"Defund the police" is dead
Glenn Youngkin’s big win in Virgina got almost all the media attention on Tuesday, with a little bit left over for a New Jersey Governor’s race that turned out to be much closer than anyone expected. But there were also municipal elections across America, and it’s the campaign for Seattle city attorney, of all things, that really caught my eye:
Ann Davison was elected Seattle city attorney after capturing nearly 60% of the vote following an initial round of ballots counted on Nov. 2, and maintained her lead Nov. 3.
Davison leads with 58% of the vote. Challenger Nicole Thomas-Kennedy trails with 42% of the vote.
Davison will replace Pete Holmes.
Davison believes the City Attorney's Office is not for setting policy or a "place for radical agenda." It is a place to provide impartial advice to those elected to create policy and to maintain laws so there is public safety.
Nicole Thomas-Kennedy has been a public defender and is a self-described abolitionist who wanted to reimagine the City Attorney’s Office and how it prosecutes offenders.
When they say Thomas-Kennedy is an “abolitionist,” they aren’t exaggerating. And now a Republican has won an elected position in one of the most progressive cities in the country.
As I noted here, Thomas-Kennedy cheered on Antifa all last year, including when they set buildings on fire. When someone set off an explosive device outside a police station the blew an 8″ hole in plywood protecting the site, she tweeted that the person responsible was a “hero.” She tweeted to the Seattle PD that cops should “Eat some covid laced sh*t & quit your jobs.” Not surprisingly, Thomas-Kennedy ran as a police and prison abolitionist who promised fewer prosecutions of misdemeanor crimes if elected.
It turns out that when you use an ambiguous slogan that can be interpreted very differently by law-and-order conservatives and extreme-left anarchists, it can blow up in your face. Who, oh, who, could have predicted this?
A police abolition/reform/whatever ballot measure in Minneapolis, the very city where George Floyd was murdered by a police officer, also went down in flames.
Then there’s Buffalo, where a self-professed “socialist” won the Democratic nomination for mayor, ran effectively unopposed…and still lost to the incumbent:
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