Effort to recall San Francisco’s progressive top prosecutor is certified

The campaign to recall San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, who became a poster child for the progressive prosecutor movement when he won in a long-shot campaign two years ago, was certified Tuesday, election officials said.

John Arntz, the director of the city’s Elections Department, said in a statement that backers of the effort had collected enough valid signatures to put the recall to vote on June 7.

By last month, they had collected 83,000 signatures — about 32,000 more than needed, NBC Bay Area reported.

Critics of Boudin, a former public defender whose parents were convicted of a 1981 armored car robbery that left three people dead, including two police officers, have argued that crime has reached “crisis” levels and that Boudin has failed to keep people safe.

City officials said this year that certain crimes, including homicides and burglaries, have risen in the last two years, while other crimes have fallen. Rapes, aggravated assaults and robberies have all declined since 2019, the officials said.

Boudin, who ran on a platform of ending mass incarceration, eliminating cash bail and creating a unit to review wrongful convictions, has pointed to reform-minded policies as successes and pushed back against the campaign to oust him.

“The reason that so many of you voted for me in 2019 was because of promises I made you,” he said at an anti-recall event last month, NBC Bay Area reported.

The recall effort “has nothing to do with the facts or the real challenges our communities are facing,” he said, adding, “This has everything to do with disrespecting the will of the people."