Californians Brace for Impact

Polling is looking very grim on three major California elections this fall: Prop 36 is on track to pass, George Gascón (L.A. DA) is on track to lose to a maga republican, and Pam Price (Alameda DA) is on track to be recalled. There is a huge amount of uncertainty on all of these – the polling could be badly wrong! – but at this point we have to prepare for some bad outcomes. The first step in that preparation is to see clearly what we are looking at. 

Prop 36, a measure billed as being “pro-treatment” and therefore good for criminal justice reform, will actually send people convicted of third-time drug possession or theft to prison for long sentences, driving up state prison costs by upwards of hundreds of millions of dollars a year. This will undo some key provisions of Prop 47, the landmark reform bill that passed in 2014 and has helped drive the number of people in CA prisons down by 30,000 people while delivering nearly $1billion to California communities. Prop 47 has been a massive success, but has had too few defenders (not for lack of effort, but this field is quite small!), which made it vulnerable to attack. With the pandemic crime spike (now falling rapidly), there was an opening, and the opposition took it.  

Interestingly, recent polling has found that Prop 47 would pass again today if it were on the ballot. So if Prop 36 passes, it won't be because Calfiornians took a close look at the policy and decided to roll back reforms. It will be because the DA’s association has relentlessly pursued this goal for years, and the retailers were willing to put in millions of dollars to convince voters that forced treatment works (it doesn’t) and will help solve problems (it won’t). There is a broad coalition of groups working to stop Prop 36, and key local news outlets are giving airtime to the No vote (for example: Orange County, San Jose, Eureka). Both L.A. times ed board and the Sacramento Bee recommended a No vote as well. 

The good news about prop 36 is that it’s been getting a lot of attention, which will help the No vote. It’s possible that we will get through that one alive! By contrast, I am seeing a lot less discussion about the incredibly high-stakes race between George Gascón, the highly-experienced prosecutor and reformer who took office as the DA overseeing L.A. County’s 10 million residents in 2020, and Nathan Hochman, who was the republican nominee for state AG in 2022, and who has been endorsed and funded by leading republicans like Rick Caruso, leading to a massive cash advantage and major polling lead over Gascón. While the LA Times, the Dem Party, and the county Fed have all endorsed Gascón, the latter two aren’t putting money behind him. If we trust the polling, it’s likely that Hochman wins, which is painful to say but the deck is pretty stacked here, especially with the reduction in organizing coherence in L.A. over the past few years. We can expect jail numbers to grow quickly. 

Moving our attention up to the Bay, it’s been interesting to me to see almost no discussion about how when San Francisco voters recalled Cheasa Boudin and an anti-reform DA took his place, crime actually went up. It turns out that he wasn’t causing that problem, and throwing him out didn’t solve that problem. Maybe the people who funded and fueled his ouster didn’t actually give a damn about crime, or weren’t serious enough to look at what would actually solve the problem? Alameda feels like a similar story, and just like with Chesa and Gascón, the opposition started work to recall her as soon as she took office (aka before she had a chance to do anything and there was no data). Pamela Price looks likely to be recalled in November, which would be a frustrating setback, not because she is perfect, but because this will undermine efforts to elect better people across the state (why work so hard to win if a recall is planned from the day you take office?). To learn more about the stakes there, check out this great Bolts piece.  

How should we interpret the results if things go badly in these elections? My bottom line answer to that is that the opposition has been messaging day in and day out for 10 years, pushing anti-reform as hard as possible, trying through numerous ballot measure attempts, legislative attempts, and relentless media work to make Californians believe that the way to solve social problems like poverty and homelessness is by putting more people in jail and prison. That consistent, widespread, well-resourced work may pay off handsomely this fall. But ultimately they will find it hard to hold those victories, as they are now going against the grain of public sentiment, which has shifted a ton in the past 10 years in the direction of reform. Even now, the seeds of the next wave of pressure are germinating. This fall may be a setback, but this work is still moving forward, and I’m excited about the work that we’re funding to get that done.