Thread by @JohnFPfaff

I think it is worth digging into the dynamics here a bit deeper, rather than framing it as just “centrist vs prog Dems,” which seems to be the thrust here.

I think this is a reminder “crim legal reform” isn’t a monolith, bc the system isn’t a monolith.

nytimes.com/2022/01/08/nyr…

I think there is an instinct to frame things as competitive political races: is it tough-on-crime Adams, or reformist Bragg??

But it’s not either-or. It can be both-and, bc the mayor/police and the DA do very different jobs, may face different demands from constituents.

Krasner did best where shootings were highest. Foxx performs better (in primaries) in Chicago than the rest of Cook. Bragg campaigned on this very stuff—in 2021!—and won.

It’s clear there’s greater demand for reform DAs in areas with higher crime rates. We should LISTEN to that.

But Adams won too. And Gallup polls show solid support for policing, even among Black Americans, and even among those in heavily policed areas (tho it drops steadily with exposure to police).

These are not inconsistent results, necessarily!

What deters is detection. That’s policing (and all sorts of other stuff too: but within the crim legal silo, it’s policing).

It’s totally consistent to favor a tougher mayor and a reformist DA—If you’re going to focus solely on crim legal solutions, that’s what you SHOULD do.

So it perhaps should not come as a surprise that we see Adams/Bragg and Breed/Boudin type splits.

But rather than frame them as different approaches to different aspects of how crime reduction works, they get framed as some sort of generic referendum on “reform.”

I’m about to start a project this month to look at elections for DAs and mayors and crime at the granular level within cities, and my starting hypothesis is that we should expect to see prog DAs and tougher mayors do better in areas harder hit w crime.

But… will see.