Californians are more anxious about crime, and their mood is threatening to push liberal prosecutors out of office, Politico reports. Left-leaning district attorneys in San Francisco and Los Angeles could both be ousted. State Attorney General Rob Bonta was considered a rising progressive star a year ago when Gov. Gavin Newsom picked him to be California’s top law enforcement official. In a year when Newsom is on the ballot, Bonta’s fight to stay in office could be a bellwether of Democratic voters’ commitment to criminal justice reform. California conservatives are amplifying a sense of lawlessness and pinning the state’s crime problem on policies that reduced sentencing and incarceration.
The national GOP has made the rise of violent crime a centerpiece of its case against President Biden and vulnerable House Democrats in the 2022 elections. “If you’re an elected official or you want to be an elected official, you need to address the crime issue,” said Darry Sragow, a Democratic strategist who conducted Los Angeles focus groups that found voter malaise. “It reflects a sense among voters in this neck of the woods that society is just falling apart, and that their elected officials are unwilling or incapable of solving the problem.” Polls found a nine-point jump since 2020 in the share of California voters who see violence and street crime as a problem — now 64 percent — and a 16-point rise in those who say Newsom is doing a poor job addressing it. Bonta opponents Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert, a Republican-turned-independent, and former U.S. Attorney Nathan Hochman, a Republican have seized on that shift.
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