Another progressive Bay Area prosecutor faces a recall vote

OAKLAND, California — Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price will face a recall vote in the latest test for a national movement to overhaul the criminal justice system.

County officials confirmed on Monday that Price’s opponents had submitted enough valid signatures to trigger a vote later this year. It was a close call: While recall supporters turned in tens of thousands more raw signatures than needed last month, a random sample to confirm their validity was inconclusive and the county went to a protracted full count. In the end, proponents got about 1,600 more valid signatures than the roughly 73,000 needed.

The Board of Supervisors will still need to call and set an election for the recall.

Price will be fighting for her political survival less than halfway through her first term after crime spiked in Oakland, the largest city in her district, testing voters’ patience with her platform of slashing penalties and prosecuting police officers who use lethal force. That campaign will coincide with broader efforts to crack down on crime in California, both in the Legislature and at the ballot box, as progressives like Price navigate mounting public frustration.

The recall push accelerated last year as violent crimes and property offenses soared by double digits in Oakland. While that surge has receded in the first months of 2024, it was severe enough that Gov. Gavin Newsom and state Attorney General Rob Bonta dispatched California Highway Patrol officers and state prosecutors this year to bolster local law enforcement.

Price’s troubled tenure has followed a now-familiar arc. Like Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón and former San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, she rode into office by upsetting the establishment pick in a staunchly liberal area, pledging a break from tough-on-crime policies that swelled prisons without ensuring public safety.

And as with Gascón and Boudin — who was recalled in 2022 — she almost immediately faced a backlash and a recall campaign funded by wealthy interests. Developers and finance executives raised more than $1 million last year to oust Price, with former District Attorney Nancy O’Malley joining the effort.

After leading the push for harsher laws in the 1980s and 1990s, California has swung aggressively in the other direction over the last decade. The state has been at the vanguard of a movement to reverse excessive incarceration by reducing criminal penalties and electing prosecutors who reject policies like enhanced penalties for gang members and charging juveniles as adults.

But Price and like-minded prosecutors have had to contend with public anxiety about crime that has challenged their ideology’s staying power. Gascón faces a tough reelection campaign this year, winning just a quarter of the vote in the primary — a worrisome sign for an incumbent — and drawing a former Republican prosecutor as his general election opponent.

Crime has climbed to the top of the agenda for California politicians. As Newsom and legislative Democrats push bills to crack down on property crime, an alliance of prosecutors and major retailers is pushing a ballot initiative that would reverse recent reforms by increasing criminal penalties for property and drug crimes.