Call it a case of Trading Places, bicoastal edition. San Francisco is mounting a comeback by reversing the soft-on-crime policies that begat disorder and made the city nigh unlivable, the Wall Street Journal reports. Yet New York City, if the latest polling in the mayoral race is any guide, seems to be on the verge of embracing the opposite course by electing a Marxist candidate, Zohran Mamdani, who has called for defunding the police.

The good news from the Coast finds the City by the Bay emerging from what the Journal calls the “Shadow of a Doom Loop.” Rates of crime “have dropped to their lowest levels in decades and continue to fall,” per the Journal, “with burglaries, a particular nuisance to homeowners and tourists, down 28% this year.” Homeless tents that “block sidewalks and bedevil retail businesses” are vanishing, and “foot traffic and transit ridership” are up.

It’s a remarkable turnaround for San Francisco, which had fallen prey to misguided progressive policies embraced by the far left. The city in 2019 elected a soft-on-crime district attorney, Chesa Boudin, who, along with the former Mayor, London Breed, seemed to shrug off surging crime and public disorder that impaired the quality of life for residents and businesses. By 2022, voters were fed up and recalled Mr. Boudin, ousting him from office.

In 2024, the city gave Ms. Breed the boot, too, by opting to elect as mayor Daniel Lurie, who vowed to clean up the city and stop turning a blind eye to encampments of vagrants and public drug use. The city was aided, too, by a Supreme Court ruling last year that gave cities across America a green light to bar the homeless from sleeping in public spaces. That common-sense constitutionalism helped restore streets and parks as civic amenities for all residents. 

San Franciscans “deserve to have a clean and healthy city,” a police spokesman told the Journal, adding that “streets blocked with sprawling encampments” were “not a feasible situation.” After the cleanup, business sentiment is soaring, the city’s economist, Ted Egan, says. “The willingness to invest is back.” Mr. Lurie, a political neophyte, explained that he was compelled to seek public office to reverse the city’s downward spiral: “I just couldn’t stand by.”

One might think Mr. Lurie’s successes at San Francisco would give New York City voters pause before they contemplate hoisting into office an anti-police candidate like Mr. Mamdani. In recent years, he denounced New York’s Finest as “racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety.” His policy prescription for the NYPD was to “defund this rogue agency.” Now he’s whistling a different tune, but does such a volte-face have any credibility? 

New York’s former lieutenant governor, Betsy McCaughey, warns that Mr. Mamdani’s pledge to shutter Rikers Island means that “thousands of violent inmates will be on the streets.” At the same time, she reports, “cops will be quitting in droves,” citing former NYPD commissioners Bill Bratton and Ray Kelly. Instead of relying on police for public safety, Mr. Mamdani wants to fight crime with “mental health responders,” per the Times.

Mr. Mamdani’s Department of Community Safety would “deploy mental health teams to respond to 911 calls,” the Times reports. So if a violent crime is in progress, social workers will be dispatched to the rescue? Such delusions ignore San Francisco’s progress and threaten to ruin New York’s quality of life. Recall Reagan’s quip: “I’ve always felt the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.”