Holly MatkinSan Francisco, CA – San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin will face a recall election next year after tens of thousands of residents signed a petition seeking to oust him from office.
The San Francisco Department of Elections announced Tuesday that a special election to recall Boudin will be held during the statewide primary election that will take place on June 7, 2022, KGO reported.
“Today the Department of Elections certified that the petition to recall District Attorney Chesa Boudin contains a sufficient number of valid signatures and that the petition is successful,” San Francisco Director of Elections John Arntz wrote in a letter to petition organizers on Nov. 9, according to KNTV.
The recall effort was spearheaded by Safer SF Without Boudin, a local group that had gathered over 83,000 signatures as of two weeks ago, KGO reported.
Only 51,325 signatures were required to trigger the recall election, according to KNTV.
“San Franciscans are fed up and tired,” Safer SF Without Boudin spokesperson Andrea Shorter told KGO. “It is about San Franciscans not feeling safe under this district attorney when he does not hold to account and act responsibly when it comes to repeat offenders.”
The group has alleged Boudin is too lenient when it comes to repeat offenders and that he has placed citizens at risk as a result, KGO reported.
Former San Francisco Assistant District Attorney Brooke Jenkins and former prosecutor Don du Bain are both among those calling for Boudin’s ouster.
Although Shorter’s group has described itself as being led by Democrats, another group that is against the recall has alleged the effort is a Republican-led plot, KGO reported.
“Make no mistake: this effort to overturn an election is Republican-led and fueled by fear-mongering and dangerous misinformation,” Stand with Chesa declared, according to the news outlet. “They are pushing this recall at a time when we should be focusing on public health and economic recovery from the pandemic’s devastating toll on our city.”
Boudin’s opponents noted there are only 33,000 registered Republicans residing in San Francisco and that more than 83,000 signatures were collected, indicating Democrats have also been involved in the recall effort, according to KNTV.
Boudin’s campaign manager, Zaki Shaheen, argued the embattled district attorney “has fulfilled his campaign promises to increase public safety and to reform the criminal justice system,” KGO reported.
Shaheen said his team plans to educate voters about the “false narrative” Boudin’s critics have allegedly created.
In the event Boudin were to be recalled in June, San Francisco Mayor London Breed would have to appoint someone to replace him, KGO reported.
Boudin is the son of Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert, two members of The Weather Underground who were convicted of murdering two police officers and a Brinks security guard during an armed robbery in 1981, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
Boudin was endorsed by Presidential hopeful U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), singer John Legend, and the co-founders of Black Lives Matter, as well as several first-term radical liberal prosecutors including Chicago’s beleaguered Cook County Prosecutor Kim Foxx and Philadelphia’s cop-hating district attorney, Larry Krasner.
Activist Shaun King’s Real Justice PAC and a lot of other money from outside the state of California filled the public defender’s campaign coffers, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Boudin was 14 months old when both of his parents left him with a sitter while they committed an armored car robbery in upstate New York, NBC News reported.
After his parents went to prison, he was raised by The Weather Underground’s leaders, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, in a life of privilege that led him to Yale University.
After college, Boudin won a Rhodes scholarship and then worked as a translator for the late Communist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, according to NBC News.
“Growing up, I had to go through a metal detector and steel gates just to give my parents a hug,” Boudin said in one of his campaign videos.
The public defender ran his campaign on criminal justice reform, claiming that he was also a “victim” of his parents’ armed robbery in 1981 that left three people dead, two of them police officers.
Boudin has claimed he was motivated to run for office because he has experienced the results of the “destructive effects of mass incarceration,” NBC News reported.
