Two Democratic California mayors have endorsed a new ballot initiative to hold repeat offenders accountable in an effort to tackle the growing crime epidemic in the state.

San Francisco Mayor London Breed and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan threw their support behind The Homelessness, Drug Addiction, and Theft Reduction Act, which takes aim at the failures of California’s Proposition 47. The proposition was adopted in 2014 and recategorized a number of felonies as misdemeanors.

“Some people want to call this [a] Republican cause,” Anne Marie Schubert, co-chair of the campaign, said in an interview with the Washington Examiner. “It’s a California cause. It’s a cause that touches every demographic in this state, and we not only see that in the polling, we see it by the momentum.”

“We cannot be afraid to challenge the status quo when it is clearly not working for our residents,” Mahan said upon endorsing the measure. “Prop 47 was well-intended but what really matters is its impact — and unfortunately, it’s hurting far too many families and small businesses across the state.”

Mayors Breed and Mahan join fellow Democratic San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria and Republican Fresno Mayor Jerry Dyer in endorsing the effort to reduce crime in the Golden State.

“The Homelessness, Drug Addiction, and Theft Reduction Act will make targeted but impactful changes to our laws around fentanyl and help us tackle the chronic retail theft that hurts our retailers, our workers, and our cities,” Breed said. “I fully support this measure and know it will make a meaningful difference for cities across California.”

If approved, the ballot measure states it will “reform laws that have dramatically increased homelessness, drug addiction, and theft throughout California.”

“We’re in a downward spiral of theft,” Schubert said, and explained that theft and hard drugs like fentanyl have been “virtually decriminalized” since Proposition 47 was passed.

The former Sacramento district attorney said “fentanyl is killing our citizens, and it’s time for us to stand up and go after those drug dealers and tell them that if you continue this behavior and you kill somebody, you can be charged with homicide.”

Under the new initiative, California would provide rehabilitation for people addicted to hard drugs, add fentanyl to existing drug laws, give judges more discretion in sentencing drug dealers, reinstate penalties for drug dealers whose trafficking results in death or injury of a drug user, and warn drug dealers that they can be charged with murder if this happens.

Roughly 6,000 California residents died of fentanyl overdoses between September 2021 and September 2022, with the drug epidemic prompting the state to launch an initiative to provide free Narcan to save the lives of Californians suffering from a would-be fatal overdose.

The measure would additionally increase penalties for criminals who repeatedly engage in theft while adding new laws to address the increasing problem of “smash and grab” thefts.

The most controversial policy in the proposition is a $950 property value threshold for misdemeanors, which California Assemblyman Carlos Villapudua previously told the Washington Examiner “has fueled a market of petty and repeat offenses with zero-to-low accountability.”

“Without having a felony prosecution for serial thieves, we’re never going to get a handle on it because they know they can just continue to steal,” Schubert said in reference to the property value threshold, which she argues allows repeat offenders to escape accountability.

“Thieves have recognized that they can get away with this, that there’s little to no accountability,” she said. “They think they can rip off the state every day without any consequences.”

Villapudua launched a referendum in January to roll back a number of policies under the existing law in an effort to protect businesses, employees, and customers who “have been put in harm’s way due to today’s aggressive nature of retail theft and the onslaught of incidents.”

Izzy Gardon, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D-CA) deputy director pointed out that California’s $950 threshold is among the lowest in the nation, and pointed to “red states like Texas ($2,500), South Carolina ($2,000), and Mississippi ($1,000)” with higher thresholds in response to the Washington Examiner‘s request for comment. She also mentioned that since Newsom took over in 2019, the state has “invested $1.1 billion to fight crime, hire more police, and improve public safety.”

“It’s off the charts, the people’s desire to sign this. And that’s an indication in support of what we’ve seen in the polling,” Schubert said.

A recent survey out of Axis Research found that 70% of likely California voters support the measure and only 9% harshly oppose it.

Since Proposition 47 was passed in 2014 with nearly 60% support, the state has seen an increase in crime, especially among repeat offenders. Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-CA), Assemblyman Vince Fong, Villapudua, and other prominent Californian politicians have all thrown support behind various initiatives to repeal, amend, or replace it.

A 2018 study from the Public Policy institute of California states it found “evidence of Prop 47’s impact on property crime rates, which went up immediately after the law was implemented.”

“This increase has been primarily driven by larceny thefts, particularly thefts from motor vehicles and shoplifting. We find the increase in the larceny theft rate in California to be nearly 9 percent higher than that of similar states,” the study said.

Another study from the California Policy Lab that evaluated 9,000 people from 2016 to 2019 found that more than half of those charged with crimes and released from jail before their trials in San Francisco were later accused of committing another crime while free. One in 6 defendants reportedly went on to commit a new violent offense.

The Homelessness, Drug Addiction, and Theft Reduction Act has received more than 360,000 signatures from California voters to place it on the ballot. To qualify the measure for the 2024 ballot, 546,651 valid signatures are required by law.

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California is in a “humanitarian crisis,” Schubert said, in large part because Proposition 47 allows drug abusers to go on without true rehabilitation and serial thieves to skirt criminal justice.

The Washington Examiner reached out to Breed, Mahan, Gloria, and Dyer for comment.