Prosecutors are locally elected officials with significant discretion at the front end of the criminal legal system. In recent decades, prosecutors in the United States have wielded their power in a way that contributes to mass incarceration and its racial disparities (Frohman Reference Frohmann1997; Pfaff Reference Pfaff2017). More recently, a growing number of “progressive” prosecutors have campaigned on promises to mitigate these harms by using their discretion to reduce charges, the use of cash bail and pretrial detention, and racial disparities (Davis Reference Davis2019). Progressive prosecutors have also generally pledged to meet growing calls for accountability of police violence, a key demand of the Movement for Black Lives (BLM) (ibid). As progressive prosecutors have been elected in growing numbers, particularly since 2016, so too has resistance against them. Challenges to progressive prosecutors include the recall of former District Attorney (DA) Chesa Boudin in San Francisco, the forced resignation of former Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner in St. Louis, and the suspension of two locally elected prosecutors in Florida by Governor Ron DeSantis.
Although these cases have been well-publicized, less is known about the broader extent of or the dynamics underlying concerted challenges to prosecutors. To date, little is known about how widespread such challenges are and whether challenges to prosecutors are primarily targeted at progressives or other groups. Moreover, there has yet to be a systematic examination of the leadership, forms, and function of concerted challenges to prosecutors outside of regularly scheduled elections. Understanding these dynamics may have implications not only for criminal justice reform but also for local politics in the United States more generally. In an era of national reckonings over racial injustice (Oliver Reference Oliver2021), the movements for and against local prosecutors offer microcosms of the broader state of our polarized politics (Grumbach Reference Grumbach2018).
This study explores the origins, extent, and impact of concerted challenges to prosecutors. Toward this end, I constructed an original database of all local prosecutors in office or elected in 2012 and/or 2022 in the country’s 300 most populous jurisdictions in which local prosecutors are elected. Collecting data at these two timepoints enables comparisons of the field of prosecution prior to and after progressive prosecutors’ rise, a timeframe scholars tie to BLM (Butler Reference Butler2023; Davis Reference Davis2019). To construct this database, I conducted archival research and documented prosecutors’ political orientations, demographics, and professional backgrounds; variation in political party control over state executive and legislative branches (henceforth, state partisan control); and extra-electoral challenges, which I define as organized efforts to remove a prosecutor from office or constrain a prosecutor’s power outside of regularly scheduled elections. I also operationalize a novel, systematic definition of the term “progressive” based on the on-the-ground movement for prosecutor reform and compare this new metric of “progressive” with those developed by Deva Woodly (Reference Woodly2022) and John Pfaff (Reference Pfaff2023), as discussed further in Data and Methods.
Analysis of this original dataset enables me to make several contributions to ongoing scholarly debates. First, this research is the first national and empirical study evaluating the reach and impact of challenges to prosecutors. It reveals three core findings: extra-electoral challenges appear to be correlated with (1) prosecutor demographics, disproportionately affecting Black women prosecutors; (2) politics, disproportionately affecting progressive prosecutors, especially those in Republican-controlled states; and (3) contemporary political polarization, as extra-electoral challenges to prosecutors nearly tripled over the last ten years and disproportionately coalesces around ongoing debates over perceptions of crime, BLM, and abortion. In addition to descriptive statistics and linear probability models (LPM), I use qualitative archival analysis and consider counter-hypotheticals to strengthen my findings. For instance, I show that prosecutors who are white, male, and not progressive do not face extra-electoral challenges even when there is evidence of their gross misconduct.
Second, this study theorizes extra-electoral challenges against prosecutors as an emerging movement repertoire used by the political right to mobilize against racial justice. In this way, it resembles earlier countermovements in the United States to contest progress toward equity. Throughout the country’s history—including following Reconstruction and the 1960s Civil Rights Movement—progress advancing legal rights and protections of African Americans has been met with vitriolic backlash to undermine and undo these rights (Du Bois Reference Bois and William1935; Francis and Wright-Rigueur Reference Francis and Wright-Rigueur2021; Weaver Reference Weaver2007). The movement against progressive prosecutors appears to follow this historical arc. Efforts to elect progressive prosecutors were framed as part of a broader racial justice movement to combat the racialized harms of mass incarceration and to strengthen accountability for racialized police violence (Butler Reference Butler2023; Davis Reference Davis2019). Progressive prosecutors, disproportionately people of color, who ran on platforms to advance these goals, have been met with unprecedented constraints on their discretion and efforts to remove them from office outside of regularly scheduled elections. Those seeking to thwart progressive prosecutors’ agenda for racial justice frame their efforts in the language of law, order, and public safety, mirroring historical rhetoric and tactics (Alexander Reference Alexander2010; Anderson Reference Anderson2017).
Moreover, I detail the strategies comprising extra-electoral challenges—such as removal proceedings, state legislation, and oversight committees—thus shedding light on a contemporary countermovement tactical innovation. These strategies have been used to remove elected prosecutors from office and replace them with non-elected individuals, thus appearing to deviate from democratic norms. Additionally, these strategies appear to be growing not only against prosecutors but also against members of local school boards and state officials (Spivak Reference Spivak2020). Although these extra-electoral procedures are designed to ensure accountability for official misconduct, I show that they are in fact being used increasingly against prosecutors for ideological purposes. I contend that challenges to progressive prosecutors are designed to maintain racialized social strata, both within the carceral system and within the offices of those who enforce it. It is also worth noting, however, that these strategies appear to be expanding beyond challenges to progressive prosecutors, as there is evidence of their nascent use against moderate and conservative prosecutors. For instance, the Democratic Governor of Arizona recently forbade conservative prosecutors from charging abortion-related offenses, a strategy to curb prosecutorial discretion that fits within my definition of extra-electoral challenges and may indicate broader political polarization.
Finally, this article provides a novel dataset, operationalized variables, and statistical patterns that generate theories for future studies to test. My analysis shows that prosecutor demographics, state partisan control, and contemporary polarization are all important when considering extra-electoral challenges. Future research can further disentangle these variables and consider additional potential factors that may influence extra-electoral challenges, such as local wealth inequality, specific policies, or other factors beyond the scope of this study. Other studies may also put this database into conversation with content analysis of media articles or ethnographic studies of prosecutors’ offices. Researchers studying movements for and against racial justice beyond prosecution might consider this article’s definition of extra-electoral challenges to understand the extent or impact of similar movement repertoires in other public realms.
In what follows, I review the literature on prosecutors and movement repertoires related to racial justice. I then describe my data and methods, followed by my findings. I conclude with a summary and discussion of what the movement against progressive prosecutors today reveals about mobilizations to counter and constrain racial justice in the United States.
Prosecutors
Prosecutors and Mass Incarceration
Extensive research reveals the growth of the criminal legal system in the United States since the 1970s. This scholarship suggests that this historically and internationally unprecedented growth was not a response to rising crime rates, but rather stemmed from policy changes that are part of a longer history of racialized social control in this country (Beckett and Francis Reference Beckett and Ming Francis2020; Weaver Reference Weaver2007). Myriad studies document how the criminal legal system operates as a “racial caste” system (Alexander Reference Alexander2010, 12) that disproportionately targets and harms Black and Indigenous people of color and low-income communities, including their health, wealth, and civic participation (Turney and Wakefield Reference Turney and Wakefield2019).
Prosecutors have had an important role in fueling mass incarceration. Research reveals how prosecutors categorize places and people across race, class, and gender stereotypes and use these stereotypes as they decide whether to accept a case and when conveying it to juries (Frohmann Reference Frohmann1997; Gottschalk Reference Gottschalk2016). Other studies show that prosecutors’ discretion grew with federal sentencing reforms that limited judicial discretion, ultimately leading to more felony filings and pressure on defendants to enter plea deals (Lynch Reference Lynch2016; Pfaff Reference Pfaff2017). With this expanded power, prosecutors contributed to a growing number of people, disproportionately people of color, going to prison for longer.
Studies show how prosecutors contribute to racial disparities within the criminal legal system. For instance, Nicole Gonzalez van Cleve (Reference Cleve and Gonzalez2016) uses ethnographic data to convey the role of prosecutors in the “racial abuse” constituting the court system, describing the courts as a “theater of racial degradation” (2022). Other studies on prosecutorial discretion show that “defendants’ or victims’ race directly or indirectly influences case outcomes, even when a host of other legal and extra-legal factors are taken into account” (Kutateladze, Lynn, and Liang Reference Kutateladze, Lynn and Liang2012, 17). Angela J. Davis analyzes the history of race and prosecution in the United States and proposes ways prosecutors can use racial impact studies to guide their discretion and “eradicate the discriminatory treatment of African Americans in the criminal justice system” (1998, 18).
Scholars have also examined prosecutors as elected officials, illuminating the political dynamics that contribute to prosecutors’ traditional role in contributing to mass incarceration and racial disparities (Davis Reference Davis2019; Degenshein Reference Degenshein2023). This literature emphasizes that prosecutors historically have faced little scrutiny at the ballot box. For instance, prosecutors are the most frequently elected local law enforcement officials (Ellis Reference Ellis2012), yet incumbent prosecutors are more likely to run unopposed than other incumbent officials (Wright Reference Wright2008). When prosecutors do face opposition in elections, they historically rely on punitive rhetoric, measuring and touting their success in terms of conviction rates (Beckett Reference Beckett1997; Pfaff Reference Pfaff2017). In recent years, social movements focused on the harms of the criminal legal system and its role in structural racism have gained traction in public discourse (Dunivin et al. Reference Dunivin, Yan, Ince and Rojas2022). In this context, some reform advocates suggested that prosecutors could, and should, curtail mass incarceration (Sklansky Reference Sklansky2021; Travis, Stewart, and Goldberg Reference Travis, Stewart and Goldberg2019). More specifically, if the public demands a smaller and more equitable criminal legal system, they can hold prosecutors to account on these goals through the ballot box.
The Movements for and Against “Progressive” Prosecutors
“Progressive” prosecutors are those who pledge to work toward these aims to reduce the scale of and disparities within the criminal legal system. Davis (Reference Davis2019) traces the movement for prosecutor reform to BLM, arguing that impunity of police officers following lethal use-of-force led to public outrage and a new focus on prosecutors (see also Soss and Weaver Reference Soss and Weaver2017; Tillery Reference Tillery2019; Weaver Reference Weaver2020). More specifically, BLM emphasizes the perceived and genuine closeness between police and prosecutors and the conflicts of interest that ensue from their collaboration on cases, as well as campaign donations and endorsements from police unions (Austin et al. Reference Austin, Choi, Bell, Scott Thomson and Goldberg2019).
Outrage over impunity for police violence led organizations like Color of Change and the American Civil Liberties Union to coordinate education campaigns about the power of prosecutors. These organizations supported the election of a growing cohort of elected progressive prosecutors, particularly since 2016 (Davis Reference Davis2019). In addition to national advocacy organizations, foundations such as the Open Society Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and Arnold Ventures invested in convening prosecutors and launching research projects to examine prosecutorial discretion. These organizations fostered broad coalitions to “reimagine the role of the prosecutor” from a mechanism of mass incarceration to a partner in reform (Travis, Stewart, and Goldberg Reference Travis, Stewart and Goldberg2019).
As progressive prosecutors were elected in growing numbers and saw a rise in institutional support, they also encountered a burgeoning countermovement opposing their elections and tenures in office (Davis Reference Davis2019). Scholars suggest that resistance to progressive prosecutors often stems from assistant district attorneysFootnote 1 (ADAs) within their offices, other criminal legal actors or public officials in their jurisdictions, and powerful local institutions, including police unions and the bail bonds industry (Barkow Reference Barkow2021; Richardson and Kutateladze Reference Richardson and Luka Kutateladze2021). Goldstein (Reference Goldstein2024) points to “toplash,” or state-level elected officials’ overruling the power of local officials, and details contemporary challenges to prosecutors that she contends go beyond traditional preemption. Recent preemption literature also suggests that state-level interference with local policymaking today is heightened by partisan polarization (Goldberg, Kitchens, and Baldwin Reference Goldberg, Kitchens and Baldwin2025) and is correlated with political and demographic factors (Flavin and Shufeldt Reference Flavin and Shufeldt2020). Rhetoric surrounding resistance to progressive prosecutors often suggests that rising crime contributed to this resistance, although there is limited empirical support for this claim (Foglesong et al. Reference Foglesong, Levi, Rosenfeld, Schoenfeld, Wood, Stemen and Rengifo2022; Stone Reference Stone2022). Davis (Reference Davis2019) emphasizes the important role that race and gender play in pushback to progressives. While past research offers compelling theoretical claims and insight from individual offices, this study offers the first empirical investigation nationally into the origins, reach, and impact of resistance to prosecutors.
Movement Repertoires for and Against Racial Justice
The literature on social movement repertoires offers a useful analytical frame for making sense of mobilizations for and against locally elected prosecutors. Movement repertoires refer to the “whole set of means [a group] has for making claims” (Tilly Reference Tilly1986, 2; see also Lehoucq and Taylor Reference Lehoucq and Taylor2020). Developed from Charles Tilly’s studies of contentious collective actions in 17th-century France, repertoires have become central to studies of social movements. Tilly shows how the French proletariat did not innately know how to stage protests, strikes, and sit-ins but adapted these strategies from their everyday tools of collective resistance, such as turning away tax collectors (1986; see also Tarrow Reference Tarrow1993). Thus, movements’ capacity for change is not based solely on external resources such as financing or political opportunities but also on the coordinated skills and innovations of actors engaged in collective actions. The tactics these actors devise to advance their aims constitute their repertoires, which are shaped by their sociopolitical environments and evolve across time, place, and movements.
Movement repertoires are capacious, and scholars have adapted the concept to shed light not only on overt protest activity but also on more subtle forms of collective action. For instance, Elizabeth Clemens (Reference Clemens1993) develops “organizational repertoires” to show how movements structure internal operations to reflect their principles and goals. In studying women’s groups at the turn of the 20th century, Clemens reveals how these marginalized groups instituted nonhierarchical, inclusive organizing to innovate practices that were counter to the exclusive, male-dominated governance structures they were contesting (ibid). Other scholars show how collective actions can contribute to knowledge repertoires, or “[tools] to produce a collective self … contribute to policy alternatives as well as to spread alternative imaginaries to challenge and reform the status quo” (della Porta and Pavan Reference della Porta and Pavan2017, 297). Knowledge repertoires reveal how movements contest hegemonic epistemes, or social norms, categories, and definitions that appear natural and unquestioned but are in fact social constructs that reinforce the status quo (Boutros Reference Boutros2022). According to this scholarship, movements do not always achieve their stated aims but nevertheless contribute to institutional change through repertoire innovations.
Repertoires shape and are shaped by movements’ relational dynamics (Tilly Reference Tilly1986). For instance, while repertoires were initially considered tools to contest the state, mobilizations now have broader targets as power is diffused across the state, corporations, and other institutions (Armstrong 2008). Thus, contesting a state’s foreign alliances may be furthered not only by protesting the government but also by consuming or boycotting imported goods (King and Pearce Reference King and Pearce2010). In addition to protest targets, movement adherents’ collective identities influence repertoires. For example, Amin Ghaziani (Reference Ghaziani2008) shows how evolving identities and allegiances within the LGBTQ movement shaped its repertoires across four decades. In discussing “ethnoracial movements,” Fleming and Morris emphasize that although identities are socially constructed rather than essential, “[i]n the aftermath of colonialism and chattel slavery, the contentious meanings and memories attached to race and ethnicity often constitute the grounds on which social justice movements unfold” (2015, 106). The meanings and memories of ethnoracial and other movements are also shaped by hegemonic epistemes. For instance, the Black Panther Party’s Survival Programs—including free meals and health care, repertoires defined by collective care—are overshadowed in the U.S. collective discourse by images of the Party’s armed self-defense against police violence (Nelson Reference Nelson2011).
While some frame movements as “laboratories of democratic innovation” where activists experiment with participatory decision-making processes (della Porta and Pavan Reference della Porta and Pavan2017), repertoires can also be used to contest democratic norms. Indeed, there is a growing body of research on right-wing movements that challenge multicultural, inclusive democracies (Caiani Reference Caiani2012; Deodhar Reference Deodhar2022). While earlier research on right-wing movements focused on the use of violence (della Porta Reference della Porta2013) and the internet (Adams and Roscigno Reference Adams and Roscigno2005), more recent studies consider broader repertoires these mobilizations employ to gain legitimacy in mainstream politics in the United States and Europe. For instance, Hajar Yazdiha (Reference Yazdiha2023) shows how right-wing movements have co-opted the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. to advance an agenda counter to the 1960s Civil Rights Movement he spearheaded. This research shows how right-wing movements have adapted widely-shared values or symbols—such as “freedom”—to advance counterintuitive agendas, such as right-to-carry gun laws and restrictions on abortion (ibid). As right-wing movements gain traction across the globe, their repertoires are increasingly a focus of scholarly literature.
Racial Justice
Within the United States, historically, right-wing movements have emerged and gained traction following periods of progress toward racial equity, as efforts to expand protections and rights for people of color are frequently met with quick and vitriolic backlash (Anderson Reference Anderson2017; Bracey Reference Bracey2021; Du Bois Reference Bois and William1935). For instance, as Carole Anderson (Reference Anderson2017) shows, white mobs terrorized Black people following Reconstruction as well as the 1960s Civil Rights Movement (see also Wells Reference Wells1969). These mobs, like earlier iterations of racist violence, had both de jure and de facto support of states and the federal government (Anderson Reference Anderson2017). Perpetrators of mob violence were rarely arrested. Instead, their actions were often justified through the criminalization of their victims, a facet of racialized violence that persists today (Austin et al. Reference Austin, Choi, Bell, Scott Thomson and Goldberg2019). The movement to elect progressive prosecutors was motivated in part to resist this obstinate historical trend (Davis Reference Davis2019).
Repertoires are iterative, as they build on earlier tactics and adapt to countermovement efforts. For instance, a burgeoning literature is documenting and debating the strategies and impacts of BLM (Caren, Andrews, and Nelson Reference Caren, Andrews and Nelson2023; Dunivin et al. Reference Dunivin, Yan, Ince and Rojas2022) and how it builds on earlier movement repertoires to contest racialized violence. Megan Ming Francis and Leah Wright-Rigueur (Reference Francis and Wright-Rigueur2021) draw parallels between Ida B. Wells’s work (Reference Wells1969) documenting instances of lynchings in the early 20th century and BLM activists’ efforts to quantify instances of police violence in the absence of a government database. Thus, BLM advances knowledge repertoires by producing data about state-sanctioned violence. Magda Boutros’s (Reference Boutros2022) ethnography of activists contesting racialized police brutality in France further elevates the epistemic potential of BLM’s repertoires. Boutros shows how activists overcome the country’s legally mandated colorblindness to document patterns and practices of discriminatory policing against Black and Arab young men, revealing persistent legacies of colonization (Fanon Reference Fanon1961; Merry Reference Merry and Sarat1998).
The U.S. criminal legal system is a ripe site to study the evolution and iteration of movement repertoires for and against racial justice. For instance, Michelle Alexander (Reference Alexander2010) frames mass incarceration as an extension of earlier racialized systems and statutes, such as vagrancy laws, Black Codes, and Jim Crow, which subjugate Black people and deprive them of the right to vote. According to this view, mass incarceration is merely the latest in a long history of legal repertoires to criminalize people of color and, in turn, to limit their citizenship and participation in democracy (ibid). Indeed, felon disenfranchisement did not become widely adopted until Reconstruction, after Black people secured a right to vote via the 15th Amendment: “[b]etween 1865 and 1900, 19 states adopted or amended laws restricting the voting rights of criminal offenders” (Uggen, Behrens, and Manza Reference Uggen, Behrens and Manza2005, 308; see also Anderson Reference Anderson2017; Muller 2018; Weaver and Lerman 2010).
Felon disenfranchisement today remains emblematic of racialized voter suppression (Uggen and Manza Reference Uggen and Manza2002), a discriminatory tool progressive prosecutors have attempted to combat through repertoire innovations. For instance, in Florida, several prosecutors waived fines and fees for formerly incarcerated people so that they can vote (Gardner and Rozsa Reference Gardner and Rozsa2020), thus using their discretion to further movement aims to combat the racialized harms of mass incarceration. In Florida, two of the prosecutors engaged in these efforts—Monique Worrell and Andrew Warren—were removed from their elected positions overseeing racially diverse jurisdictions and replaced with non-elected officials who are members of the right-wing Federalist Society.
I view this and other examples of extra-electoral challenges against progressive prosecutors, detailed below, as novel right-wing movement repertoires to contest racial justice following BLM. Focusing on extra-electoral challenges against prosecutors also reveals how movement repertoires evolve over protest cycles and are shaped by their sociopolitical and economic milieus (Tarrow Reference Tarrow1993)—specifically the U.S. ongoing struggles for and against racial justice. Thus, extra-electoral challenges can be understood as part of the country’s longer history. While earlier countermovements sought to constrain progress toward equity following Reconstruction and the 1960s Civil Rights Movements, extra-electoral challenges against progressive prosecutors today can be viewed as a tactical innovation against BLM. These dynamics would suggest that extra-electoral challenges disproportionately affect prosecutors committed to racial justice, including progressive prosecutors and prosecutors of color, a hypothesis I further investigate using mixed methods.
Data and Methods
Prosecutor Sample
This study examines the form, function, and outcomes of challenges to the tenure and discretion of locally elected prosecutors. To do so, I constructed an original database of all local prosecutors who were in office or elected in 2022 in the 300 most populous jurisdictions in the United States where local prosecutors are elected. I created this database first using population data from the U.S. Census Bureau to identify the country’s most populous counties. I then refined this list, excluding locales where prosecutors are not elected (n = 26) and combining counties that share a common prosecutor (n = 9), resulting in 265 distinct prosecutor jurisdictions.Footnote 2 I identified the 2022 local prosecutors for each of these jurisdictions. For jurisdictions where an incumbent left office in 2022 (n = 40), I include both the outgoing prosecutor as well as his or her successor. Thus, there are 305 prosecutors in the 2022 prosecutor database who, collectively, represent about 61% of the 2022 U.S. population.Footnote 3
I collected similar data for prosecutors in these jurisdictions in 2012 to compare extra-electoral challenges before and after a first wave of progressive prosecutors were elected.Footnote 4 The selection of that date reflects the fact that the 2016 elections marked a notable shift away from incumbent prosecutors running largely uncontested races on punitive platforms. Scholars largely credit this shift to BLM (Butler Reference Butler2023; Davis Reference Davis2019; Soss and Weaver Reference Soss and Weaver2017). For instance, following the 2014 murders of Michael Brown in Ferguson and Laquan McDonald in Chicago, and the impunity of the officers who killed them, prosecutor candidates Kim Gardner and Kim Foxx were elected in these jurisdictions,Footnote 5 respectively, on campaign promises of police accountability and broader criminal justice reform. My research also suggests 2016 marked the first time donors significantly invested in prosecutor races. Thus, the 2012 data offers a window into the field of prosecution before the shift toward prosecutor reform.
There are 94 prosecutors who were elected in 2012 or earlier and remained in office in 2022. These individuals are included in both the 2012 and 2022 databases. To ensure counts of extra-electoral challenges are not distorted by prosecutors in office in both 2012 and 2022, I confine extra-electoral challenges to include challenges only within the preceding decade.Footnote 6 Two undergraduate research assistants checked the database for accuracy and inter-coder reliability.Footnote 7
Variables
I used archival methods (Benzecry, Deener, and Lara-Millán Reference Benzecry, Deener and Lara-Millán2020; Lara-Millán, Sargent, and Kim Reference Lara-Millán, Sargent and Kim2020) to collect data on each prosecutor’s race, gender, professional background, political orientation, and potential instances of extra-electoral challenges, described further below. I collected this data from prosecutors’ web pages, campaign materials, and the top ten most relevant media articles about them according to Google News searches. Systematically reviewing and collecting data from multiple public sources enables triangulation and replicability in future empirical research.
Prosecutors’ professional backgrounds were coded for whether they previously served as ADA, other state or local law enforcement official, other state or local elected official (not law enforcement), public defender (for indigent clients), or other. Prosecutors who have ever served as an ADA were coded as such, even if they also pursued other careers. This is based on the hypothesis that those who previously served within a prosecutor’s office are less likely to encounter concerted resistance and better able to navigate internal dynamics. For those who did not serve as ADA, their most recent profession prior to serving as chief prosecutor was coded.
For political orientation, I used two measures: partisan affiliation and political ideology. Partisan affiliation is an imperfect measure, as prosecutors in several states are nonpartisan,Footnote 8 and there is significant variation in practices within the broad parties of Democrat and Republican. Therefore, political ideology—specifically whether prosecutors are progressive or not progressive—offers a more precise way to categorize prosecutors’ political affiliations.
The term “progressive” prosecutors has been often used but inconsistently defined in the scholarly literature. For instance, John Pfaff, whose book (2017) on prosecutors and mass incarceration is widely cited in both scholarship on and advocacy for prosecutor reform, offers a list of all progressive prosecutors and prosecutor candidates. He considers this “the first such complete list … [based on] local elections at boltsmag.org; the list of reformers listed at the end of [Agan’s, Doleac’s, and Harvey’s] Prosecutorial Reform and Crime Rates …; and [his] own knowledge” (2023). His citation of his “own knowledge” as a source makes replicability difficult. Deva Woodly’s important book on the centrality of movements, including BLM, to democracy also includes a list of “Progressive and Reform Prosecutors” (2022). Woodly considers prosecutors on this list as having taken strides to combat the harms of the criminal legal system and considers variation within this list according to the extent of reform measures, alignment with the “progressive movement,” and a “commitment to decarceral solutions” (2022, 242). I consider all prosecutors on her list as “progressive” in order to simplify models and because of ostensibly inconsistent groupings within her sub-categories. For instance, Woodly considers both Andrew Warren and Amy Weirich as “reform” prosecutors. This seems to indicate the need for more specific inclusion criteria, as Warren proactively took strides to reduce racial disparities in his office, whereas Weirich has been accused of overt racial bias and misconduct in her office. There are several other prosectors on her list who I would deem as operating on the other side of the political spectrum. On the other hand, Pfaff misses several prosecutors I consider progressive, including Carol Siemon, of Ingraham County, Michigan, and Glenn Funk of Davidson County, Tennessee. Thus, while these scholars offer a useful starting point for considering progressive prosecutors, I ultimately find their definitions to be overly inclusive and neglect systematic explanations.
Dissatisfied with extant definitions of progressive, I developed a novel operationalization of the term. I define prosecutors as “progressive” if they sign on to at least three of Fair and Just Prosecution’s (FJP) 2022 reform pledges to combat mass incarceration and its racial disparities (see Appendix A).Footnote 9 FJP is a national membership organization of progressive prosecutors committed to advancing criminal justice reform. The organization specifically aims to bring “together elected local prosecutors as part of a network of leaders committed to promoting a justice system grounded in fairness, equity, compassion” (FJP 2024). It does so through policy training, toolkits, and issue briefs. Thus, identifying prosecutors who frequently engage with FJP is an apt proxy for identifying “progressives” and offers a standardized and systematic definition of this variable that can be replicated in future research. However, like earlier definitions of “progressive,” this study’s operationalization is imperfect. For instance, there are likely prosecutors who sign on to FJP’s pledges yet do not make efforts to reduce the harms of the criminal legal system. There are likely others who aim to reduce the harms of the criminal legal system yet do not sign on to FJP’s pledges. Still, the metric used here likely captures important variation in the extent to which prosecutors identify and campaign as reformers.Footnote 10
Given the complexity in defining “progressive,” I include three distinct metrics of the variable in my models—my novel operationalization based on FJP engagement, as well as Pfaff’s (2023) and Woodly’s (2022). There is meaningful overlap across prosecutors we identify as progressive, as well as conspicuous differences due to distinct inclusion criteria, described above. Therefore, including these three metrics ensures robust results and offers a path for future scholars to continue developing metrics and examining the implications of progressive prosecution. Each metric is included in my models, presented in Tables, and discussed in Findings.
In addition to considering individual prosecutors’ political orientations, I also consider partisan dynamics in the states where they operate. To do so, I collected data on whether each state’s senate, house, and governor’s office were controlled by Democrats, Republicans, or a divided government (henceforth, state partisan control). I specifically considered whether all three government branches were controlled by one party simultaneously, commonly referred to as a partisan “trifecta.” Rather than capturing static point-in-time data on state partisan control for any given year, I collected data on each state for my focal decade 2013–2022. Specifically, I captured this data at five timepoints: 2014, 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2022, prior to each of those years’ elections. This composition of state partisan control enables a dynamic understanding of statewide governance that aligns with the timeframe of my dependent variable, extra-electoral challenges. With this data, I coded each state’s partisan control as either a Democratic trifecta, Republican trifecta, or a divided government for the majority of that decade (see, e.g., Flavin and Shufeldt Reference Flavin and Shufeldt2020). In addition to this simple measure of partisan control, I also conduct robustness checks with an expanded measure that captures additional levels in state partisan control to consider whether there is a distinction between states with 100% partisan control over a decade relative to 60% or 80%. This enables insight into potential variation between states that are strongly Democrat or Republican, such as California or Florida, for example, relative to more competitive places, such as Virginia or Wisconsin.
Next, I used online media sources to document potential extra-electoral challenges, which I define as organized efforts within the preceding decade to remove an elected official from office or constrain their power outside of a regularly scheduled election. By organized, I mean a concerted, mobilized effort focused on limiting an elected official’s discretion. I do not include Change.org petitions, opinion editorials, or social media posts by one angry individual. Thus, this is a conservative metric. Throughout the findings, I discuss the type of opposition—such as recall or impeachment efforts to remove an official, or legislative constraints on their power—and the primary leadership of this opposition, such as state officials or police unions. Each type of extra-electoral challenge varies by mechanisms—for instance, an impeachment might involve state legislators voting for or against the removal of a local prosecutor, whereas seizing cases from a DA might result from a governor’s unilateral move. The common goal across these tactics is to limit elected prosecutors’ power outside of a predetermined election cycle. I do not include traditional opposition advertisements or debates during a predetermined election cycle, where we would expect candidates to debate policies and offer countering views of their goals for office. Rather, I am focused on opposition outside of regularly scheduled elections, where constituents are largely removed from having a voice through the ballot box.Footnote 11 I further detail examples of extra-electoral challenges throughout the findings.
Collectively, these variables enable analysis of the extent of extra-electoral challenges to prosecutors in my sample, with comparisons across time, state partisan control, and prosecutor demographics. I begin analysis using descriptive statistics to examine the relationships between extra-electoral challenges and these independent variables (see Table 1) and provide further evidence of their significance using LPM (see Table 2 and Figure 2).Footnote 12 To examine the robustness of my findings, I run several LPM models with varying definitions (described above) of prosecutor political ideology, partisan affiliation, and state partisan control. I also consider interactions of these variables, as well as the interaction of race and gender. I further conduct robustness checks using logistic regressions, which provide further evidence of the direction and statistical significance of these relationships. All results from LPM models, as well as logit marginal effects, are included in tables. As detailed below, I consistently find that people of color, progressives, and prosecutors in Republican-controlled states disproportionately face extra-electoral challenges.
Table 1. Descriptive statistics for local prosecutors in office or elected, 2012 and 2022
*Any prosecutor who ever served as ADA is counted as such, even if they also held other positions. Public defenders are only those who represent indigent defendants, not criminal defendants generally.
˜As detailed in Data and Methods, the difference in sample size between 2012 and 2022 reflects the difference in incumbents who left office during these years: 25 incumbent local prosecutors left office in 2012, whereas 40 did so in 2022. Both incumbents and their successors are included in the database.
Table 2. Linear probability models estimating the probability of local prosecutors in office or elected in 2022 encountering extra-electoral challenges (EEC)
Note for all models: N = 305; *p < 0.1; **p < 0.05; ***p < 0.01; standard errors in parentheses; ^FJP, Woodly, and Pfaff refer to a distinct definition of “progressive” prosecutor used in each model, described further in Data and Methods.
Figure 1. People of color disproportionately encounter extra-electoral challenges (EEC).
Figure 2. Probability of facing extra-electoral challenges (EEC), Model 2.
My sample size is small (N = 305), and therefore, statistical analysis should be taken with caution, particularly given the risks of spurious results and limited generalizability common to small N analyses. I note these cautions throughout the paper, particularly where polytomous variables, such as Professional Background, make each sub-category especially small and therefore the results potentially misleading. Additionally, I strengthen the credibility of my findings by putting them into conversation with existing literature, detailing their implications through qualitative examples revealed through the archives, and considering anomalies. For instance, although I find progressives are more likely to encounter extra-electoral challenges, I also detail instances where non-progressive prosecutors confront them.
Additionally, I consider counterarguments to my analysis. Opponents of progressive prosecutors often argue that they go beyond the limits of their offices’ mandates or are acting inappropriately in ways that justify action against them. Therefore, I coded for all instances of prosecutors’ potential misconduct apparent in the archives, ultimately identifying seven prosecutors in 2022 who are not facing extra-electoral challenges despite actions that could be considered violations of the ethics or norms of the office. These prosecutors, all of whom are white, most of whom are men, and none of whom are progressive, have been accused of gross misconduct, yet none have encountered concerted efforts to limit their power or oust them from office. I detail these instances and their implications below.
Limitations
In addition to the small N of my dataset, there are four additional primary limitations of this study. First, there appears to be notably less online archival material for 2012 compared with 2022. This limits the amount of available information about prosecutors in office in 2012, constraining potential comparisons (e.g., across professional backgrounds or political orientations).Footnote 13 Moreover, although there is some evidence that ADAs contribute to internal resistance against progressive prosecutors (Richardson and Kutateladze Reference Richardson and Luka Kutateladze2021), such instances are inconsistently reported in the archives, thereby limiting the potential to systematically capture them. Therefore, this study misses these efforts, further suppressing my findings and making this analysis conservative. By sampling prosecutors at two timepoints—2012 and 2022—this study potentially misses instances of extra-electoral challenges at other dates, a limitation common to point-in-time analyses that could lead to false negatives and further suppress findings. I consider one such instance, the Florida Governor’s 2017 seizure of local prosecutor Aramis Ayala’s cases, in the findings. Finally, this research does not consider the movement against progressive prosecutors in smaller or more rural locales that fall outside of the country’s 300 most populous jurisdictions. This is a potentially concerning limitation given smaller jurisdictions’ rapid growth in incarceration and distinct dynamics of court proceedings, monetary sanctions, and immigration enforcement (Kang Brown and Subramanian 2017; Kirk et al. Reference Kirk, Thompson, Huebner, Uggen and Shannon2022; Lara-Garcia 2022). However, the dynamics of local prosecutor campaigns and resistance may not be comparable in smaller or rural jurisdictions where only a handful of people may have worked in prosecution or are qualified to run as a prosecutor. Additionally, the documented decline in local news (Hayes and Lawless Reference Hayes and Lawless2018) makes data for smaller jurisdictions less accessible or reliable. Thus, although these methods cannot speak to the movement against progressive prosecutors in smaller locales, they are well-suited for this study’s aims.
Findings
This study scrutinizes the field of prosecution to assess whether there are discernible patterns in extra-electoral challenges, which seek to limit the discretion and tenure of elected officials outside of regularly scheduled elections. Through original data analysis of all locally elected prosecutors in 2012 and/or 2022 in the country’s most populous jurisdictions, I find that 45, or nearly 15% of prosecutors in 2022, encountered extra-electoral challenges, nearly triple the proportion a decade prior. Furthermore, extra-electoral challenges disproportionately affect progressive prosecutors and prosecutors of color, especially those in states with Republican trifectas. I theorize extra-electoral challenges as a novel countermovement repertoire to oppose prosecutors committed to racial justice and contest gains made by BLM.
Prosecutor Demographics
My analysis shows that contemporary extra-electoral challenges vary by prosecutor demographics. For instance, people of color comprise only one in five locally elected prosecutors in 2022, yet comprise nearly half of those facing extra-electoral challenges (see Table 1 and Figure 1). Results from LPM are consistent. Each LPM model shows prosecutors of color are at least 13 percentage points, and potentially as high as 16 percentage points, more likely than white prosecutors to face extra-electoral challenges, and this difference is statistically significant across models (see Table 2). Logit marginal effects show slightly smaller and weaker effects, but consistently show that prosecutors of color are at least 11 percentage points more likely to face extra-electoral challenges than are white prosecutors, with statistical significance across models (see Table 3). An additional model where race is considered as a categorical as opposed to binary variable reveals that this difference is driven by extra-electoral challenges against Black and Latino prosecutors, likely due to the small number of Asian and Native American prosecutors (six and one, respectively).
Table 3. Average marginal effects from logit models estimating the probability that local prosecutors in office or elected in 2022 encounter extra-electoral challenges (EEC).
Note for all models: N = 305; *p < 0.1; **p < 0.05; ***p < 0.01; standard errors in parentheses; ^FJP, Woodly, and Pfaff refer to the definition of “progressive” prosecutor used in each model, described further in Data and Methods.
Similarly, fewer than one in three locally elected prosecutors are women, yet 42% of those facing extra-electoral challenges are women. Although LPM results do not suggest the difference in extra-electoral challenges confronting men and women is statistically significant, they do suggest a strong effect when considering the interaction of race and gender: Women of color are between 26 and 30 percentage points more likely to encounter extra-electoral challenges compared with white men, a finding consistent with logit marginal effects (see Tables 2 and 3 and Figure 2). This is particularly apparent when looking at Black women, who comprise less than 7% of locally elected prosecutors, yet comprise 20% of those facing extra-electoral challenges. These findings support Davis’s (2019) important work that suggests race and gender play a meaningful role in challenges to prosecutors. More broadly, these findings suggest that the demographic positionality of elected officials may be an important factor in extra-electoral challenges, extending prior work on repertoires against racial justice generally (Anderson Reference Anderson2017; Coates 2017).
In considering the white male prosecutors who do encounter extra-electoral challenges, resistance seems to focus on their commitments to racial justice. For instance, DAs who were formerly public defenders—and thus, tasked with defending poor people, often people of color (Harris Reference Harris2016)—face a disproportionate amount of extra-electoral challenges: public defenders comprise nearly 16% of those facing extra-electoral challenges, yet comprise only 4% of prosecutors generally. Larry Krasner and Chesa Boudin, who each faced extra-electoral challenges, were public defenders before being elected DA. Several LPM models suggest that prosecutors who were previously public defenders are statistically significantly more likely to face extra-electoral challenges relative to those who previously served as ADAs (see Table 2). However, the number of former public defenders serving as chief prosecutors is so small (13, with seven facing extra-electoral challenges) that further research is warranted before drawing conclusions. Unsurprisingly, those who previously served as ADAs appear to be under-represented as those facing extra-electoral challenges (75% of prosecutors generally, compared with 56% facing extra-electoral challenges). No other professional backgrounds had notable discrepancies between their composition as prosecutors in general and those facing extra-electoral challenges.
Politics
In addition to analyzing prosecutor demographics and professional backgrounds, I consider the role of prosecutor political orientations and state partisan control in extra-electoral challenges. To do so, I first compare extra-electoral challenges against progressive prosecutors with those against non-progressives. This analysis shows that over 55% of prosecutors facing extra-electoral challenges are progressive according to the FJP definition, although they only comprise 16% of prosecutors generally (see Table 1). LPM results support this finding. LPM models using the FJP definition of progressive consistently show that progressives are at least 35 percentage points more likely to face extra-electoral challenges than are non-progressives. Models using the Pfaff definition of progressive show this difference closer to about 29 percentage points, and those using the Woodly definition of progressive place this difference at 19 percentage points. The difference in the size of the effect is likely due to each metric’s distinct criteria of progressive, as detailed in Data and Methods. Nevertheless, each model consistently shows progressives are statistically significantly more likely to encounter extra-electoral challenges than are non-progressive prosecutors. Given that progressive prosecutors are those with explicit commitments to ending the racialized harms of mass incarceration, this finding offers further evidence of extra-electoral challenges constituting a countermovement tactic to contest racial justice.
It is also useful to consider prosecutors’ political orientations based on their partisan affiliation. Although this is an imperfect measure due to significant variation within political parties and prosecutors are nonpartisan in several states, progressives are most often registered as Democrats, thus enabling this comparison to further test results. Indeed, Democrats are overrepresented among those experiencing extra-electoral challenges (71%), compared with their representation among prosecutors generally (41%). In contrast, only 11% of Republicans face extra-electoral challenges, although they constitute 39% of prosecutors generally (see Table 1). These results are corroborated in an LPM model, which shows that Republicans are nearly 17 percentage points less likely to face extra-electoral challenges relative to Democrats, a statistically significant difference that is consistent with logit marginal effects. This is likely a conservative estimate as several prosecutors, such as California progressives Chesa Boudin and Pamela Price who have faced extra-electoral challenges, would likely be considered Democrats by traditional standards but are officially nonpartisan.
In addition to prosecutors’ political orientations, state partisan control appears to be important for extra-electoral challenges. As discussed above, state partisan control considers whether Democrats or Republicans controlled all three branches of state government simultaneously (i.e., partisan trifecta) for the majority of the decade 2013–2022. More than two in three (69%) prosecutors facing extra-electoral challenges are in states with Republican trifectas for most of the decade, compared with 47% of prosecutors generally. Indeed, LPM results show that prosecutors in states with Republican trifectas for most of the decade are consistently between 14 and 16 percentage points more likely to face extra-electoral challenges than those in states with Democratic trifectas (see Table 2), and this finding is statistically significant. When I consider prosecutors’ partisan affiliation (i.e., Democrat or Republican) as opposed to political ideology (i.e., progressive or non-progressive), LPM results show that prosecutors in states with Republican trifectas for most of the decade are 20.6 percentage points more likely to face extra-electoral challenges relative to those in states with Democratic trifectas. In a model with an expanded measure of state partisan control, I find that prosecutors in states controlled by Republicans for the entire decade are less likely to experience extra-electoral challenges relative to those in states controlled by Republicans for most of the decade. While this theoretically makes sense, as officials in electorally competitive states might be motivated to use extra-electoral challenges to maintain their dominance, this finding should be taken with caution given the small ns for this polytomous variable.
Considering the interaction between prosecutor political ideology and state partisan control is also revealing. Progressives are statistically significantly more likely to encounter extra-electoral challenges than non-progressives in every type of state, but particularly so in states with Republican trifectas.Footnote 14 LPM models indicate that progressive prosecutors in states dominated by Republicans are between 46 and 66 percentage points more likely to face extra-electoral challenges than those in Democrat-controlled states, depending on the definition of progressive used (see Table 2). The archives also reveal that in states with divided governments or that are controlled by Republicans, prosecutors in jurisdictions governed by local Democrats seem to be particularly affected by extra-electoral challenges, as discussed further below. Furthermore, models consistently show that even non-progressives in Republican-controlled states are statistically significantly more likely (by more than 9 percentage points) to face extra-electoral challenges relative to non-progressives in Democrat-controlled states. For instance, Rachel Mitchell, an Arizona prosecutor, was censured by the state’s Republican Party, her own party, for sanctioning Kari Lake, a Republican gubernatorial candidate who made false statements to the court about election fraud.
The primary leadership of extra-electoral challenges against prosecutors also appears to vary based on state partisan control. Most prosecutors facing extra-electoral challenges in states with Democratic trifectas encounter resistance led by state and local law enforcement, frequently police unions.Footnote 15 For instance, Pamela Price, DA of Alameda County, California (which includes Oakland), is a Black woman and former civil rights attorney who was elected in 2022. She encountered a recall campaign less than six months into her tenure surrounding allegations that her office’s policies to decline prosecuting certain offenses were contributing to rising crime, a claim empirically unjustifiable given her limited tenure in office. Nevertheless, local law enforcement vocally ridiculed Price and supported the recall effort, as they also did for the successful recall against neighboring San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin less than one year prior. The archives also show law enforcement contributed to the campaign of Price’s opponent in the general election. Price was recalled halfway through her four-year term in fall 2024.
Allegations of rising crime were also used in efforts to remove Los Angeles County DA George Gascón from his post within his first year of taking office. Again, it is empirically unjustifiable for a change in prosecutor to lead to a rise in crime in such a short period of time, especially in a city like Los Angeles, where long-standing impunity for violence is well-documented (Leovy Reference Leovy2015). Gascón faced two recall attempts, both of which failed to garner sufficient signatures to get on the ballot. The latter recall effort was organized by the Assistant District Attorneys Association, a union that includes hundreds of assistant prosecutors, including many within his own office, who also filed a lawsuit against him. The Sheriff of LA County also supported the recall effort. Gascón is a former officer with the Los Angeles Police Department and the former chief of Mesa, Arizona’s police department. He was also the DA of San Francisco prior to his move to Los Angeles. While in San Francisco, he did not face the sort of extra-electoral challenges that his successor encountered nor that he faced in Los Angeles, indicating a shift in political dynamics discussed further below. He lost his bid for reelection in 2024.
In addition to claims over rising crime, abortion has emerged as a central point of contention in states with Republican trifectas or divided governments. For instance, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis suspended two locally elected prosecutors, Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren and Orange-Osceola State Attorney Monique Worrell, after they said they would not charge people seeking or aiding abortion. After removing Warren and Worrell, DeSantis replaced them by appointing two non-elected attorneys, Susan Lopez and Andrew Bain, respectively. Both Warren and Worrell were proactively progressive in their campaign messaging and policies, whereas Lopez and Bain are aligned with DeSantis’s right-wing agenda, which extends beyond challenges to local prosecutors to also include bans on books and LGBTQ equality. Indeed, Lopez and Bain are both members of the Federalist Society, a right-wing association of attorneys who mobilize for judicial appointments in order to advance conservative policies.Footnote 16
DeSantis appears to be building on a repertoire that was piloted by his predecessor. In 2017, then-Florida Governor Rick Scott seized all cases from Orange-Osceola State Attorney Aramis Ayala, the state’s first Black prosecutor (Goldstein Reference Goldstein2024). Ayala was elected with over 97% of the vote and promised not to pursue the death penalty, largely due to evidence of racial discrimination in its implementation. After she fulfilled her campaign promise, Scott seized all of her office’s cases. Worrell previously worked for Ayala and campaigned to continue Ayala’s priorities. DeSantis, on the other hand, is working to extend his predecessor’s initiatives, including expanding and adapting strategies to limit the power of locally elected prosecutors, especially those committed to racial justice.
In addition to governors, state legislators also seem to lead extra-electoral challenges against prosecutors in Republican-controlled or divided states. For instance, Florida legislators introduced a bill to strip cases from or implement oversight committees over progressive prosecutors. Similar statutes have been introduced in Georgia, Texas, Tennessee, Indiana, and Wisconsin. While some of these statutes name the prosecutors they target, others focus on specific policies, such as taking over abortion-related cases from prosecutors who decline to charge them. The majority of prosecutors targeted by these statutes are people of color or are in majority-minority districts, thus overruling the will of voters who have been historically disenfranchised. This finding corroborates existing preemption literature that points to how Republican state-level officials have historically overruled the will of local officials, especially Black officials, in blue cities, and points to closer consideration of how this pattern intersects with the disenfranchisement of voters of color (Flavin and Shufeldt Reference Flavin and Shufeldt2020; Goldberg, Kitchens, and Baldwin Reference Goldberg, Kitchens and Baldwin2025; Goldstein Reference Goldstein2024).
These tactics’ efficacy has not gone unnoticed by officials on the other side of the political aisle, who are beginning to adopt similar strategies to thwart the discretion of prosecutors with whom they disagree. For instance, recently elected Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, prohibited prosecutors from charging people seeking or aiding abortions through an Executive Order. Several Republican prosecutors in the state, including Rachel Mitchell of Maricopa County and Kent Volkmer of Pinal County, have challenged this order. Similar dynamics are apparent in Michigan.
Contemporary Political Polarization
These points of contention—perceptions of crime, BLM, and abortion—further suggest that extra-electoral challenges against prosecutors relate to the broader contemporary political moment defined by polarization (Grumbach Reference Grumbach2023). For instance, the proportion of prosecutors facing extra-electoral challenges nearly tripled from about 5% in 2012 to nearly 15% in 2022. Prosecutors in office in 2012 who used their discretion in unpopular ways were more often voted out of office during regularly scheduled elections rather than removed via extra-electoral strategies.
For instance, Bob McCulloch served as prosecutor from 1991 through 2019 in the jurisdiction that included Ferguson, Missouri. McCulloch rarely faced electoral opponents and never faced extra-electoral challenges. Throughout his tenure, he never indicted an officer for use-of-force, including in 2014, when he failed to indict police officer Darren Wilson for shooting Michael Brown. He lost his subsequent election in 2018. Former Duval County, Florida State Attorney Angela Corey also lost her reelection campaign in 2016 after she was accused of mishandling the prosecution of George Zimmerman, who murdered Trayvon Martin in 2014. The murders of Brown and Martin, and impunity for those who killed them, helped to launch BLM and focus on prosecutors’ discretion in police accountability (Davis Reference Davis2019; Oliver Reference Oliver2021). These events contributed to the movement to elect progressive prosecutors but did not seem to result in extra-electoral challenges.
In contrast to these defeats at the ballot box, the extra-electoral challenges that occurred in the early aughts and 2010s were used primarily to remove or constrain the discretion of prosecutors accused of gross misconduct, as opposed to policy or ideological disagreements. For instance, William Mason, a white male prosecutor in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, from 2009 to 2012, was forced to resign over federal inquiries into pay-to-play corruption related to donations to his office and other local officials. Former Cameron County, Texas District Attorney Armando Villalobos, a Latino man, was also forced to resign after being indicted on federal charges of bribery and extortion.
These local prosecutors’ forced resignations for official misconduct and federal offenses stand in stark contrast to that of Kim Gardner, a Black woman and prosecutor of St. Louis from 2016 to 2023. Gardner was elected in a jurisdiction that neighbored McCulloch’s, where Michael Brown was killed, on a promise of police accountability. One of Gardner’s early actions as prosecutor was to update her office’s Brady policy, which limits prosecutors’ collaboration with police officers who have allegations of misconduct—such as not taking these officers’ evidence or testimony. The police department issued threats toward and obstructed Gardner’s discretion immediately after she took office and throughout her tenure. She ultimately resigned halfway through her second term while facing opposition from the police, mounting pressure from a lawsuit by the Missouri Attorney General, and state legislation that sought to seize her cases. These challenges were not levied against her predecessor or neighboring prosecutors.
Contemporary extra-electoral challenges, such as those facing Gardner, appear to be based on ideological disputes and political retribution, as opposed to the official misconduct that led to extra-electoral challenges to prosecutors in 2012. In contrast, my archival research shows seven prosecutors in office in 2022 accused of official impropriety who have not faced extra-electoral challenges. This impropriety includes evidence of corruption, improper investigations, overt racism, domestic violence, and drunk driving. All of these prosecutors accused of misconduct are white, most are male, and none are progressive. None have encountered extra-electoral challenges. I consider this impunity for officials accused of misconduct as an important complement to, and contrast with, mobilizations against officials advancing racial justice. The absence of extra-electoral challenges to prosecutors facing allegations of impropriety today offers further evidence that efforts to constrain the power of progressive prosecutors are intended to limit steps toward racial justice, rather than to uphold high ethical standards of DAs.
The ideological basis, as opposed to official misconduct, driving extra-electoral challenges today, is also apparent in the tenures of prosecutors facing resistance. For instance, prosecutors elected since 2015, when the first cohort of progressives entered office, are overrepresented as those facing extra-electoral challenges, comprising less than 60% of prosecutors generally compared with 80% facing concerted resistance. Nearly half (47%) of those facing extra-electoral challenges encountered these challenges less than two years into their first term, prior to any potential policy impacts or evidence of misconduct from materializing.Footnote 17
Of the seven prosecutors who have been in office for over a decade and are now encountering extra-electoral challenges, this opposition began in 2020 or later. Challenges against six of these DAs are centered around the prosecutor’s policies on police violence or abortion, debates that have come to the fore and been increasingly polarized in recent years. For example, John Chisholm, who took office in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 2006, began encountering extra-electoral challenges in 2020. Milwaukee is home to about 60% of Wisconsin’s Black population. It is a blue city in a state that was dominated by Republicans from 2013 through 2018. Since the state turned purple in 2018, the Democratic governor has frequently battled with the Republican state legislature over his discretion. These debates now seem to be spilling over into the prosecutor’s office.
Chisholm is a white man and career prosecutor who was one of the first DAs to partner with researchers to analyze, with the aim of rectifying, racial disparities in his office’s case filings (Kutetaladze and Andiloro Reference Kutateladze and Andiloro2011). He co-authored with Angela J. Davis a paper on the history of institutional racism in prosecution (Davis, Chisholm, and Noble Reference Davis, Chisholm and Noble2019). Chisholm was elected a decade before progressive prosecution was a widely recognized term, yet he is credited, along with former King County, Washington prosecutor Dan Satterberg, for creating a roadmap for prosecutors who seek to reduce the racialized harms of mass incarceration (Davis Reference Davis2019).
Despite years of public efforts to advance reform, Chisholm only began to encounter extra-electoral challenges in 2020. For instance, the 2022 Republican candidate for Wisconsin Attorney General pledged that he would restore law and order in Milwaukee, which he described as a “shooting gallery,” by taking cases from Chisholm (Whalen Reference Whalen2022). Both Chisholm and his neighboring prosecutor, Izmael Ozanne of Dane County, a moderate DA who has been in office since 2010 and is the first Black person elected prosecutor in Wisconsin, face extra-electoral challenges surrounding their handling of cases related to police violence and abortions. Protesters in support of BLM want their offices to pursue more charges against officer use-of-force, while groups on the other side of the political spectrum have protested what they perceive as their lax charging and bail policies. After both DAs said they would decline to charge abortions, anti-abortion groups lobbied the state to take over their cases. Chisholm declined to seek reelection in 2024.
Conclusion
This study uses challenges to prosecutors to elucidate a novel movement repertoire used by the political right to thwart racial justice efforts following BLM. Extra-electoral challenges are organized efforts to constrain elected officials’ discretion or tenure outside of regularly scheduled elections. As progressive prosecutors have been elected in growing numbers since 2016 on pledges to combat the racialized harms of mass incarceration, they have faced unprecedented constraints on their power. The burden to advance racial justice and combat mass incarceration falls disproportionately on prosecutors of color, especially Black women prosecutors, who then endure extra-electoral challenges throughout their tenures. This opposition occurs most often in states with Republican-controlled governments. It is frequently led by governors, state legislators, and local police unions and justified under the language of law, order, and public safety. In this way, extra-electoral challenges resemble earlier countermovement strategies that aimed to constrain progress toward equity following Reconstruction and the 1960s Civil Rights Movements.
This study offers the first empirical investigation into the origins, extent, and impact of challenges to prosecutors nationally. It offers a novel database and operationalized terms that may be used in future empirical research. Future studies might consider extra-electoral challenges in other public realms or might further probe the relationship between prosecutors and movements for and against racial justice. An expanded database with additional prosecutors, jurisdictions, timepoints, and variables might enable more sophisticated statistical analyses that can further disentangle the relationships between prosecutor demographics, policies, politics, and other considerations. Qualitative research, including ethnographic or archival case studies of specific jurisdictions, might further clarify the mechanisms driving extra-electoral challenges. Future scholarship might pay particular attention to apparent anomalies, such as Satana Deberry, a Black woman in North Carolina, a state with evidence of democratic contraction (Grumbach Reference Grumbach2023), who does not seem to encounter extra-electoral challenges. Particular attention to progressives who have evaded challenges might shed light on protective factors for progressive DAs or other officials advancing racial justice. Additional data on organizations involved with the movements for and against progressive prosecutors—such as FJP, Color of Change, the Federalist Society, and the Heritage Foundation—might also shed light on potential organizational repertoires (Clemens Reference Clemens1993) that propel or quell strategies toward racial justice. Another avenue for research might consider how extra-electoral challenges interact with electoral outcomes. While extant research on “toplash” suggests state-level officials contest progressive prosecutors because they are unable to defeat them electorally (Goldstein Reference Goldstein2024), the cases of Gascón, Chisholm, and others potentially complicate this explanation—these cases might point to extra-electoral challenges as useful tools to begin early electoral campaigns against progressive incumbents, an empirical question additional data could help to unravel. While this study is unable to address these important questions, it lays the groundwork for future research to probe them more deeply.
In our contemporary era, defined by the country’s first Black President followed by the subsequent election of Donald J. Trump, movements for racial justice focused on the local level, where democratically elected prosecutors pledged to use their discretion to combat the racialized harms of the carceral system (Davis Reference Davis2019). As they have attempted to do so, the backlash has been vitriolic, with ramifications for efforts to create a more equitable legal system. Moreover, as questions over political polarization at the national level return, this research emphasizes the importance of careful attention to local actors entangled in dueling mobilizations for and against racial justice. Prosecutors have effectively served as mechanisms of mass incarceration and racial disparities in the criminal legal system over the last four decades. Whether they are able to effectively use their discretion and meet recent calls to combat the racialized harms of the criminal legal system remains to be seen.
Supplementary material
To view supplementary material for this article, please visit https://doi.org/10.1017/rep.2025.10043.
Acknowledgements
I thank JREP editor Benjamin Gonzalez O’Brien and anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback. This paper benefited from the invaluable research assistance of Caroline Hale and Kaisa Sherwood. Any mistakes are my own. I am also grateful for the review and feedback of Katherine Beckett, Kyle Crowder, Jelani Ince, Noga Rotem, Jerald Herting, Theresa Rocha Beardall, Pam Oliver, Wayne Santoro, Angela J. Davis, Roy L. Austin, Jr., Jeremy Travis, Paul Butler, Mona Sahaf, Stephen Roberts, Andrew Taylor, Nico MacDonald, Jose Chapa, Sam McCann, Ruby Nidiry, Selen Güler, Devin Collins, Tyler Smith, Chassidy Wen, Courtney Allen, Michele Cadigan, Ihsan Kahveci, Chris Maggio, Tynan Challenor, Rebecca Blair, Ryan Gentzler, Rachel Marshall, Kyla Bourne, Rebecca Goldstein, UW’s CSSCR, members of the Vera Institute of Justice’s Reshaping Prosecution Team, and members of the Hofstra University Department of Sociology. Several current and former prosecutors also offered valuable insight. I appreciate comments and conversation on this paper at the 2023 American Society of Criminology Annual Meeting, 2023 University of Washington’s Context Working Group, and 2024 American Sociological Association Annual Meeting. I received financial support from the UW Department of Sociology, UW Center for Human Rights, and PEO McVicker Chapter while authoring this paper.
Competing interests
From 2017 through 2019, the author was employed by the Institute for Innovation in Prosecution at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY, which partnered with many of the “progressive” prosecutors named in this article. However, the author was not employed by this organization while conducting the study.
Funding statement
The author received financial support from the UW Department of Sociology, UW Center for Human Rights, and PEO McVicker Chapter while authoring this paper.
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