This fall, California voters will have multiple chances to decide whether their state has gone too far in reining in law enforcement and reducing criminal penalties.
A statewide initiative that’s likely to qualify for the ballot would unwind parts of Proposition 47, a collection of sentencing reductions passed by voters years before the George Floyd killing sparked a national movement to rethink criminal justice policy. At the same time, two of the country’s most prominent district attorneys committed to police accountability and slimmer sentences are fighting to keep their jobs.
The alignment of those questions on the November ballot will force the collection of activists, funders and politicians who led the historic turn away from aggressive policing and incarceration to decide which parts of that legacy to prioritize defending.
For some of the politicians, led by Gov. Gavin Newsom, it means considering whether to cut a deal to crack down on property crime as a means of forestalling an anti-Prop 47 initiative already dividing Democratic officials and candidates. For donors, it means determining if they are ready to spend as robustly to protect Prop 47 and progressive district attorneys in Los Angeles and Oakland as they did to put them in place.
“California had led the nation in mass incarceration, so going from that to being a leader in a movement that makes us safer was very exciting,” said Daniel Zingale, a former Newsom adviser who previously helped organize the donor community that coalesced behind Prop 47 in 2014. “There’s a risk of fatigue coming out of a moment like that.”
A decade later, California’s ballot will again test the criminal justice reformers, this time against their most formidable challenge yet: a coalition that brings together rural sheriffs and big-city mayors with funding from big-box retailers amid a nationwide resurgence of voter concern about street crime.
The road to reform, and back
For a quarter-century, California politicians of both parties responded to voter concerns about crime by defaulting to policies of ever-tougher penalties and new prison construction. In 2011, those facilities were so full that the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the state to remedy what it called unconstitutional overcrowding.
Voters responded by reducing drug and property crime penalties with Proposition 47 in 2014, loosened parole rules with Proposition 57 two years later, and defended both by rejecting an effort to overturn them with Proposition 20 in 2020. Democratic governors and legislators cheered those changes while enacting laws that scaled back punishment. A new generation of prosecutors, like Alameda County’s Pamela Price and Los Angeles’s George Gascón, repudiated sentence-lengthening tools like extra time for gang membership or adult trials for juveniles.
Prison and jail populations shrank. With reported crime rates dipping to historic lows, public sentiment was firmly on reformers’ side for much of the past decade — a sea change validated through a series of statewide votes and fortified by a national movement toward racial justice.
But some types of violent crime are again on the rise. Car break-ins and shoplifting have increased in large cities. Californians have become accustomed to the sights of fentanyl smoked on sidewalks and toiletries locked behind glass cases at pharmacies. Participation in court-ordered drug treatment plunged, as have arrests for misdemeanor property crimes.
A political backlash has followed. Price faces a recall election in November and the prospect of being ousted before she gets halfway through her first term — a repeat of the way Chesa Boudin was abruptly yanked from the San Francisco District Attorney’s office in 2022. Gascón barely mustered a quarter of the vote in his March primary after he drew numerous challengers and faced a constant drumbeat of conservative media criticism. All three rode promises of change into office and then faced voter reprisals stoked by restive deputy prosecutors and funded by deep-pocketed foes.
Democratic politicians sense the changing winds. Newsom and lawmakers from his party are pushing bills to bolster property crime prosecutions, and the governor worked with Attorney General Rob Bonta — a potential governor candidate himself — to dispatch law enforcement assistanceto Oakland this year.
It may not be enough to avert a ballot fight. Big-box and grocery store chains like Walmart, Home Depot, and Target, which claim they face a shoplifting epidemic, have poured millions of dollars into a prosecutor-backed ballot initiative that would unravel voter-enacted changes by allowing repeat drug and theft offenders to be charged with felonies. The initiative would also make it easier to charge fentanyl dealers with homicide. Last month they submitted enough petition signatures to qualify for the November ballot.
Some repeal proponents insist they don’t want to return to a failed era of mass incarceration, arguing the initiative would target serial offenders. They portray the reimposition of drug felonies as a tool to compel people into treatment. But they also believe there has been a decisive shift among voters who just four years ago overwhelmingly rejected a ballot measure reupping penalties.
“We’ve seen more overdose deaths and a growing homelessness crisis,” said San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, a Democrat who has endorsed the measure. He cited “the number of small business owners who have expressed deep dismay because they’ve been victims of crime and have felt powerless to address it.”
The only game in town
The shifting political landscape has put reformers on the defensive after years of consistent victories. They note that crime remains historically low and warn that opponents — both law enforcement groups and retailers and developers who have funded campaigns — are cynically exploiting public anxiety and conflating crime with homelessness.
“I think what voters are looking for is solutions, and I think right now there’s a lot of gaslighting about what those solutions could be,” said Tinisch Hollins, who leads Californians for Safety and Justice, a nonprofit that has pushed for more lenient laws. “A lot of the folks opposed to Proposition 47 and reform overall are counting on the fatigue of folks wanting immediate relief and rethinking their choices.”
Those dynamics have opened up fault lines among Democrats over how to respond. While two of the state’s most prominent big-city mayors have endorsed the initiative to walk back aspects of Prop 47, state lawmakers in Sacramento have resisted the rush back to the ballot. Broadly, they are wary of returning to the discredited policies that produced California’s prison overcrowding crisis in the first place. Personally, many of them supported Prop 47 or Gascón and are loath to walk those positions back.
Newsom, whose chief of staff Dana Williamson ran the 2020 campaign that defeated a previous toughen-up initiative from retailers and prosecutors, has been steadfast in resisting wholesale changes to Prop 47. His office regularly touts fentanyl seizures and organized theft arrests to argue laws on the books work.
Some Democrats are wary of a ballot measure that could divide their coalition while motivating Republicans to vote, especially as control of the US House could turn on a handful of California races. Yolo County District Attorney Jeff Reisig said he has spoken to Democratic state lawmakers fixated on “the impact this might have on other races than on some fundamental difference with the idea embodied by this initiative.”
Newsom and legislative leaders have responded to the ballot measure threat by working on a bill package that would make it easier to crack down on repeat property crime offenders and target resellers of stolen goods.
“For the past few years when we tried to do things (in Sacramento), I hit a brick wall. The dialogue is completely different,” said California Retailers President President Rachel Michelin. “We went from no one wanting to do a retail theft bill — now it’s like everything’s a retail theft bill.”
Many Democrats see such a package as their best path to deter an initiative, which can be pulled before the ballot is finalized in late June. Michelin and prosecutors have been firm that they will go to voters unless Sacramento enacts substantial changes — and some prosecutors believe any real change would entail a vote. California’s constitution requires voters to approve any changes to laws originally enacted via citizen initiative.
“The public is not unclear on the current situation. They’re not happy. And I think that’s why you saw so many signatures submitted,” Democratic San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria said in an interview. If lawmakers don’t pass sufficiently strong legislation, Gloria went on, “that DA measure is going to be the only game in town, and I think it will be very successful at the ballot box because I think people want to see change.”
Splitting heirs
If the initiative does end up before voters, it will put pressure on the coterie of wealthy individuals and philanthropies that funded a decade of work to move California criminal justice policy leftward. They may be forced to triage resources between the progressive prosecutors and measures sharing a ballot in November.
The committee to fight the Prop 47 rollback has raised just $70,000 so far, with only token amounts or nothing yet from major criminal justice reform donors who have spent some $50 million on California politics in the last decade. Oakland philanthropist Quinn Delaney, who has poured $14 million into California politics since 2014, has given just $25,000. Oil heiress Stacy Schusterman, who has spent roughly $2.5 million in state politics during that time, has given the same amount.
“In progressive philanthropy,” acknowledges Zingale, “there’s always a risk of funding fatigue.”
Defenders of Prop 47 see their best hope in rallying California’s overwhelmingly Democratic electorate to view the conflict in partisan terms. Opponents of the ballot initiative have put out digital ads decrying the measure as a project of “extremist Republican politicians” like Rep. Kevin Kiley, a longtime Newsom antagonist who now represents a district sprawling down the state’s rural eastern and northern reaches.
That has been Gascón’s strategy, too. His reelection effort has emphasized that his opponent, onetime prosecutor Nathan Hochman, is a former Republican whose campaign is heavily funded by prominent southern California GOP donor Gerald Marcil.
As the Republican nominee for attorney general in 2022, Hochman was blown out in Los Angeles County, where voters had just overwhelmingly affirmed support for the Prop 47 reforms. Hochman said in an interview that he believes dynamics have changed since 2020, when the ascendant Black Lives Matter movement and a late burstof Democratic defections propelled Gascón to victory.
“In 2020 we were dealing with the George Floyd incident, protests in the streets, we had an LA mayor famously change his endorsement on the eve of the election,” Hochman said. “You have a situation in 2024 where the data has disproven George Gascón’s promises that he’s going to keep people safe with his extreme decriminalization policies.”
Gascón’s campaign manager, Jamarah Hayner, conceded that the incumbent faces a difficult path to reelection. But she said he has been battle-hardened by constant recall threats and has worked to shore up Democratic support.
“It’s forced us into a permanent campaign mode,” Hayner said. “We’ve been very clear in saying this isn’t just about George in that if we stand together as progressives, as Democrats, we will beat this back.”
