Democrats are putting ‘progressive prosecutors’ on trial

Remember how the campaign for progressive prosecutors started: As political arbitrage. Unless an incumbent was beset by scandals, the more than 2,000 local elections for district attorneys and county prosecutors were fairly low-profile and low-cost ways for donors to make an impact. In 2015, when George Soros began funding “Safety and Justice” PACs in these races, a six-figure buy that could go unnoticed in a Senate race could completely transform a sleepy DA election. By 2018, when Obama praised the movement, it had notched win after win without the crime spike that conservatives and police unions predicted. Philadelphia’s Larry Krasner, Eric Gonzalez in Brooklyn, Rachael Rollins in Boston’s Suffolk County, Kim Foxx in Cook County, Ill.: All of them aimed to end “mass incarceration” and declined to prosecute some petty offenses. In 2020, when Donald Trump went after those prosecutors, he polarized the issue: No Democrat wanted advice from him about who could keep them safe. (“The radical left District Attorney in Portland, Mike Schmidt, his name is, has released hundreds of rioters,” Trump said at a 2020 rally in Pennsylvania, which was a boon for Schmidt back home.) Only when Trump left office, and crime increased in some cities...