One of the hallmarks of American elections is the nearly exclusive media and public focus on national and “up-ballot” outcomes – even though locally-elected “down-ballot” officials, like District Attorneys, profoundly impact on the lives of citizens in the voting area. Most often, it’s the Presidential and US Senate and House races that grab most of our attention. This year was no exception. Although the ongoing drama of the national and top state races continues to draw focus from smaller races, it’s well worth checking in on a few key prosecutorial elections, and what they reveal about the reform-oriented trend of recent years.
In Los Angeles County, California, challenger George Gascón unseated 8-year incumbent Jackie Lacey in a race closely watched by criminal justice reformers. Gascón campaigned on reducing incarceration, ending sentencing enhancements like gang enhancements, expanding police accountability and pledging not to seek the death penalty. In October, during his campaign for the largest DA’s office in the country, Gascón told The Appeal: Political Report “If I win and we can show that it actually works. It [sic] will really begin to devalue the scare tactics that are being practiced now by Trump, and by my opponent, and by police unions throughout the country.” Other criminal justice reform candidates and measures in Los Angeles County also won, despite millions of dollars spent by police unions to defeat them.
The success of reform-minded prosecutors extends even beyond large metropolitan areas like Los Angeles. As Daniel Nichanian of The Appeal pointed out, “Initially associated with the nation’s biggest cities, successful efforts to overhaul the criminal legal system through the ballot box have spread to suburban and rural jurisdictions.” Other reform-centered DA candidates also successfully ran on progressive platforms in places including Oakland and Washtenaw County in Michigan; Jefferson and Larimer Counties, Colorado; Pima County, Arizona; and Westchester County, New York.
In the tradition of Philadelphia’s current DA Larry Krasner, former public defenders are winning too. In Austin, José Garza, a former public defender and labor and immigrants’ rights attorney, ousted the incumbent district attorney in the primary and then went on to defeat the Republican challenger Martin Harry in the November election. During the campaign, Garza vowed to decriminalize small quantities of any controlled substance and shrink the criminal legal system. He also promised to end cash bail and committed never to seek the death penalty. Another former public defender, Monique Worrell, won a victory in Orlando, Florida, replacing Aramis Ayala, who did not seek re-election after being publicly attacked by the Republican Governor for her criminal justice reform policies. Like other reform candidates, Worrell committed to decreasing the prison population and reducing use of prosecutorial discretion to move minor children’s cases into adult court, with an exception for cases that include “loss of life.”
Reform-minded incumbents, like Mark Gonzalez in Nueces County, Texas (Corpus Christi) and Andrew Warren of Florida’s Hillsborough County won re-elections, as did Kim Foxx in Cook County (Chicago) and Kim Gardner in St. Louis. The Washington Post reports that at least 22 reform-minded prosecutors were elected, with some races still waiting to be called.
The election also saw the defeat of two incumbent prosecutors with poor racial justice records: Jackie Johnson in Brunswick, Georgia and Ron O’Brien, in Columbus, Ohio. Jackie Johnson was widely condemned for her handling of the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, and Ron O’Brien received extensive negative attention for his excessive pursuit of death penalty sentences.
Each of these reform victories was surely an uphill battle in a system built to resist change. Naturally, candidates with reform messages also lost to incumbents in jurisdictions, including Maricopa County, AZ, Charleston, SC, and Topeka, KS. What we saw, though, in the wake of the national protests sparked by George Floyd’s murder and large-scale local organizing, were voters increasingly supportive of reimagining the criminal legal system. Encouragingly, voters seem willing to support district attorney candidates with alternative approaches to replace outdated tough-on-crime policies that have irrefutably failed the public.
As Ronald Wright, a law professor at Wake Forest University and a criminal justice expert, explained to The Washington Post: “It was a pretty good day for meaningful change in criminal justice reform. The priorities I was watching didn’t win everywhere, but they won a lot more than they lost.” While ending prosecutorial misconduct may not have been a key campaign message for these reform-minded candidates, it’s certainly central to the themes of accountability and justice at the heart of many of this year’s DA campaigns. As voters follow this new group of prosecutors, they must watch closely to ensure their actions live up to their promises. It’s our hope the slate of reform-minded candidates and their victories will result in overall downward trends for prosecutorial misconduct based on public pressure to see better compliance with existing ethical rules of conduct, and fairer, more humane discretionary decisions.
