Voter frustration with crime, liberal DAs mounting in California while Harris mum on controversial Prop 47
Rising retail theft over the past several years, often done by organized crime, has California voters more inclined to repeal Prop. 47, which lessened penalties for theft under $950.
Proposition 47, a progressive proposal headed by George Soros-backed Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon, could be going down the drain come election night as polling shows a partial-repeal effort has the support of the majority of California voters.
Gascon's job, along with other progressive district attorneys who championed Prop. 47 across the state, could also be at risk from voter backlash.
Voter outrage is "sort of a message to [Vice President] Kamala Harris, who was the one that was a big supporter of Prop. 47 by giving it a misleading ballot title," former Republican Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley told Fox News Digital.
"So it's a rejection of her, it's a rejection of Gascon, who was the official proponent of Prop. 47, and the rejection of Soros-type prosecutors," Cooley said.
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Also known as the Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act passed by Californians in 2014, Prop. 47 made theft under $950 punishable by up to six months in jail and reclassified felonies down to misdemeanors "unless the defendant had prior convictions of murder, rape, certain sex offenses, or certain gun crimes."
Gascon, who co-authored the ballot measure, sought to rethink tough-on-crime policies and reduce mass incarceration.
But in the last several years, retail chains and mom-and-pop shops have been hit hard by theft, smash-and-grab robberies and organized retail crime gangs. Prop. 36 – titled the Homelessness, Drug Addiction, and Theft Reduction Act – seeks to undo portions of Prop. 47 by boosting penalties for some crimes and could increase depending on each category.
An overwhelming 71% of Californians support Prop. 36, according to a survey last month by the Public Policy Institute of California, a nonpartisan think tank.
Harris, who was California's attorney general at the time of Prop. 47's passage, has not said whether she supports Prop. 36.
"She paid her dues to the Soros people when she went along with that phony, misleading title of Safe Schools and Neighborhoods Act," Cooley said of Harris. "That was an incredible lie to the voters, so she paid her dues."
San Francisco Mayor London Breed has also thrown her support behind Prop. 36, calling it a "meaningful difference for cities across California." But Gov. Gavin Newsom remains staunchly opposed to the effort, saying it "takes us back to the 1980s, mass incarceration."
San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan has also joined the effort to partially repeal Prop. 47. The California District Attorneys Association, the Los Angeles Police Protective League and the California State Sheriffs’ Association all endorsed Prop. 36.
And some Republicans in the state legislature are confident it has enough support to pass.
"Nobody talks about the victims in California," Republican state Sen. Brian Dahle told Fox News Digital. "The Democrats never talk about them. They talk about the people who they think have been put in jail unfairly, and it's made it a social justice issue more than just flat-out crime."
Four years ago, Dahle heavily campaigned for Prop. 20, which was another initiative that sought to repeal Prop. 47, but state voters rejected the measure.
But Prop. 36 may not be headed for the same outcome.
"The big difference in my mind is that the retailers are in the game now," Dahle said. "They went and got the signatures. They realized that, 'Hey, we can't continue to bleed out hundreds of millions of dollars in theft,' and they're behind it, and that's why I think you see the change."
In Los Angeles, where organized smash-and-grab retail thefts and robberies thrived during the pandemic and its aftermath, law enforcement officers often had their hands tied and described what they called a "revolving door" of arrests.
"Right now, we're just seeing the revolving door of our officers," Los Angeles Police Protective League Director Debbie Thomas told Fox News Digital.
"They'll respond to radio calls, and they can arrest somebody up to three times and shift the same officers because of this blanket policy of not holding people that commit under $950 of theft accountable for their actions," said Thomas, who is also a Los Angeles Police Department officer. "They're the ones that are praising George Gascon in the penitentiaries."
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Thomas said the shift to supporting a repeal effort for Prop. 47 is indicative of other shifts in ideology among some voters, including that of the "defund the police" movement.
"I think that people are more than fed up with the lack of support that they've seen," Thomas said. "Defund the police does not work."
"It's just nice to see people starting to wake up and realize that it's a ‘yes’ to Prop. 36, and also ‘yes’ to Nathan Hochman, who's currently running for L.A. County district attorney," he added.
If voters pass Prop. 36 in November, offenders of the law will have to serve out their sentences in state prison "regardless of criminal history."
Fox News Digital did not hear back from either Gascon's office nor the Harris campaign by publication deadline.
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