Political analysts can quantify all kinds of things these days, but there’s a limit to where their sophisticated methods can take them. They can’t, for example, climb inside voters’ minds.
And so, after we learn who won and who lost an election, one question frequently remains: Why?
I’ve often wondered that about Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams’ victory in 2020.
Williams ran as an uncompromising progressive, vowing to never try juveniles as adults or use the state’s habitual offender law to jack up sentences.
In nearly four years in office, he’s done both, although to a more limited extent than his predecessor Leon Cannizzaro. Ironically, he’s basically adopted the approach of his vanquished election opponent, Keva Landrum, who said she’d dial those controversial practices way back but keep them in the office’s arsenal.
Williams has also formed a partnership of sorts with a couple of conservative state officials who are anything but progressive on criminal justice matters, Gov. Jeff Landry and Attorney General Liz Murrill.
Columnist Stephanie Grace
Does all that make him a hypocrite, or a realist?
I asked Williams about his thinking in a recent interview, a fuller version of which was published on this page Thursday. His answers surely won’t satisfy everyone who backed him in 2020 — as he openly acknowledges?— but they were nuanced and complex.
Williams said he absolutely believed in the positions he took at the time of the campaign, before being figurately “punched in the face.” In the case of juvenile crime, he described a pandemic-era scenario in which kids were disconnected from school and said he never could have envisioned a crime like the murder of Linda Frickey, who was dragged to her death during a carjacking.
He said that he sought guidance from East Baton Rouge District Attorney Hillar Moore on using the habitual offender law in a much more limited way against only the most dangerous offenders, not as an everyday tool, and that he put in strict controls.
On teaming up with Landry and Murrill, he conceded that they disagree on much but said they “drilled down” on areas of agreement, which helped lead to a new state police presence in the city that is yielding results.
He even sidestepped the “progressive” label, arguing that it sets up a false choice between public safety and criminal justice reform, “when in fact they are two sides of the same coin.”
Which brings us back to the big question of what many of the 58% of voters who elected Williams think.
My gut sense?— again, it’s just that?— is that many New Orleanians support the progressive agenda to a point. They want to address the root causes of crime, to give juvenile offenders a chance to turn their lives around and not lock up people for years for nonviolent offenses. But above all, they want to be safe and secure.
So it could well be that Williams owed his winning margin less to his precise platform and more to a general desire to dial back what many viewed as Cannizzaro’s overkill?— not just the frequent shift of juveniles to adult court and use of multiple billing to force defendants to plead, but controversial hard-line tactics toward uncooperative witnesses.
Plus, Williams was a high-profile at-large City Council member when he ran and an outspoken critic of Cannizzaro. Nobody was campaigning much due to COVID, which surely helped. And there’s the simple fact that he’s a naturally gifted politician?— so gifted that he was able to overcome a federal tax fraud indictment, for which he’s since been acquitted, in voters' minds.
I know there are those who believed him, who remain committed to the principles on which he ran and are deeply disappointed; that’s entirely fair, and the cost of breaking political promises. It’s also fair to question whether a seasoned defense attorney really couldn’t envision the extremely difficult situations he might confront in office.
My guess, though, is that many of his supporters — and likely a bunch of Landrum’s supporters too?— are content with how he’s handling the job.
Overall crime numbers are way down, a phenomenon for which many deserve praise?but that certainly doesn’t reflect poorly on the DA.
While other progressive prosecutors around the country have faced backlashes, and Williams caught recent flak from the Legislature?— and Murrill?— on his approach to post-conviction relief, his standing at home appears solid. Williams’ poll ratings have improved markedly, from 36% approval/47% disapproval in 2022 to 45% approval/35% disapproval this year, according to the University of New Orleans Quality of Life Survey, which also found much less voter preoccupation with crime compared to two years ago.
Williams said in the interview that he plans to run for reelection in two years. If he does, he might want to talk less about being progressive and more about being pragmatic this time around.
I suspect that’s what many voters in New Orleans wanted all along.