One of the most significant political developments of the last several years has been the quiet revolution in prosecutor races. Progressives have realized that district attorneys or states attorneys have a lot of discretion in choosing which cases to prosecute, and candidates who have promised to fight mass incarceration by reversing “tough on crime” policies have won office in big cities including Philadelphia, Chicago, and Los Angeles. George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police and the ensuing protests and reckoning over law enforcement’s structural racism has only made this project more urgent.
These candidates are often backed by local grassroots reform organizations. But they are also frequently bankrolled by a handful of mega-donors who have funded criminal justice reform efforts, recognizing these campaigns as places where their dollars matter. This has undoubtedly helped advance progressive priorities in lots of cities, but it has also opened up mega-donor-backed candidates to charges that they’re in the pockets of special interests.
So where is the money coming from? Here are a few of the top donors to criminal justice reform:
George Soros
The 90-year-old billionaire philanthropist has spent lavishly on a variety of causes both in the U.S. and around the world; his giving is so massive and multi-faceted that though he hardly has an exclusive focus on criminal justice, no one else has invested as aggressively in the election of progressive prosecutors. Since 2015, he has been putting millions—$3 million from 2015-16, Politico reported—into district attorney races in places as diverse as Chicago and Mississippi. This money is generally routed through PACs with names like “Safety and Justice,” and though these donations represent only a tiny fraction of Soros’s giving, DA races are traditionally inexpensive, so his investment in them led to big, dramatic wins—like the 2017 election of Larry Krasner in Philadelphia, a victory toward which Soros contributed $1.7 million.
Since Soros has been contributing to these races, their cost has risen, as opponents of reform spend in an effort to counter the money of Soros and other donors. One example is the 2020 Los Angeles County DA race, where Soros gave $2.25 million directly to George Gascón, who unseated incumbent Jackie Lacey. But that was counterbalanced by millions from law enforcement unions, who fought to keep incumbent Jackie Lacey in office.
Incumbent DAs who find themselves targeted by Soros’s political donations often cry foul, decrying him as an outsider looking to interfere in local politics and his giving as “dark money.” At this point, the mega-donor has become so notorious—he is the subject of many right-wing anti-Semitic conspiracy theories—that his giving may backfire in some cases, allowing the opponents of his chosen candidates to paint them as under the control of nefarious, out-of-district influences. But in many races, his money has boosted progressive challengers’ chances. He can justifiably claim a portion of the credit for the recent surge of progressive prosecutors. And he’ll be spending even more—recently, his Open Society Foundations announced that it would be spending $220 million to fight racism in America, some of which will surely go toward changing policy at a local level.
Cari Tuna
Tuna and her husband, Facebook co-founder Dustin Moscovitz, have invested their $16 billion fortune in Good Ventures and Open Philanthropy, philanthropic ventures guided in large part by the principles of effective altruism, i.e., the couple tries to identify where giving will have the greatest impact. Consequently, their foundation has prioritized humanity-threatening issues like pandemics and artificial intelligence, but it has also focused on criminal justice reform.
The thinking is that American mass incarceration is immiserating so many people that reforming the system, ensuring that fewer people are in jail or prison, will change a large number of lives. As a 2016 strategy document from Open Philanthropy noted, there is a “window” to advance reforms at the state and local levels, and taking advantage of that is paramount. It’s a relatively novel framing of the problem—not only is the criminal justice system racist and unfair, not only is it of paramount concern to change it, but doing so could be a relatively efficient way to spend philanthropic money. This way of thinking may be catching on in Silicon Valley, as other billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan have quietly begun donating to criminal justice reform causes.
Tuna herself has invested millions on electing progressive prosecutors, using the Accountable Justice Action Fund, a 501(c)(4), as a vehicle. She hasn’t contributed as much money to DA campaigns as Soros has, of course, but her strategy is similar and has resulted in similar blowback from opponents crying dark money.
Reed Hastings and Patty Quillin
Hastings, the CEO of Netflix, is another Silicon Valley luminary. He and his wife, Quillin, have donated extensively to Democratic politicians in California for years, and they have also been major proponents of charter schools, which was a cause celebre for years among the moneyed tech set, particularly Zuckerberg.
In the past decade, Hastings has also been donating to criminal justice reform causes, though unlike Soros and Tuna, his spending has focused on ballot measures. In 2012, he spent $250,000 on a failed campaign to repeal California’s death penalty; in 2014, he dropped $247,000 on a successful ballot measure that reduced criminal penalties in California. In 2016, he spent nearly $1 million to pass a measure limiting the ability of California prosecutors to try children as adults, and in 2018, he looked beyond his state’s borders, giving $1 million in support of an ultimately unsuccessful reform ballot measure in Ohio.
In the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests in response to the killing of George Floyd, Hastings and Quillin have recently upped their donations to racial equity causes and expanded the ways they use that money. This year, the couple pledged to give $120 million toward scholarships at historically black colleges and universities. They also gave a combined $2.1 million to Gascón in the L.A. DA race—a contest that combines two of their apparent passions, criminal justice reform and California electoral politics.
One thing that stands out is that for mega-donors, the numbers involved in criminal justice reform aren’t all that “mega.” Even if there has been something of an arms race when it comes to DA elections, they’re still cheap compared to Senate contests, let alone presidential campaigns. And unlike many politicians, a DA can unilaterally change a lot of lives quickly—their choice not to prosecute nonviolent drug offenses means fewer people in prison.
That’s the basis of the argument Tuna and Good Ventures have been making, and it’s easy to see how it would be attractive to tech executives who in their day jobs are naturally drawn to metrics. Donating to progressive DA candidates and criminal justice reform ballot measures is also a good way for wealthy denizens of Silicon Valley—which has been criticized for its often toxic, racist culture—to demonstrate their anti-racist bona fides. (And of course, they may also be genuinely committed to the cause of anti-racism.)
But it’s also true that when reformers spend money on electing progressive DAs and passing ballot measures, their opponents (mostly law enforcement unions) spend money in response, driving up the cost of formerly sleepy prosecutor races and launching their own ballot initiatives. Criminal justice reform may become a less efficient cause to invest in as the price tag of competing in this arena goes up. Though that doesn’t make it any less worthwhile.
