The closing days of the 2024 election focused on the titanic battle for the presidency. However, a set of developments, primarily on the West Coast, may be nearly as important.
I am referring to elections for District Attorney in Los Angeles and Alameda Counties in California and Multnomah County, Oregon. In each, a “progressive prosecutor” lost the reelection battle. These three contests represent an impressive rejection of the woke agenda in some of the country’s most liberal counties.
Even so, how could three local elections compare to the presidency?
Radically Revolutionary
I can answer you in three words—the Progressive Prosecutor Project. For over a decade, the far-left has spent millions electing District Attorneys dedicated to judicial chaos.
One of the first journalists to notice was Andrew McCarthy, who wrote about it in the March 2020 issue of Commentary.
“By the movement’s lights, the very act of policing, of enforcing the laws enacted by the people’s representatives, is an exercise in race-based persecution. Indeed, in its most triumphalist iteration—and it is really feeling its oats these days—the movement would eliminate police departments. Not tame them. Not scale them back. Eliminate them.” (Emphasis in the original.)
Stunningly Effective
The centerpiece of the project was amazingly simple. Most of us focus our attention on the top of the ballot—presidents, senators, members of Congress and the like. By the time we get down to county offices like district attorneys, we vote for people we don’t know or care to research their programs. If a leftist ideologue runs for District Attorney, few people realize it until it is too late.
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The effort has been stunningly successful. In June 2022, the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund (LELDF) reported that these progressive “prosecutors have jurisdiction over 72 million Americans, including 25 of America’s 50 most populous cities and counties. Their power stretches from large urban centers to leafy suburbs and rural farming communities.”
An LDLDF map indicates twenty-four jurisdictions in which the Progressive Prosecutor Project has helped elect the local District Attorney. They range from New York City’s Alvin Bragg to Los Angeles’s George Gascón ($6,042,934). Alameda County, California’s Pamela Price was elected, while Portland, Oregon’s Mike Schmidt also joined the ranks.
Today, the LELDF can remove Mr. Gascón, Miss Price, and Mr. Schmidt from its list. The 2024 election proved to be their undoing.
Reversal in Portland
Mike Schmidt reached the exit door first. Initially appointed while Portland endured the massive COVID-summer riots of 2020, 77% of voters elected him that fall. He exuded liberal enthusiasm on the County’s official website.
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“I’d like to see the end of cash bail. I’d like to see the end of mandatory minimum sentencing practices. And I will be working with the Legislature to advocate for those changes, among others.” He promised to “take our efforts to the next level by looking at specific charging practices, how we handle pretrial negotiations and plea offers, and looking to expand diversion policies and programs.” He did just that, refusing to prosecute those arrested for disorderly conduct or interfering with a police officer.
The leftist euphoria didn’t last long. In May 2024, Mr. Schmidt lost his reelection bid to a more reasonable primary opponent, Nathan Vasquez. While no conservative, Mr. Vasquez promised to enforce drug laws and “make the city’s down streets and parks feel safer,” according to Oregon Public Broadcasting.
The Situation in Oakland
Pamela Price’s career trajectory as Alameda County, California’s District Attorney, came and went even more quickly. On her inauguration in January 2023, she gushed, “This moment is an exclamation point in history!”
A graduate of the famously liberal Berkeley Law School, she laid out her plans for her alma mater a month after taking office.
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“My 10-point platform continues to guide me in how we transform the DA’s office over the next six years…. I remain dedicated to addressing gun violence, mental health issues and gender-based crimes, as well as a new vision for youth justice. Our office will work…in addressing those issues as well as hate crimes, consumer, environmental, and worker protections, public accountability, racial justice, and ways to implement innovation in the criminal justice system.”
That March, she tried to get a convicted murderer out of jail. As the San Francisco Standard described the situation, “[T]he offer amounted to this: Prosecutors would drop three murder charges against Delonzo Logwood for the 2008 killings if he pleads no contest to a single charge of manslaughter.” Fortunately, a local judge killed the deal. In October, she made a similar deal with a man charged with “five murders, two attempted murders and a carjacking. According to the local Berkeley Scanner, he would be freed in less than a year.
Almost immediately, voters launched an effort under California’s complicated recall process. In November, nearly two-thirds of the voters in this liberal bastion ousted her.
Meanwhile, In the City of Angels
Like Mike Schmidt in Portland, George Gascón became District Attorney of Los Angeles County because of the leftist ferment of 2020. As NBC News pointed out, “He harnessed the progressive energy surrounding that summer’s protests over police misconduct and racial inequality, riding a political wave that in previous cycles helped elect crusading prosecutors in cities like Boston, Chicago and Philadelphia.”
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On taking office, he implemented the radical “social justice” template. “He barred prosecutors in his office from seeking the death penalty and various sentencing enhancements, stopped the prosecution of juveniles as adults and ended cash bail for misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies.”
Mr. Gascón thwarted recall campaign organizers who could not gather the necessary 566,857 signatures. According to the New York Times, they submitted 715.833, but state authorities threw out almost 200,000.
However, the reelection calendar respects no man. Mr. Gascón faced the voters in November. This time, his luck ran out. His challenger, Nathan Hochman, secured a sixty percent majority to make him the victor.
A Significant Result
Of course, removing three “hard left” functionaries won’t change a society’s future by themselves. On the other hand, these results are significant reverses to the leftist agenda for three reasons.
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First, California’s ability to impose its bad ideas on the rest of the culture is legendary. Because of its dominance of the entertainment media, California has been a bellwether for the future of American society.
Second, these elections follow a general pattern in California. In 2020, Joseph Biden defeated Donald Trump in the state by 63.5 to 34.3 percent. Kamala Harris—a California native and former Senator from the Golden State—received 57.6 percent in 2024 to Donald Trump’s 39.8 percent. That deterioration, nearly six percent in a state where Mr. Trump did not campaign, could be a sign that California voters are returning to the land of sanity.
Last, and most significantly, this is a sign that Californians value safety and order more than their four-year-old flirtation with the whims of social justice zealots. This is not the time for over-optimism, but American history is full of significant developments that began with far less promise.
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