California voters made public safety an election issue; Alabama should follow suit
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Eye on Politics
Paul DeMarco
There is a lesson Alabama voters can take from an unlikely source – California.
Violent crime has plagued the nation from the East Coast to the West Coast. Liberal elected officials in California had put felons above the interest of crime victims to the point that the voters in the state finally put their foot down this past Election Day.
In Los Angeles, District Attorney George Gascon lost his bid for reelection. Moving North to Oakland, Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price was recalled from office, as well. The mayors of Oakland and San Francisco also lost their jobs.
The theme was the same – the voters in this bright blue state sent a message that they were going to reject elected officials who were not proponents for a strong criminal justice system.
California voters even passed Proposition 36, a measure that increased penalties for certain repeat theft offenses, property and drug crimes. The significance of its passage is that the new tough-on-crime law reversed a 2014 law that had downgraded many crimes from felonies to misdemeanors. The prior law had been blamed on the rise of crime in the state, including brazen acts of theft and shoplifting that were chasing businesses out of California.
So if a state like California can hold their elected officials accountable for the spike in violent crime, so can voters in Alabama.
We have seen so much crime in the state, elected officials are taking notice. There is frequent media coverage of out-of-control crime in the state’s major metropolitan areas, up and down the I-65 corridor. Just this week, Birmingham passed the 2023 number of homicides, and we still have almost seven weeks left in the year. Even in rural Alabama, violence has skyrocketed, as evidenced by the mass shooting this past weekend in Tuskegee that left 16 wounded and one killed.
Alabama citizens need to make it clear to city, county and state officials that enough is enough. Too many weak sentences and efforts to put violent criminals back on the streets are part of the reason we have such a problem in the state. Time and time again, those doing the shootings have a long rap sheet and should have never been back out in the community. This is another reason the Alabama Legislature should pass truth-in-sentencing.
It is hard to believe Alabama needs to look to California for a lesson, but with regard to public safety, Alabama elected officials need to pay close attention to the message California voters sent elected officials on November 5.
Paul DeMarco is a former member of the Alabama House of Representatives and can be found on X, formerly Twitter, at @Paul_DeMarco.