On June 7, San Francisco residents voted—60% to 40%—to oust District Attorney Chesa Boudin.

Since “liberal” has become a taboo word even among liberals, Boudin was praised by his supporters—and saw himself—as a “progressive prosecutor.”

This meant he favored—and implemented:

• Abolishing cash bail;
• Refusing to prosecute minors as adults—regardless of their crime; 
• Lowering the jail population during the COVID crisis;
• Refusing to seek tougher sentences under California’s anti-gang (“three strikes”) law.

Boudin, 41, had previously served as a deputy public defender for the city’s Public Defender office. As such, he was expected to provide his clients with a vigorous defense. His mistake was taking that same mentality into the office of District Attorney. 

Chesa Boudin

Shoplifters ran rampant in the city, victimizing not only high-end stores but even pharmacies. As a result, Walgreens has closed at least 10 stores since the beginning of 2019. Five closed in November 2021. Six CVS stores have closed for the same reason.

Owing to President Donald Trump’s attacks on China as the incubator of COVID-19, assaults on Asian-Americans steadily rose—in a city where they make up 34.40% of the population. 

Overall crime in San Francisco is up nearly 8% in 2022, with a 20% surge in larcenies, as well as spikes in homicides, rapes and assaults.

Boudin and his supporters blamed conservative and business groups for the recall effort. And, in fact, they had raised more than $7 million to secure his ouster. 

But the recall clearly tapped into existing anger about soaring levels of quality-of-life crimes in the Bay Area—car break-ins, burglaries and shoplifting.

San Francisco’s notorious tolerance for “the homeless”—most of whom consist of drug addicts, alcoholics, mentally ill and outright bums—also played a major role. Tax-paying citizens have grown fed up with sidewalks littered with oversize tents, empty wine bottles and beer cans, human feces and urine, used hypodermic syringes—and the Untermenschen responsible for them.

Boudin had been elected District Attorney on November 5, 2019. 

In hindsight, Boudin’s priorities as District Attorney—and the reasons for his recall—seem foretold.

His parents, David Gilbert and Kathy Boudin, were members of the radical Weather Underground. In 1981, when Boudin was 14 months old, both served as getaway drivers in a Brink’s robbery. And both were convicted of the murder of two police officers and a security guard.

Kathy Boudin was sentenced to 20 years to life; David Gilbert drew 75 years. Kathy Boudin was paroled in 2003, dying of cancer in May. Gilbert was paroled in October, 2003.

As a result, the raising of Chesa fell to two other members of the Weather Underground: Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. So discovering why Boudin considers criminals as oppressed victims is relatively easy.

For Michael Shellenberger, author of San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities, none of this has come as a surprise.

From the inside cover flap: 

“Michael Shellenberger has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for 30 years. During that time, he advocated for the decriminalization of drugs, affordable housing and alternatives to jail and prison. 

“But as homeless encampments spread and overdose deaths skyrocketed, Shellenberger decided to take a closer look at the problem. 

“What he discovered shocked him. The problems had grown worse, not in spite of but because of progressive policies. San Francisco and other West Coast cities—Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland—had gone beyond merely tolerating homelessness, drug dealing and crime to actively enabling them….

“The real problem is an ideology that designates some people, by identity or experience, as victims entitled to destructive behaviors. The result is an undermining of the values that make cities, and civilization itself, possible.”

Anyone who doubts Shellenberger’s conclusions need only examine the city’s COVID-19 Alternative Housing Program. 

It’s the creation of San Francisco Mayor London Breed and the Board of Supervisors, and run by the city’s Department of Public Health (DPH),

It works in two stages:

Stage 1: Move the “homeless” into the city’s hotels—at city expense.

Stage 2: Provide them with not only free food and shelter but free alcohol, cannabis and cigarettes. 

According to a May 11, 2020 story in City Journal.org:

“The program’s primary purpose is to keep homeless people, the majority of whom are addicts, out of harm’s way during the pandemic. By getting their substance of choice delivered, the thinking goes, the guests may be more apt to remain in their government-funded rooms….

“The city doesn’t want homeless people who should be staying in their rooms roaming the neighborhood in search of the substances, potentially infecting others.”

Referring to these people as “guests,” DPH said in a statement that they are screened for substance addictions and asked if they’d like to stop or have support to reduce their use.

If they say they want to remain alcoholics and/or drug addicts, they’re provided with their substance of choice. 

In 2020, and lasting until at least 2022, San Francisco lost its longstanding convention, Oracle’s OpenWorld, to Las Vegas. A chief reason cited: “Poor street conditions.”

And “a major medical association” will move its convention out of San Francisco after 2023

Tourism is San Francisco’s largest industry, generating $8.4 billion annually. When tourism revenues dry up, so will the city.