The conservative tide reaches the great Democratic bastion of California

California is still counting votes. The most populated state in the country expects that on December 13 there will be official results from the elections held last week. Although there are still 2.6 million ballots left to be counted, the impact of the Republican tide is already being felt in America’s great Democratic stronghold. Voters turned to the right to punish the great progressive experiment taking place in the main cities of California. This conservative wave has hit the San Francisco Bay Area especially hard, but it has also been felt in Los Angeles, where its district attorney has lost the election. An overwhelming majority of Californians are demanding tougher penalties for crimes related to theft and drugs.

The clearest warning signal to Democrats has come from San Francisco. The electorate voted for a change in local politics. Mayor London Breed, a centrist, has lost her re-election bid after six years in office. Voters instead opted for Daniel Lurie, heir to the Levi Strauss textile empire and a political novice. Lurie, 47, will be the first mayor since 1912 who has no government experience. People have bought into his message as a moderate outsider, although he also won as a Democratic politician seeking to clean up the city. Lurie wants to expand the homeless shelter system and intends to declare a state of emergency over the ravages of fentanyl in the city.

Lurie, who spent more than $7 million of his own fortune on his campaign, is not alone. The electorate also voted out of office Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao and Pamela Price, the district attorney for Alameda County, the region east of San Francisco. Thao and Price were elected two years ago and were standard-bearers of the progressive movement. Their tenure has been derailed by a perception of rising crime, homelessness and a stagnant economic recovery from the Covid pandemic.

Price has suffered the same fate as Chesa Boudin, the former San Francisco district attorney. Boudin succumbed in 2022 to a tech-mogul-funded recall campaign. Boudin was blamed for rising crime after trying to eliminate bail for minor offenses, being more lenient with repeat offenders, and taking a fresh approach to homelessness. Sixty percent voted to remove Boudin from office. Sixty-five percent voted last week to remove Price, who becomes the first Alameda district attorney to lose her job.

The best indicator of Californians’ weariness with crime is the wide margin by which Proposition 36, which toughens penalties for drug possession and theft, was approved. Seventy percent of voters, some 8.6 million people, voted in favor of this initiative, which received even more support than Kamala Harris. The proposition was approved in all 58 counties in the state. Not a single one voted to continue with the alternatives put in place in 2014 to reduce penalties. The referendum puts an end to the theft threshold of up to $950, which was considered a misdemeanor. Anyone arrested for a third time will face charges of aggravated felony regardless of the amount stolen. The same will apply to anyone who accumulates three charges for drug possession. Critics of the measure believe that this will increase the prison population in the state.

The city of Los Angeles was also hit by this wave of change. It has swept away one of the best-known progressive profiles in the state, George Gascón. The county district attorney was defeated by Nathan Hochman, a former federal prosecutor, who beat him by more than 600,000 votes. “The shift to the right across the country is devastating,” Gascón said in the statement in which he acknowledged his defeat. The prosecutor came to office four years ago with the promise of trying new methods of criminal justice. His experience was supported by a career as a lawyer in San Francisco, where he replaced Harris as the progressive city attorney.

“We will make crime illegal again,” Hochman told reporters last week. The Beverly Hills-born attorney is a graduate of Brown and Stanford universities. He has experience litigating against corrupt elements of local law enforcement. In 2022, he sought to be California’s attorney general, but was defeated by Rob Bonta. His hard-line centrist message has been better received this year. His campaign raised more than $7.2 million in donations, compared to the $605,000 for Gascón. Hochman abandoned his Republican past in order to succeed in the Democratic stronghold. In 2023, he changed his party affiliation to “independent.” Hochman has promised to eliminate “the pro-crime measures” of his predecessor.

Despite the Democrats’ wake-up call, California remains blue. Harris won the state by a landslide, with 58% of the votes counted (7.7 million) against Donald Trump’s 38% (five million). Democrat Adam Schiff also beat his Republican rival, former baseball player Steve Garvey, by 20 points. Voters, however, have set a new direction for local politics.

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