SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) – Richie Greenberg, who spearheaded an earlier effort to have San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin recalled, spoke with KRON4’s Pam Moore and Vicki Liviakis after the latter’s primetime interview Monday.

“I want to congratulate Chesa Boudin and praise him that he actually admitted two and a half years in that he virtually has no experience prosecuting any cases, and he just did that now and he got a conviction, so bravo,” Greenberg said. “But the problem is we’re now two-and-a-half years in and what does that say? … He ran in 2019 as a defense attorney, as a public defender, and this is the results we see, that he has no experience in what he’s doing.”

Greenberg’s effort to recall Boudin was the first, but it failed to gather the requisite number of signatures. He launched it after an online petition asking Boudin to resign garnered almost 15,000 signatures. The current recall effort is headed by Mary Jung, a former head of the San Francisco Democratic Party. Greenberg was a Republican candidate for mayor in 2018.

During the interview with KRON4’s Catherine Heenan, Boudin defended his record on criminal justice. Greenberg said Boudin’s 2019 win was because of ranked-choice voting, and not because his beliefs reflect those of San Franciscans.

“There’s a thing called ranked-choice voting: a pesky little mechanism,” Greenberg said. “That is what kicked in. The first round, he only got I think it was 36% of the vote, and the rest of the San Francisco voters actually picked the other three candidates combined. That was a surprise there, but also, he is a charismatic speaker, I admit that, and many people here got transformed by what he was saying.”

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Greenberg said that city residents “have all been the victim of a crime, or know someone directly” who is, and blamed that on Boudin and his policies, which he said are “not effective at all.”