Voters Cancel the War on Police From Seattle to Long Island, Americans voted against public disorder.
With crime surging in many cities, voters rejected the anti-police left this week. Minneapolis was the birthplace of the defund the police movement, but on Tuesday more than 56% of voters rejected a proposal to abolish the police department. The ballot measure would have replaced the MPD with a vaguely defined Department of Public Safety and eliminated from the city charter requirements for a police chief and a minimum level of police funding.
Violent crime is up nearly 30% in Minneapolis this year compared to the first 10 months of 2019. The police force has lost about a third of its officers, and response times for 911 calls now average about 15 minutes. Minneapolis voters were mugged by reality.
Same in Seattle, of all places. The city was still tallying ballots on Wednesday. But as of this writing, moderate Bruce Harrell was trouncing progressive M. Lorena González nearly 65% to 35% in the race for mayor.
Mr. Harrell promised to rebuild the police department, restore public order, and refuse to tolerate property destruction. Ms. González was president of a City Council that slashed the 2021 police budget by nearly $35.6 million, or about 9%, compared with 2019.
More than 300 officers have resigned or retired in the past two years. Seattle has seen some 443 shootings this year, up from 332 in all of 2019. Feces litter the city’s streets, and downtown businesses struggle amid rampant homelessness, shoplifting and drug use.
Public discontent with the disorder also affected the Seattle city attorney’s race. Progressive candidate Nicole Thomas-Kennedy cheered on the rioters on Twitter last year and told voters she’d “contribute to the defund movement” by “categorically refusing to prosecute” misdemeanors like drug possession or prostitution. As of this writing, she was trailing moderate opponent Ann Davison nearly 41% to 59%.
The law-and-order trend continued in New York City, where Eric Adams won the mayoral election as expected. His real victory occurred this summer when he defeated progressive opponents in the Democratic primary. As murders and shootings spiked, Mr. Adams campaigned against the disorder.
Current Mayor Bill de Blasio inherited a thriving metropolis and now bequeaths a mess. Mr. Adams will have to fight the City Council and progressives in his own party, but he has a clear mandate to do so.
Tuesday’s outlier was Philadelphia. Radical progressive Larry Krasner coasted into a second term as district attorney after affluent woke white voters helped him win the May primary. But there’s better news out of Long Island, where Republicans Anne Donnelly and Ray Tierney defeated Democrats in district attorney races in Nassau and Suffolk counties. Both races were a referendum on progressive bail reforms that have set repeat offenders free.
Data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation showed a historic spike in violent crime after last year’s political assault on police. Voters on Tuesday said they’ve had enough.
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