Progressive crime agenda pushed largely by liberal mega donor George Sorossuffered a major defeat in California this week after voters soundly rejected prosecutors and progressive policies that experts say Fox News Digital represents a sea change.

“I think this is broader than a message from people who care about crime,” Cully Stimson, senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation and co-author of “Rogue Prosecutors: How Radical Soros Lawyers Are Destroying America’s Communities.” said Fox News Digital.

“This is a massive mandate and a cry for help from the general population that we want the state back. We want our counties back, and we want our cities back, and that our failed social experiments have had enough time and are an absolute, abysmal failure.”

California voters overwhelmingly voted in favor of Proposition 36, which overturned key provisions of Proposition 47, which was promoted by state Democrats as progressive crime reforms that would make the state safer.

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But in the past few years, retail chains and retail stores have been hit hard by thefts, retail robberies and organized crime gangs, while cities like San Francisco, Oakland and Los Angeles have been ravaged by increases. in property crimes and retail theft.

“For too long, Gavin Newsom, George Gascón and Democratic leaders have tried to tell voters not to believe what they see when it comes to crime,” Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco told Fox News Digital. “They wanted to make the public think that our eyes lied to us. Well, the people have spoken overwhelmingly. The results in the LA YES race and the Prop 36 race make it clear that Californians are done with the Democrats’ experiments on crime that endanger the safety of our communities.”

When Proposition 47 was passed in 2014, it downgraded most thefts from misdemeanors to felonies if the amount stolen was under $950, “unless the defendant has prior convictions for murder, rape, certain sex crimes, or certain crimes involving weapons”.

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Every county in the state voted in favor of Prop 36, which won by an overall margin of 70.4 percent to 29.6 percent, with 54 percent of the vote Thursday.

“You see all these Walgreens, the first In N Out Burger closing, all these CVS in downtown San Francisco and LA closing, these stores closing because you’re literally telling people you can steal up to $950, and nothing will happen to you,” Stimson told Fox News Digital. “No one with an ounce of common sense, left or right, thinks this is a good idea. This is not reimagining criminal justice. This is a cancer unleashed on society under the fig leaf of reform.”

Progressives suffered another major loss in the city of Los Angeles, where Soros-backed District Attorney George Gascón was defeated by former federal prosecutor Nathan Hochman because crime was seen as a top issue of the election cycle.

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Stimson told Fox News Digital that Gascón’s policies were essentially a “middle finger” to victims and that the “Achilles’ heel” of the progressive prosecutors’ movement continues to be the “invalidity and lack of common sense” that leads “directly to increasing crime rate”. “

“That’s why Gascón will go down as the worst prosecutor in the history of the county, maybe the country,” Stimson said.

After losing his re-election campaign, Gascón suggested he was part of a “shift to the right in America”, which he called “heartbreaking”.

“Democrats have a long way to go, but the work is more vital than ever, and our commitment will not waver,” Gascóon said. “However, I have called Mr. Hochman and wish him well as the next Los Angeles County District Attorney. I am deeply proud of what we have accomplished over the past four years, and I am grateful to the communities that have been and will always be at the heart of criminal justice reform.”

Gascón, who co-authored Prop 47, was inducted into office in 2020 amid a ruling on police misconduct and national calls for criminal justice reform. His directives — such as eliminating cash bail, not seeking the death penalty and refusing to try juvenile defendants accused of violent crimes as adults — have been criticized by critics as too soft on crime.

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In another loss for Soros-backed prosecutors in the Golden State, Alameda County, Calif., District Attorney Pamela Price was recalled early Wednesday, less than two years after taking office amid backlash over her alleged soft-on-crime approach.

Democratic Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao, who faced heat from her constituents amid rising crime and car theft, was also voted out of office after her recall effort was approved with 65 percent of the vote.

In San Francisco, where crime was a major concern of voters, Democratic Mayor London Breed he lost his re-election campaign.

“I don’t think this really happened to people who cared about the crime,” Stimson said. “This is just that we want our beautiful state back. We want our beautiful cities back. And your failed cancerous social experiment, your social pandemic you unleashed on us is gone. I’m done. I’m done with this. And that’s what’s happening.”

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“So Pamela Price, losing, being recalled. That’s a no brainer. George Gascón lost 2 to 1. It’s a no brainer. The passage of Proposition 36 is a no-brainer because it was the epitome of stupidity, and one thing that’s hard for people to recognize is that Trump didn’t win because black men are misogynistic and Hispanic men are misogynistic. Gascón didn’t lose because blacks are misogynists and hispanics are misogynists. The price has not been recalled because of this. Prop 36 didn’t pass because of that. These things happened because the policies, in action or proposed by the other side, were stupid. They were a failure. And on the criminal law side, they were deadly.”

Fox News Digital’s Jamie Joseph, Louis Casiano and Michael Ruiz contributed to this report