THE NEW YORKER -- San Francisco was not as ideal a site for a radical approach to criminal justice as it first appeared. In the 2019 primary, the city’s progressives, who had aggressively organized young voters and represented close to half the electorate, backed Boudin, who won Bernie Sanders’ endorsement. The establishment, including nearly every major elected Democrat in California and the San Francisco Chronicle, backed Suzy Loftus, a former prosecutor, and the city’s Police Officers Association spent more than $650,000 to try to defeat him.
Jason McDaniel, a political scientist at San Francisco State, described the divide as “renters versus homeowners.” Weeks before the primary, the sitting district attorney, George Gascón, who was not running for reëlection, resigned, and the moderate mayor, London Breed, appointed Loftus to replace him, giving Loftus the benefit of incumbency. The maneuver dominated coverage of the final weeks of the campaign; if it was intended to benefit Loftus, it seems to have backfired. Boudin won by three thousand votes out of a hundred and seventy thousand cast. No one was in a mood for reconciliation.