Recalled San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin mulling November run for same position

Ex-San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin – removed in a June 7 recall vote by frustrated residents – says he is contemplating a 2023 run to reclaim his post.

Boudin, the son of two infamous Weather Underground terrorists whose various dealings with the law he says inspired his career, told the San Francisco Chronicle that a second run is not out of the question. 

"A lot of my supporters and endorsements and donors and Democratic clubs that were behind me are urging me to run now, or in 2023," he said. "I’m committed, as I always have been my entire life, to doing the work to support our communities, to fight for a fairer system of justice."

City Mayor London Breed has not yet named a temporary replacement. A special election will be held in November to officially fill the position in which Boudin could theoretically run.

San Francisco residents have experienced significant upticks in crime, including aggressive shoplifting, car break-ins and open-air drug dealing on their streets, with much of the blame having been put on Boudin's progress politics.

The 41-year-old, who is scheduled to leave office within 10 days, has argued he was targeted as the scapegoat for the city's rise in crime. 

"I was only in office for two months with our courts functioning at their normal capacity," he said. "And despite that, I was attacked for literally everything that’s wrong in the city, things that have been wrong for decades. And so when you put it in that context, I’m actually really proud of the fact that we won a lot more votes in 2022 than we did in 2019."

Throughout his campaign and during his time in office, Boudin promised to work to fix a criminal justice system that he believes is historically racist and deeply unjust. In office, he placed a number of prohibitions on seeking cash bail in criminal cases, he also sought to prevent juveniles from being prosecuted as adults, and put in place less harsh guidelines for prosecuting gang members.