Is it time to recall the recall?

Recall elections go back to ancient Athens. The Athenians elaborated “ostracism,” a procedure whereby an elected official who was perhaps not guilty of a criminal offense but who had transgressed community norms would be exiled from the city for a decade. The Athenians, who invented democracy, thought that the electorate might suffer voter’s remorse and needed an escape valve for their bad decisions. 

In the United States, the recall procedure exists in only 19 states and the District of Columbia, and only three states in U.S. history have attempted to recall their governors. One of these, California, has gone wild with gubernatorial recall attempts, going back to 1968 with Ronald Reagan. The efforts got on the ballot only twice, and succeeded only once.

In 2003, California voters recalled Democratic Gov. Gray Davis a scant few months into his second term. He began that term with strong approval ratings. He had made education a priority, exceeding his budget by $8 billion, helping standardized test scores to rise dramatically for five straight years. He supported bans on assault weapons and improved the relationship between California and Mexico. Facing an apathetic electorate for his second term, he defeated his Republican opponent, Bill Simon, with 47 percent of the vote to Simon’s 42 percent. 

But Davis lost touch with the voters. He cost them money.

Electric bills soared on his watch. He reversed 10 years of fee reductions on motor vehicles, increasing the license fees for car owners threefold. He allowed undocumented immigrants to have driver’s licenses, which they needed for work. A mere month after being reelected, he announced a forecasted budget deficit of $35 billion, $13.7 billion higher than in the previous month. California’s finances seemed out of control.

Davis was recalled and replaced in a recall election with Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger, who promptly rescinded the vehicle license fee. Analysts claimed the Terminator’s move would add more than $4 billion to the state budget, thereby increasing the deficit. So it’s difficult to see what the recall accomplished.

Just last year, California tried to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom. With the number one issue being his handling of the pandemic, voters sought to challenge his vaccine mandates and his pandemic restrictions, including the requirement that residents wear masks in offices, restaurants and other crowded places. Newsom exacerbated the situation by dining at a posh crowded restaurant at the height of the pandemic. He was maskless — a political gaffe on a par with UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s “party gate.”

Voters declined to recall Newsom in a special election that cost taxpayers $276 million, exclusive of campaign contributions. While 62 percent of voters elected Newsom governor in 2018, 65 percent voted to keep him in office. Newsom saw the recall as a “waste of time” and an attempted “power grab “by the Trump dominated GOP.” And so it was.

Which brings us to San Francisco, California’s city by the Bay. I always loved to visit San Francisco, and enjoyed its charming hills, cable cars, wharfs and parks. Today, it is a very different San Francisco, a poster child for civic mismanagement, incompetence and corruption. 

The economy is in disarray. The residential sector is weakening as empty apartments go begging. Many stores are closing permanently, not only in the neighborhoods but also in historic Union Square and environs. Hours have been cut, sales staff have left or been laid off. There have been brazen “smash and grab” break-ins with resulting burglaries that outpace the rest of the country. Security guards and police abound in Union Square, but curiously they don’t seem to do much. If they arrest someone, they are rarely incarcerated.

San Francisco is teeming with homeless people. Up to date figures on homelessness are not available. The biannual census count of people living in the streets or shelters has not been taken since 2019, when the count was 8,035, the highest number since 2013, with an up-to-date count set for some time later this year.

And, at the margins of the recall issue, City Administrator Naomi Kelly just resigned in a corruption scandal after the federal government charged her husband with accepting bribes. 

And rising crime is without just punishment. District Attorney Chesa Boudin, a progressive Democrat, was elected in 2020 on a platform of seeking systemic reform and alternatives to incarceration in the criminal justice system — at least for non-violent offenders. Under his stewardship, this has not happened. It is alleged that he has freed convicted murderers to walk the streets of the Tenderloin and do it again.

Now, Boudin’s office is foundering. Scores of attorneys have left or been fired. Two top assistants just resigned because Boudin, they felt, was too lenient on crime, including violent crime. His priority, they claimed, was not protecting public safety but satisfying some radical political agenda. 

Boudin is facing recall, with the election to be held in June. He is in the cynosure of controversy for his program to decarcerate the city. Though he claims that the effort to recall is a Trumpian plot to unseat him, 83,000 residents signed the recall petition in a city where there are only 33,788 registered Republicans. 

The question for San Francisco voters should be whether he is doing the job they wanted him to do. Is his balance between public safety and decarceration radically flawed? 

If the voters put a radical in office, they should not be surprised if they get what they paid for. As Adlai Stevenson said: “Your public servants serve you right.” So, absence malfeasance, shouldn’t the sole remedy to interrupt his elected term be impeachment?

All this leads to a philosophical question: Why not recall the recall? An official is elected to a term of years and should have the security in office to make tough decisions, even if unpopular, with those who elected him. A once-popular governor who imposes vaccine mandates in a pandemic should not be unseated by those whose interests or convenience he frustrates.

And, if an elected official has adopted bad policies or has administered sound policies poorly, isn’t the remedy to “throw the rascal out” at the next election? 

James D. Zirin is a former federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York.