Americana

Democrats are putting ‘progressive prosecutors’ on trial

THE SCENE

Six summers ago, as he ramped up his campaigning for Democrats, Barack Obama praised a political experiment unfolding in city after city.

“If you are really concerned about how the criminal justice system treats African Americans, the best way to protest is to vote,” Obama said. “Do what they just did in Philadelphia and Boston and elect state attorneys and district attorneys who are looking at issues in a new light.”

This week, Portland voters ejected one of those district attorneys. Mike Schmidt, who’d run in 2020 to end “systemic racism” and “the school to prison pipeline,” won that race by such a landslide that his predecessor retired early, out of respect for people “shout[ing] from our streets that Black lives matter.” Schmidt lost this one to Nathan Vasquez, a prosecutor in the Multnomah County DA’s office endorsed by police unions.

“What you see and feel is real,” Vasquez said in a debate with Schmidt, blaming the incumbent for a surge in crime and drug overdoses. “My path offers hope, safety through collaboration, and actual, real experience handling prosecution — doing the work that is this office, to prosecute crimes.”

National Democrats, who were also once eager to align themselves with the 2020 protests, were thrilled to see the result on Tuesday. The years-long campaign to elect criminal justice reformers in powerful local offices isn’t over, but it is giving up ground.

State legislators in both parties have undermined them; progressive prosecutors in St. Louis, Chicago, and Northern Virginia have resigned, been replaced by critics, or lost reelection. In March, progressives did successfully oust Kim Ogg, the prosecutor of Houston’s Harris County, in one of the movement’s biggest wins. One week later, however, Texas Attorney Gen. Ken Paxton proposed a rule that would allow him to remove urban prosecutors unless they complied with strict new reporting standards, because “District Attorneys who choose not to prosecute criminals appropriately have created unthinkable damage” to Texas.

“No attempt at change is linear, and it’s predictable that those who don’t want law enforcement accountability and who want to lock everyone up are fighting back,” said Jessica Brand, the founder of the Wren Collective, a criminal justice reform group. “Some progressives are going to lose. But more are winning reelection, even when met with massive spending for their opponents. It’s why some right-wing electeds are now utilizing undemocratic attempts to remove them — because they can’t win many elections. I think that shows that the movement has a strong future.”

DAVID’S VIEW

Remember how the campaign for progressive prosecutors started: As political arbitrage. Unless an incumbent was beset by scandals, the more than 2,000 local elections for district attorneys and county prosecutors were fairly low-profile and low-cost ways for donors to make an impact. In 2015, when George Soros began funding “Safety and Justice” PACs in these races, a six-figure buy that could go unnoticed in a Senate race could completely transform a sleepy DA election.

By 2018, when Obama praised the movement, it had notched win after win without the crime spike that conservatives and police unions predicted. Philadelphia’s Larry Krasner, Eric Gonzalez in Brooklyn, Rachael Rollins in Boston’s Suffolk County, Kim Foxx in Cook County, Ill.: All of them aimed to end “mass incarceration” and declined to prosecute some petty offenses.

In 2020, when Donald Trump went after those prosecutors, he polarized the issue: No Democrat wanted advice from him about who could keep them safe. (“The radical left District Attorney in Portland, Mike Schmidt, his name is, has released hundreds of rioters,” Trump said at a 2020 rally in Pennsylvania, which was a boon for Schmidt back home.)

Only when Trump left office, and crime increased in some cities with progressive DAs, did Democrats start to panic. When I talked with Krasner in 2021, before he defeated a police-backed primary challenger, he attributed rising crime to the shutdown of civic infrastructure during COVID, and to police not closing enough cases.

That was compelling to Philadelphians. But Republicans didn’t let up. Democrats got more cautious about the premise of the progressive prosecutor movement — that you could decarcerate without increasing crime — while Republicans relentlessly tied their opponents to progressive prosecutors. After narrowly winning his 2021 race, Virginia Attorney Gen. Jason Miyares joined a PAC built to beat those prosecutors; like Trump, he saw power in identifying them and making Democrats own their records. (Earlier this month, House Republicans gathered in Philadelphia for a field hearing largely about blaming crime on Krasner.)

“Highlight every single far-left, special-interest prosecutor that has been elected in your state,” Miyares told members of the House Republican Study Committee in early 2022. “I don’t care if they are in your district — they are all over,” he explained, and Republicans could “make them famous.”

The RSC did that, sketching out a Concerned Citizens Bill of Rights, which recommended cutting off federal funds from states with “harmful no-cash bail policies,” or where some district attorneys “systematically decline to prosecute types of cases.” As he ran for president, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis built on that, suspending two elected prosecutors, accusing one of “dereliction of duty” for not pursuing tougher charges.

Voters in Portland and San Francisco don’t care much about what DeSantis thinks. But liberals who joined the 2020 protest wave have changed their priorities.

THE VIEW FROM DEMOCRATS

The Biden administration hasn’t gone after progressive prosecutors; the White House officials who were happy about Schmidt’s loss in a Politico story celebrated it anonymously. Its larger political project has been instituting reforms at Main Justice while increasing law enforcement funding and denouncing the “defund the police” slogan that’s vanished everywhere except Republican campaign ads.

“The tide is clearly turning,” said Jim Kessler, the executive vice president for policy at the centrist Democratic think tank Third Way. Polling, said Kessler, usually found that “crime” was one of the top concerns for non-white voters; that refuted the worry some Democrats had in 2020, that by denouncing activists or progressive DAs that they’d alienate their base. “Biden has a history of being a strong-on-crime Democrat, and he needs to remind people,” he added. 

Specifically, Kessler wants Biden to emphasize how much more money his administration has spent on law enforcement — and how cuts to police budgets, which Portland and some other Democratic cities enacted in 2020, have been completely reversed. In 2020, Trump accused Biden of wanting to “cut funding for police,” and Biden said that he wanted to increase it.

And he did. From 2021 to 2024, funding for the FBI has increased from $10.4 billion to $11.3 billion; funding for the COPS grants, which fund community policing, has nearly doubled, from $386 million to $663 million.

That’s separated Biden from activists and progressive campaigners, without mollifying Republicans at all. When the Biden administration has increased law enforcement funding, it’s been denounced by the Movement for Black Lives, who responded at one point: “When we say ‘defund and abolish the police,’ we mean exactly that.” This month, when House Republicans welcomed local law enforcement to D.C.’s “Police Week,” they repeatedly accused Democrats of “defunding” police; pressed on how Democrats actually increased funding, House Speaker Mike Johnson referred to the “viral vignettes” of him reading quotes of Democrats who, at some point, were “on board” with the idea.

Republicans have found firmer ground when attacking the Biden administration for appointing judges and U.S. attorneys sympathetic to the reform movement. Rollins, one of the DAs who Obama praised in 2018, won a hard-fought promotion under Biden: With Vice President Harris breaking the tie, Democrats made her a U.S. attorney for Massachusetts. Rollins resigned sixteen months later, after an ethics investigation found that she’d leaked DOJ secrets to influence the election of her successor.

NOTABLE

• In Politico, Jonathan Martin profiled the final days of the Schmidt-Vasquez campaign, as “the culmination of simmering local frustration with crime, homelessness and drug abuse and a resounding correction to the shift left on criminal justice that took place here and in so many cities in 2020.”
• In the Washington Post, Eugene Robinson criticized House Republicans for banging the “defund” drum while proposing cuts in their budgets: “Democrats campaigning should make Republicans own all of this if they want to take back control of the House in the fall.”

Ohio. Gov. Mike DeWine called a special legislative session after fellow Republicans refused to pass a waiver that would put the Biden-Harris ticket on the November ballot. Weeks after Secretary of State Frank LaRose warned that Democrats would miss the state’s cutoff — the Democratic National Convention will convene two weeks later — Republicans who’d voted to waive the deadline in previous years refused to do it unless the bill included a ban on foreign donations to state ballot initiatives. Democrats prepared break-glass options if the legislature doesn’t act — a lawsuit, or an early convention vote. They weren’t happy with DeWine, though: He favored the version of the ballot waiver that included GOP reforms. “This is like being sold spoiled milk,” House Democratic Leader Allison Russo wrote on X.

South Carolina. In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority upheld a congressional map that removed Black voters from Rep. Nancy Mace’s district to make it easier to hold. In his opinion, Justice Samuel Alito characterized anti-gerrymandering lawsuits as a threat that could “transform federal courts into weapons of political warfare,” pointing toward future decisions that could uphold districts built to favor one party.

Kentucky. Rep. Tom Massie easily beat two fringe challengers in Tuesday’s primary, celebrating that as a win over AIPAC, whose PAC spent six figures on ads to attack his Israel record around the state. “AIPAC was ‘not playing in’ Massie’s primary,” the group said in a statement. “We’re shining a spotlight on his atrocious anti-Israel record and making sure every Kentuckian knows.”

Oregon. While Mike Schmidt lost in Portland, two progressive candidates lost Democratic primaries for House seats — Portland’s Susheela Jayapal and central Oregon’s Jamie McLeod-Skinner. Jayapal lost by 15 points, as of Friday’s vote count, to state Rep. Maxine Dexter, who was boosted in the race’s final month by centrist Democratic PACs; McLeod-Skinner lost in a 2-1 rout to state Rep. Janelle Bynum, who most party leaders endorsed, snakebit by McLeod-Skinner’s 4-point loss in her swing seat.

Menendez for Congress, “Who I’m Fighting For.” Rep. Rob Menendez has an intractable problem: His dad. This week, as Sen. Bob Menendez’s corruption trial began, the first-term congressman from north Jersey went up with a spot clarifying who he is: Hoboken Ravi Bhalla, his challenger, “wants to run against my father because he’s scared to run against me.” Bhalla responded by saying he backs Medicare for all, while Menendez talks more generally about healthcare access.

John Avlon for Congress, “The Hodgsons.” When Avlon left CNN to run for Congress in Suffolk County, Republicans immediately hit him as an interloper — a Hamptons-dweller who said “in Long Island,” not “on Long Island.” In this spot, Avlon opens a door to reveal not his home, but a family that would get a huge tax break if he gets elected and undoes what “Trump Republicans” did in 2017, when they nixed the state income tax cap to pay for other tax cuts.

William Timmons for Congress, “Shameful.” South Carolina has an open primary, and Democrats already have their nominee in Timmons’s upstate district. To beat challenger Adam Morgan, Timmons is portraying him as too extreme on abortion — a “yes” vote for “legislation that would send rape and incest victims to jail” if they get abortions. That might appeal to Democrats, and the closer reminds Republicans that Timmons is still “pro-life.”

No ex-president has invoked presidential immunity as much as Trump, and these are the results. When asked generically if a president should have immunity, a slight plurality of Republicans (45%) say no, joined by 84% of independents and 94% of Democrats. When asked specifically about Trump, Republicans flip — 66% say he should have immunity, a position opposed by three-fifths of independents and nine-tenths of Democrats. The most conservative voters are firmly on Trump’s side, and and most likely to support immunity in general — 46% of “very conservative” voters, and 46% of voters who attend church more than once a week.

In 2020, Gallup quizzed voters on eight personal qualities about the presidential nominees. Biden led Trump on all but one of them: Who was a strong, decisive leader. In four years, Trump has increased his lead on that question, erased Biden’s advantage on four others, and swapped places with him on this one. Democrats want voters to think of the Trump years and remember dysfunction, COVID, and Jan. 6, and half the electorate simply doesn’t do that.

Kennedy first said he’d consider running for president at a 2023 speech in New Hampshire. When he ran for the Democratic nomination, he held fairly high-profile events that irritated the party, including a speech at the libertarian Free State Project’s PORCfest and a Q&A at former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown’s home. One result: Kennedy’s got little pull with Democrats here, and Biden holds onto a narrow lead despite widespread voter anger about illegal immigration.

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White House. The Libertarian Party will welcome Trump, Vivek Ramaswamy, and both halves of the Kennedy-Shanahan ticket to its national convention this weekend, a decision that’s irked some libertarians but surged media interest in the event. When Americana picked up its press pass on Thursday, there were at least twice as many media badges as there were reporters at the 2016 convention, which picked the party’s best-performing ticket. He’d previously said that Haley was not being considered as a running mate; Haley had previously said Trump was ”not qualified" to be president after he mocked her husband during a military deployment.

Last year, Democratic strategists resurrected the Dirt Road Democrats PAC, a group built to help the party in rural areas where it had been wiped out. This month, two Democrats who saw that firsthand joined the PAC for its 2024 reboot: Brandon Presley, who narrowly lost the 2023 race for governor of Mississippi, and Chris Jones, who lost Arkansas’ 2022 gubernatorial race but outran other Democrats on the ticket. They talked with Americana about what they lived through, and what they want to do to rescue the party, and this is an edited transcript of the conversation.

Americana: What knowledge do you bring to this that the average Democrat in a suburb somewhere doesn’t know?

Brandon Presley: We went to places that hadn’t seen a candidate for governor, ever — quite frankly, places that a lot of Democrats thought they should write off. Forrest County, Miss., is a good example. It hadn’t voted for a Democrat for governor since 1979, and we flipped it. We did it by showing up and giving a little bit different perspective. You just can’t ignore people into voting for you. That’s a dumb political playbook.

Chris Jones: I went to all 75 counties at least three times, and what I heard was, Democrats hadn’t been around here for decades. No politician had been around in forever. The number of people that we were able to persuade and convince was amazing. And my opponent, Sarah Sanders, ended up underperforming every other statewide Republican. She spent $18 million on a race in a red state where she had 100% name recognition, and the President and a former governor were behind her.

Americana: Mississippi hasn’t elected a Democratic governor for a long time; Arkansas turned to the GOP a little more recently. What reasons were you finding when you’d met people who were done with Democrats? If they used to be Democrats, why’d they leave?

Chris Jones: The beauty of Dirt Road Democrats that we can support infrastructure for state parties that hasn’t been deployed in quite a while. And then and when we support infrastructure, and we show up, that’s where the difference happens. When I ran my race, Arkansas Democrats fielded the smallest number of state legislative candidates in probably over two decades — maybe ever. When you don’t have candidates on the ballot, and you don’t give people a choice, then they don’t exercise their vote. I also found that small town newspapers simply weren’t hearing from us at all. So, I started writing a weekly column in the smallest of newspapers across the state.

Brandon Presley: There’s a city in Mississippi, Horn Lake, that President Biden carried with almost 60% of the vote. In the last couple of mayoral elections, Democrats didn’t field candidates for every seat there. That’s not respecting the voters.

Americana: What did you actually run on that seemed to connect?

Brandon Presley: Medicaid expansion, cutting the sales tax on groceries, opening up government to the people, cutting car tags — those were kitchen-table issues that actually have an effect on people’s lives. Look, I’m sick and tired of people acting as if Democrats aren’t tax cutters. I cut property taxes twice as a mayor, I voted against more rate increases as a Public Service Commissioner than anybody in state history. And after the election, we came very close to passing Medicaid expansion in some form in Mississippi, through the Republican legislature. That is a direct effect of showing up talking to people.

Chris Jones: I heard some of the same concerns from people — hospitals closing, broadband access. But we were also battling a combination of misinformation and no information. The Republicans are putting out all sorts of crazy information about Democrats and we’re not there to combat it. I had a conversation with a lady, who was so sincere when she told me that Democrats sacrifice babies and worship Baal. You know, I kept talking, and by the end of the conversation, she had changed her tone. But when you ignore people they get sucked into misinformation.

Americana: Well, a lot of the national Democratic message right now is about abortion and choice, which plays very well in metropolitan and suburban areas. But that voter sounds like someone who sounds pretty happy with the abortion status quo in Arkansas.

Chris Jones: It’s less about shaping a particular message and more about supporting candidates and organizations that are going to show up. Bill Clinton gave me some advice. If there are five hot topics, you should avoid three and only talk about two. Let people know where you stand, how you feel, and what you believe in, because they’ll show up if you’re honest with them.

Americana: You’re trying to convince more people to make the jump and run for office; one factor weighing on people is that they’d be running with Biden, who isn’t popular. So what would be your advice to candidates worried about the drag on the ticket?

Chris Jones: I was just thinking about this the other day. There was a big announcement here about $23 million of investments in a nursing program. It was an amazing resource. And at the announcement, the governor had a big check with her name on it, and no mention that the money came from the Biden administration. A lot of great things have happened, but if you’re not directly talking to people, it doesn’t matter. You’ve got to build for the long-term and you’ve got to start early.

• four days until runoffs in Texas
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• 34 days until the first presidential debate
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• 165 days until the 2024 presidential election