidency. Any change to the model, especially when a perceived increase in crime is on the ballot, is certain to engender a political and electoral reaction.
But the battle over prosecutorial roles shows how officials view the political battles ahead and perhaps may point out the benefits of a law like the recall to help voters navigate significant new policy departures.
Philadelphia voters cannot recall Larry Krasner, even if they had wanted to, thanks to a 1976 Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision barring the recall in any office in the state. The Florida recall law appears to require a malfeasance standard for a district attorney, whereby the elected official can only be removed for a specific group of statutorily delineated set of reasons, like a conviction. This lack of recall laws may seem positive, but in fact, may instead provide elected officials looking to capitalize on their own “tough-on-crime” posture an excuse to take action by ousting the prosecutors themselves rather than providing voters a pathway to decide. In San Francisco — no one’s idea of a conservative part of the country — the voters took decisive action and removed an official using the recall power.
The difference in action can help shape a more accepted policy. Future progressive prosecutors will likely be more careful and tailor their appeal to voter sensibility once they realize there is an electoral price to be paid. But when it is executive or legislative action forcing prosecutors out, we are unlikely to come to any meeting of the minds. Instead, the issue will be a political football used to score points and gain electoral advantage.
Even though the recall is a seemingly blunt electoral weapon, in this case it can be used to help make policy in a way that maximizes voter opinion and policy preferences.
Joshua Spivak is the author of “Recall Elections: From Alexander Hamilton to Gavin Newsom.” He is a senior fellow at the Hugh L. Carey Institute for Government Reform at Wagner College and a senior research fellow at the Berkeley Law’s California Constitution Center. He also writes the Recall Elections Blog.