You may remember last week there was a story about some CNN reporters who were in San Francisco working on a story when their car got broken into. The irony on top was that the reporters were working on a story involving crime in the city.

Yesterday we got a look at the finished story that reporter Kyung Lah and Jason Kravarik were working on. It did involve crime but the main thrust was how crime and other issues were impacting the voting habits of some Asian residents in the city.

[Allene] Jue, who generally considers herself a Democrat, recalled her anger at liberal local politicians.

“They care about policies that don’t really help someone who just lives in the city and just want to be safe, who wants their kids to be educated well,” she said. “They forgot the core problems for regular people. I wanted to do something to try to change and take that power back. It was fear and frustration, a lot of frustration, that I turned into action.”

Jue has two kids, aged 3 and 5, and during the pandemic she got fed up with the direction the city was heading. She volunteered to stuff envelopes for the recall campaigns of Chesa Boudin and three members of the school board. Later she would be featured in an add for a moderate city supervisor named Joel Engardio who defeated a Chinese American incumbent to win the race.

Education was a big issue but so was crime. During the pandemic, hate crimes against Asian Americans went up more than 500% in San Francisco, from just 8 cases in 2019 to 60 in 2021.

Chief Scott said more than 30 of the incidents in 2021 were committed by the same person who deliberately targeted Asians. He was arrested in August for burglaries, acts of vandalism, and also faces hate crime enhancements. The chief also highlighted other arrests including the person accused of stabbing two Asians at a bus stop on Market Street. “That case got a lot of publicity, it was a bad look for our city,” he lamented.

It was during the time when all of this was making news that the school board was doing things like trying to rename a bunch of schools in the district and removing competitive admissions from Lowell High School. There seemed to be a disconnect between what concerned many Asian American parents and what the DA and school board were focused on.

The word “woke” doesn’t appear in CNN’s story but it’s absolutely the core of what the story is about. Chesa Boudin was a woke DA. The three school board members who were recalled were absolutely woke in their approach to their jobs. And that’s the extremism which led to a backlash among some Asian voters in America’s most liberal city.

Supervisor Joel Engardio, a gay married man who by most national standards is a liberal, describes himself as a moderate in San Francisco. And he is quick to criticize the word “progressive.”

“To me, progressive is forward thinking, moving into the future and building a better city,” said Engardio from his San Francisco City Hall office. “For too long, we have not followed that definition of progressive. Progressive is a city that works and functions and builds toward the future.”…

“We should all pay attention that San Francisco, the most liberal place in America, is saying enough. We want safe streets. We want good schools. That should tell anyone – pay attention,” said Engardio.

It seemed as if, after the 2020 elections, Democrats had learned a lesson about going woke and underperforming dramatically in House races. But it’s not clear if that message really stuck or if there has been some backsliding already. If the latter, maybe this story will remind Democrats what’s at stake when they move too far left. Here’s the full report. Stick around to the end when Kyung Lah adds a postscript about her can being broken into. It’s good to see a story like this appear on CNN.

Asian Americans to Democrats: "we want safe streets, good schools and less progressive ideology." That's the message and 2024 warning from San Francisco. Footnote about our unfortunate experience at the end. @OutFrontCNN story features @JoelEngardio. Producer: @jasonkCNN pic.twitter.com/6Up96sGD5H

— Kyung Lah (@KyungLahCNN) March 23, 2023

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