The backlash against criminal justice reform is real, and Joe Biden needs to take note.
Portland DA Mike Schmidt's defeat would represent a full circle moment from 2020, when Portland exploded and Trump officials delighted in the images of Proud Boys and Antifa squaring off. | Sean Meagher/The Oregonian via APJonathan Martin is POLITICO’s senior political columnist and politics bureau chief. He’s covered elections in every corner of America and co-authored a best-selling book about Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
It should also get the attention of Democratic lawmakers everywhere. They’ve mostly found success by elevating abortion and MAGA, the party’s best one-two since Dobbs, but their vulnerabilities on quality-of-life issues remain and could prove particularly acute with the broader presidential electorate this fall.
A former assistant DA and legislative aide, the then-38-year-old Schmidt claimed 77 percent of the vote that year, and in that summer of demonstrations and riots said he wouldn’t prosecute protestors charged with crimes like disorderly conduct or interference with a police officer.
A few weeks after Gov. Tina Kotek signed the recriminalization, The Oregonian went into the field with a poll and found 78 percent of voters in metro Portland believe homelessness is a “very serious problem” and over 60 percent said local governments should be allowed to fine or arrest anyone who refuses to leave public spaces.
And in a city where displaying a MAGA sign would amount to a hate crime — especially without a trigger warning — the DA race is one of the few ballot lines where Democrats can vote guilt-free for change. It’s not a mayoral election, let alone a statewide or federal contest. The private security guards — always a sign of insufficient or ineffective policing — are not just at Powell’s. They’re at Nordstroms and inside that Whole Foods. And the CVS across from the Whole Foods doesn’t have a single aisle without at least one locked enclosure to prevent theft.
“Prior to him coming into office, we ranged somewhere between 12,000 to 20,000 cases a year,” said the challenger. “Under him, post-Covid, we were under 6,000.”
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