John, we’ve faced some vicious attacks from our well-funded opponents in the past 2 years.
From multi-million dollar efforts to smear campaigns to recalls, impeachments, and suspensions, our movement to elect pro-civil rights DAs has been up against some serious opposition.
And while we succeeded in growing our movement in 2022, we know that 2023 won’t be an easy year because our opponents will work even harder to stop our momentum.
In Los Angeles, there have been TWO attempts to recall Los Angeles DA George Gascón. Both attempts have failed to make the ballot and were bankrolled with over $1 million from GOP mega-donors.
Supporters of the second recall are challenging the decision in court, and a judge is allowing them to review the signatures in an attempt to get the recall on the ballot.
In Virginia, conservatives have launched TWO recall attempts against Fairfax DA Steve Descano and ONE against Arlington and Falls Church DA Parisa Deghani-Tafti.
Just like in California, these efforts were bankrolled by conservative mega-donors and are based on the flawed idea that because Steve and Parisa work to address the root causes of crime instead of simply relying on the failed policies of mass incarceration, they are somehow “soft on crime.”
Luckily, these efforts didn’t make the ballot, but with Steve and Parisa facing re-election in 2023, we know that conservatives are going to go ALL IN to defeat them so we need to defend these bold champions.
In Florida, Governor DeSantis suspended State Attorney Warren in Tampa for signing a letter stating that he wouldn’t use his prosecutorial discretion to focus on prosecuting women for having abortions.
In a document, DeSantis’ team literally said that one of the benefits of the suspension is “a leftist prosecutor is removed from a position of power.” Now, Warren is currently challenging the suspension in court.
In New York, Republicans are trying to pass a constitutional amendment to establish public recall elections for District Attorneys.
And of course in San Francisco, conservative mega-donors spent over $6 million to successfully recall DA Chesa Boudin. One of the leaders of the recall who was paid six figures by a nonprofit linked the recall, Brooke Jenkins, was then appointed as DA. This has been one of our toughest losses for Real Justice.
Jenkins has worked to undo Chesa’s work by signaling to directly impacted families that she won’t prosecute police for misconduct, restarting the failed war-on-drugs by sending drug users to jail, expanding widespread surveillance that allows police to access doorbell cameras, charging kids as adults, and increasing mass incarceration.
All of this to say that we are serious when we say that we are up against powerful special interests and big opposition — and if we don’t respond swiftly and powerfully, it can really set back our movement like what we saw in SF.
Thank you SO much,
Real Justice