National Review Online
Thursday, May 23, 2024
There are moments in politics that herald change.
The defeat of the Democratic speaker of the House, Tom Foley, in 1994 made
clear the scale of the Republican Revolution. The defeat of the British cabinet
minister, Michael Portillo, in 1997 marked the definitive end of the Thatcher
years. The removal of Mike Schmidt, a feckless progressive
prosecutor in the city of Portland, Ore., is the most dramatic of several
recent indications that, at long last, the tide is turning in America’s most
beleaguered metropolises.
In recent years, Portland has become a byword for
fashionable left-wing guff, including the notion that crime and homelessness
are little more than voluntary social constructs that are better fought with
kind words and substantial welfare spending than with the assiduous enforcement
of the law. After he was elected as the Multnomah County district attorney in
2020, Mike Schmidt implemented every bad idea in circulation. He supported the
ending of cash bail. He reduced the prosecution of misdemeanors. He flirted
with defunding the police. He resisted calls to clear the city’s many homeless
encampments. Despite Portland having hosted some of the worst riots of the long
summer of 2020, Schmidt steadfastly refused to go after any of the perpetrators
— including those who had damaged the city’s center, engaged in disorderly
conduct, resisted arrest, or otherwise interfered with the work of the police.
This wolf, as a great man once wrote, came as a wolf.
The results were utterly predictable. Portland’s murder
rate rose precipitously in 2021 and 2022 — and it remains higher than it was
prior to Schmidt’s arrival. Rather than responding to the reduced use of cash
bail by staying on the straight and narrow and then gratefully showing up in
court, the number of people who committed crimes while awaiting trial
increased. In the meantime, Portland’s pretty downtown became known nationally
for homelessness, petty crime, open-air drug deals, and the slow response time
of the police. In return, the voters have sent Schmidt away — and emphatically
so. Tuesday evening, local media in Portland called the race for Schmidt’s
opponent within hours of the polls closing, and as of Wednesday evening, the
incumbent was losing by nine points to his more conservative challenger, a
former Republican named Nathan Vasquez who once worked as a deputy in his
office.
Schmidt’s departure is by no means an isolated incident.
Three years ago, the citizenry of Seattle preferred to pick a Republican as
their city attorney rather than to assent to the peculiar ideas of Nicole
Thomas-Kennedy, who had proposed abolishing jails. Two years ago, San Francisco
kicked out its progressive prosecutor, Chesa Boudin. And, this November, voters
in California’s Alameda County (home to Oakland and Berkeley) will decide
whether they wish to recall Pamela Price, a district attorney who has presided
over similar results as did Boudin and Schmidt. Still, for this to have
happened in Portland of all places is remarkable and telling,
and ought to confirm for the remaining skeptics that, even in this fractious
moment in our history, crime remains a fundamentally pre-political question.
Americans may disagree on all manner of important issues, but, quite rightly,
they will not put up forever with their cities becoming dangerous dens of
blight and iniquity — especially when they have been made so deliberately, and
with ample warning.
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