Kamala Harris remains silent as California voters threaten to roll back sentencing reforms

Democrats have tried for more than a year to stop Proposition 36, and Newsom argued that it now addresses voters’ key concerns about shoplifting without undoing a historic reform.

“We didn’t just wake up to this problem,” Newsom said last month as he signed a law that would make repeat shoplifting a misdemeanor, not a misdemeanor.

But the party disagrees on what to do; Sen. Dave Min of Orange County, who tried to hold on to a rocking chair vacated by Rep. Katie Porter, supported the bill 36 days before the bill was signed.

“The Democrats failed to convince voters — even Democratic voters — that tinkering around the edges of the problem with certain pieces of legislation was a compelling response to the videos they see on the news every few days of gangs of thugs who enter the shops to commit vandalism. and commit robberies,” says longtime Democratic strategist Garry South.

And Republicans are united in favor of the measure, a change from 2014, when many conservatives endorsed lower sentencing requirements and smaller prison populations.

“It’s the first step forward in making crime illegal again,” said James Shook, the campaign manager for Rep. Kevin Kiley, who ran unsuccessfully in the 2021 recall election against Newsom and has campaigned extensively for Proposition 36.

Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price, elected in 2022, faces a recall vote in five weeks, driven by anger over a crime spike that preceded her term. In Los Angeles County, District Attorney George Gascon is following a former Republican in his bid for a second term. The PPIC poll found that Proposition 36 had overwhelming support in the Democratic county; Harris, who endorsed Gascon in 2020, has remained neutral in the race this year.

Democrats seeking to reject the new proposal say Harris’ sidelining is not a concern for them — or a surprise, given the facts. She had her own initiatives as district attorney in San Francisco and as attorney general in California. She helped develop and implement the language for Proposition 47, but it was never her personal project.

“Clearly the vice president has bigger fish to fry, and a lot of things on her plate — in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia,” said Anthony York, a spokesman for the No on Proposition 36 coalition. “Our campaign was not based on the support of the vice president, but many of us involved in this campaign supported her. And there is overlap. We use some of the same messages, we don’t go back either. But when it comes to her actual support, we don’t spend a lot of time worrying about that.”

Supporters of the proposal expect her to stay away too. “We’ve seen from the polls that the public is fed up with shoplifting and wants change,” said Matt Ross, spokesman for Californians Against Retail and Residential Theft. “That’s why this is doing so well, regardless of what politicians say, on one side or the other.”