The recall election for progressive DA Chesa Boudin is now less than a month away and yesterday a moderate Democrat announced she supported the recall.
District Two Supervisor Catherine Stefani became the first San Francisco elected official to publicly support the removal of District Attorney Chesa Boudin, a progressive prosecutor facing a highly contentious recall election on June 7...
In an exclusive interview with The Chronicle, Stefani said she thinks Boudin is failing to achieve the types of meaningful reforms he promised and failing to keep the city safe.
“I think San Franciscans are just tired of all the nonsense,” Stefani said. “We’re tired of asking for progress and results and getting excuses and slogans. People have had enough, including me.”
The San Francisco Standard has more on Stefani’s criticism of Boudin:
Stefani wrote that the district attorney is “failing” to keep San Franciscans safe and “we cannot afford to wait any longer.”
“The District Attorney claims to be a progressive prosecutor, but his approach to domestic violence is taking us backwards,” the supervisor wrote, noting that Boudin charged 13 out of 131 felony domestic violence cases brought to his office in the last quarter of 2020. “He has abandoned victims when they need our support the most.”…
“On his watch, 1,300 people have died from drug overdoses in San Francisco,” Stefani said. “That’s almost twice the amount of San Franciscans who have died from COVID-19. Meanwhile, the District Attorney has failed to send a single drug dealer to prison.”
Stefani could be one of the people on a short list to replace Boudin if he is recalled but she declined to talk about that saying there was no vacancy at the moment. Even so, she seems to be with the majority of San Francisco residents. A poll published today found a majority support the recall.
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With less than a month until the final day to vote in the June primary, the SF Standard Voter Poll found that over half of registered voters (57%) support recalling District Attorney Boudin, while less than a quarter of respondents (22%) plan to reject the recall.
A substantial portion of surveyed San Franciscans (21%) had yet to decide how they will vote, but negative job performance ratings found that 52% said they “strongly disapproved” of Boudin, while 18% said they “somewhat disapproved” of how he’s performed in his first term…
Two earlier polls on the DA recall, both conducted in February 2022, found different results. One poll—commissioned by the recall committee—found 68% of respondents supported the recall. Another poll from David Binder found that 44% supported the recall and 44% were against, with 12% unsure. The latter poll, however, focused on state Assembly District 17, which does not include the more conservative west side of the city.
More details from the poll are available here. One of the things that seems to be driving the recall is a general sense of respondents being less enthusiastic about progressive policies as compared to a few years ago.
A total of 25% of voters surveyed say their views on SF politics have become more progressive since 2019, while 39% say they have become less progressive.
Slightly more Democrats in the survey are more interested in becoming less progressive rather than more progressive but the shift is also really strong among Independents. The poll has more bad news for Boudin who has blamed lack of charges in the city on the police. The SFPD remains more popular than he is.
As you can see, Boudin’s disapproval (somewhat and strongly) is at 70% while the SFPD’s disapproval is at 48%. The anti-recall campaign is criticizing the methodology of the poll. At this point I guess they have to because if the poll is accurate than Boudin is in deep trouble with less than four weeks left before the vote.
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