Tuesday 7 June 2022 04:46 PM House incumbents, crime, and Trump's endorsements put to the test as SEVEN ... trends now
If the midterm primaries so far have been about former Donald Trump's endorsements and President Joe Biden's struggles with inflation, Tuesday night brings another dimension to the battle between left and right: Voters fears about crime and homelessness.
The liberal left coast goes to the polls with voters in California driven by a growing sense of lawlessness triggered by the pandemic.
The issue is dominating local contests and statewide races in Democratic cities such as Los Angeles and San Francisco.
At the same time, Trump faces another test of the power of his endorsement.
With Biden slumping in the polls and inflation showing no sign of easing, Republicans are hoping to win control of the House of Representatives and maybe the Senate in November.
Tuesday's elections will see which Republican incumbents can see off challengers to prepare for November battles that could determine control of the House.
Voters in South Dakota, New Jersey, Iowa, Mississippi, New Mexico, Montana and California will go to the polls.
Crime in California
Rising crime and homelessness have forced themselves to the center of the race to be mayor of Los Angeles, where progressive Rep. Karen Bass has proposed putting more police on the streets under pressure from Republican billionaire Rick Caruso who is running a close second
Caruso is proposing moving homeless people from camps into shelters
A University of Berkeley poll in April found that crime and lawlessness were voters' number one concern, ahead of race relations, healthcare and the pandemic.
That could test a Democratic Party that has put criminal justice reform at the heart of its policies in recent years.
Two key battles will show how that debate shakes out.
In Los Angeles, Republican billionaire Rick Caruso is running second to Democratic U.S. Rep. Karen Bass in the race for mayor. They are the two candidates expected to head into a November run-off.
Caruso, who has juiced his campaigned with $30 million of his own cash, has put crime at the heart of his campaign in a city where homicides are running at a 15-year high.
He wants 1500 more police officers and plans to move homeless people out of camps and into shelters.
Liberal Bass has moved to the center and promised to put more police on the streets.
Meanwhile, San Francisco's progressive district attorney is expected to be dumped out of office in a recall vote.
Chesa Boudin - a 41-year-old former public defender whose parents were members of the radical 80s activist group Weather Underground - was elected on a platform of criminal justice reform in 2020.
But residents say the city has become increasingly unsafe because of his soft-on-crime policies.
The results from two reliably progressive cities will give Democrats an idea of how tough they will need to get on crime in November.
Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert, Chesa Boudin's radical leftist parents, spent decades in prison after taking part in a botched armored vehicle robbery that left three dead
Chesa Boudin, a progressive Democrat, entered the San Francisco district attorney's race as an underdog, running on a platform of ending mass incarceration and addressing racial disparities in law enforcement, and won by fewer than 3,000 ballots. Voters were taken by his unusual life story, which lends insight into his view on the criminal justice and prison system.
When Boudin he was just 1 year old in 1981, his parents, who were members of the far-left Weather Underground, dropped him off with a babysitter and took part in an armored car robbery in upstate New York that left two police officers and a security guard dead.
His mother, Kathy Boudin, served 22 years behind bars and his father, David Gilbert, was jailed for life - until outgoing NY Governor Andrew Cuomo commuted his sentence for murder in August.
They didn't fire shots that day and the victims were killed by the Black Liberation Army.
Boudin was cared for by members of a radical left-wing group and says his experiences of visiting his parents in
